🍭 Goodie Bag, Employee Engagement, Performance Reviews, Burnout, Iron Triangle, API Gateways: TMW #193 by CTO Craft
Hi again, welcome to the week!
We announced CTO Craft Learn at the conference - this is a new initiative we’re building out at the moment, including Masters, self-paced courses on a variety of engineering and leadership topics, and Labs, in-depth instructor-led workshops. Learn will launch in Feb 2021, but we’re already taking pre-orders at an early-bird price, so if you’re interested in getting involved, check it out now:
🎓 CTO Craft Learn - Engineering Leadership Courses and Workshops - early-bird pricing now active
And on to the content - see you next week!
Andy @ CTO Craft
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CTO Craft Member Goodie Bag
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Reads of the Week
Weak and strong team concepts.
Engineers are often frustrated that their management “treats us like fungible resources when we’re unique humans.” On the other hand, engineers usually view individual ownership as a managerial failure, “critical systems need to be owned by teams not by individuals.
Why Women Stay Out of the Spotlight at Work
To get ahead in the workplace, you have to be seen. Being visible at work allows employees to demonstrate their skills, land prominent assignments, and build strategic relationships. For women, however, the importance of visibility creates a conundrum.
From our Partners
A huge, huge thanks to our partners for supporting CTO Craft Con 2020 - you’re all amazing!
Amazon Web Services, The Scale Factory, YLD, LinearB, Albany Partners, Skiller Whale, iTechArt Group and PGS Software
🥝 🥝 If you’re interested in seeing our Partnership Opportunities, drop a reply to this email! 🥝 🥝
Culture & People
How to communicate your next employee engagement survey
Whether you’re launching your first employee survey or your twentieth, how you communicate each survey to your employees is essential. Clarity about the survey process leads to good participation, which leads to actionable data that enables you to make better decisions.
How we run 1:1s
Running a 1:1 can be quite tricky, especially if you're new to the whole management game.
In order to help ourselves (and let's admit it mostly our founders) our instructional designer Joshua has developed this framework that helps you to dive deep in your 1:1s but also keep a good handle on time.
Writing a Performance Self Review for Software Engineers - With an Example
Performance reviews are coming up. I've always found this period nerve wracking, despite having gone through it so many times, both as an engineer, and later as an engineering manager.
1 in 5 Employees Is Highly Engaged and at Risk of Burnout
Dorothea loved her new workplace and was highly motivated to perform. Her managers were delighted with her high engagement, professionalism, and dedication.
Leadership & Self-management
10 Scary Leadership & Management Mistakes
Advice from leaders at Shopify, G2, Procurify, Venngage, CreditKarma (and more!) on the most common mistakes you should avoid as a manager. Management isn’t something that you receive a handbook for.
What to Do When You’re Feeling Exhausted
Last week I got a question from one of my all-time favorite executive coaching clients. At the beginning of the call, the first thing he said was, “I’ve got to ask you a question. Is everyone you’re talking to feeling exhausted?” I didn’t need to think about that one at all.
Evolution of my role as a founder CTO
There is a lot written about the importance of scaling as a founder in a fast-growing startup. Most of it focused on the CEO role. The generic advice on leadership also applies to other non-CEO roles, but I could not find a lot of content targeted to technical founders.
Agile, Engineering & Product
The iron triangle and Agile
Long before Agile, the Iron Triangle — a.k.a. the Project Management Triangle — was a cornerstone of project management. Its origins remain unclear, but it has been used since the 1950s (Wikipedia).
The Past, Present, and Future of Cloud Native API Gateways
Daniel Bryant discusses the evolution of API gateways over the past ten years, current challenges of using Kubernetes, strategies for exposing services and APIs, the (potential) future of gateways.
Can developer productivity be measured?
Defining and measuring programmer productivity is one of the most difficult parts of an engineering manager or CTO’s job description. When everything you do is intangible, how should you measure it? Can it be measured at all?
To fix your Scrum you need to fix your agreements.
In many organisations I see Scrum not producing its anticipated value. The concept of value varies across organisations. But there also is a universal anticipated value of Scrum.
What Else?
Why Good Developers are Promoted into Unhappiness
I once thought I had traveled a unique career path. Graduating from college with a degree in computer engineering and electrical engineering I was on fire to be a manager.
Thank you to our Partners!
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Have an amazing week!
Andy