đ Managing Managers, Jeans and Jorts, Cost of Attrition, Courageous Leadership, Slumps, Jenkins Attacks, No Scrum for Data: TMW #249 by CTO Craft
Hi there, welcome to the week!
The first of this week's two Bytes events is on Tuesday at12.30 GMT and will focus on how product and engineering functions can collaborate more effectively by understanding the tensions there, and where they come from. We have over 350 people signed up for this one, so definitely recommend coming along. The recordings will be available very shortly afterwards on Crowdcast and Youtube if you're not able to make it.
We spoke to Andrew Odewahn of O'Reilly recently about how he sees engineering leadership evolving and what he thinks is on the horizon for 2022. He's a very clever gentleman.
On with the show!
Andy @ CTO Craft
Andrew Odewahn of OâReillyâs three tips on the future of work, leadership and learning and development - from the CTO Craft blog
The world of work is changing, here O'Reilly's Andrew Odewahn shares his insights on how to prioritise your team's career progression
CTO Craft Bytes
Unpacking the Tension Between Product and Engineering Teams - Tue 18 Jan 2022 at 12:30 GMT
Whatâs the best way to resolve this tension so that Product and Engineering teams donât âbutt headsâ? Sergey Soloviov and Sarah Hale have both been in the middle of this tension as Engineering leaders.
Diversity & Inclusion Strategy - Fri 21 Jan 2022 at 12:30 GMT
Itâs so important that businesses really invest in Diversity & Inclusion, but many companies donât take it seriously or imbed it in the core of their businesses strategy. Join this panel to hear how different companies have addressed this and get some pointers on where to start. We will discuss practical ways that can impact your organisation and positively affect your tech teams.
Read of the Week
Managing Managers: Words of Wisdom From Experienced Engineering Executives
I asked them 4 questions: 1. What worked for you and helped you succeed? 2. Have you experienced failure? What would you have done differently? 3. Were there any resources you found helpful as you grew into the role 4. What piece of advice would you give your past self before entering the role?
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Culture & People
Jean, Jorts, and tough feedback
I canât stop thinking about a recent AITA post from the manager of two cats named Jorts and Jean.
The post itself is Reddit goldâsurprising and empathetic with moments of pure joyâbut I also read it through the lens of someone who coaches a lot of managers as they need to respond to surprising and sensitive feedback at work.
Breaking the Cycle of Burnout in the Workplace
In particularly challenging times, leaders often feel theyâre being asked to give more, when they already have less to give. And realistically, much of the current state of affairs is well outside your zone of control.
Toxic Culture Is Driving the Great Resignation
Research using employee data reveals the top five predictors of attrition and four actions managers can take in the short term to reduce attrition.
Cost of Attrition
What if we could visualise the cost of attrition? Hereâs a team. Someone leaves. We hire a replacement. We get lucky and manage to find someone more skilled. Looks like weâre better off?
Assessing Engineering Managers
Itâs that time of year where many leaders across the globe are scrambling to kick off their âperformance reviewsâ processes or whatever ritual the company has deemed correct. Donât get me wrong; I donât recommend to any of my clients that feedback should be a once-a-year sort of thing.
Leadership & Self-management
The Best Managers Donât Fix, They Coach â Four Tools to Add to Your Toolkit
Anita Hossain Choudhry (The Grand, First Round) and Mindy Zhang (Dropbox, Oscar Health) draw on their experiences as executive coaches to unpack why managers fall into the âfixingâ trap and make the case for adding coaching as a skill. They share four practical tools, sample scenarios and thoughtful questions to help managers put these concepts into practice.
What Courageous Leaders Do Differently
Fred Keller, the founder of Cascade Engineering, wanted to show that a for-profit business could also help address societyâs social ills. So he accepted an employeeâs suggestion that they hire unemployed locals.
Hiring a VP of Eng? Use This Framework from Shopifyâs VPE to Get it Right
After more than 20 years in tech, eight companies, and thousands of hires, Shopify's Farhan Thawar shares his go-to-framework for snagging a VP of Engineering. From the skills that are most important to the questions to ask and red flags to watch out for, his advice will help founders dive several layers deeper as they approach this hiring search.
4 Early, Easy To Spot Warning Signs Of An Impending Leadership Slump
Have you ever been in a leadership slump? The signs of an impending slump are easy to spotâŠif you know what to look for. Every leader hits a slump occasionally.
Our role in effective decision making
Being effectively vocal in groups has been a skill that Iâve worked to improve my entire life. I test 100% introverted each time I take the Myerâs Briggs assessment, and I didnât talk outside of my family unit until I was in the second grade.
Agile, Engineering & Product
10 real-world stories of how weâve compromised CI/CD pipelines
Mainstream appreciation for cyberattacks targeting continuous integration and continuous delivery/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines has been gaining momentum. Attackers and defenders increasingly understand that build pipelines are highly-privileged targets with a substantial attack surface.
Donât Make Data Scientists Do Scrum
Scrum has been super popular for many years. Iâm amazed by its success in marketing. Itâs like the Kardashians of the software development management framework world.
Dependencies Are Killing Your Agile Flow at Scale
Todayâs blog post is from Ken Rubin, author of the Amazon best seller, Essential Scrum. Here Ken offers us seven strategies for reducing or eliminating the impact of dependencies on large agile projects.
Thatâs it!
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https://ctocraft.com/community
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Have an amazing week!
Andy