Tech Manager Weekly by CTO Craft - Issue #163
Hi all, welcome to the week!
Alongside an AMA with Marc Adler, former CTO at ADP, MetLife, Quantifi, and various startups starting on Tuesday, we have a fireside chat with Alex Dean of Snowplow Analytics on Friday at 12.30pm UK time, where he'll be talking to Glyn Roberts about the best approach to building a data and analytics team, common pitfalls, etc. If your business has reached the stage where you're considering this, you should definitely come along:
📅 CTO Craft Bytes - How and When to Build a Data and Analytics Team
Until next time!
Andy @ CTO Craft
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Reads of the Week
How to expand conflict capacity in times of crisis
As trite as it sounds, there are always amazing personal growth opportunities in every crisis. Leading in a COVID-19 economy requires a higher level of conflict capacity than leading when things are stable.
The Human Cost of Tech Debt
Because of the metaphor's power and subsequent effectiveness for business concerns, it is often used to describe the health of projects, particularly vis a vis deadlines and milestones. The developers may communicate that an aggressive deadline will result in technical debt, making features in the future take longer to ship.
Culture & People
To Remove Organizational Silos, Start Here
Knowing how stubborn silos can be and how rarely they are actually removed, we will need to tackle them with fresh perspectives.
“Our dev culture is based on Bushido Samurai code”
We have an important mission here at GigSmart but it isn’t life and death. And when it starts to feel that way I like to remind the team that when we make mistakes we can learn from them and move on. But I do like the idea of engraving the code into my mind each day.
Make It Safe! Psychological Safety for You and Your Teams
Steven Limmer talks about the initial management of software and how it evolved to Agile, and then discusses the common issues with “Agile”, and how this has led to failure and mistrust.
Now Is an Unprecedented Opportunity to Hire Great Talent
According to The Economist, four-fifths of CEOs worry about skill shortages — up from half in 2012 — while outside hiring at the top reached record highs, causing business for large global search firms to increase by 9% to 15% last year.
Leadership & Self-management
Commonwealth Bank CTO details how crap data, legacy can kill you
“I remember the day in August… August 17 of 2018. Matt [Comyn], who was head of the retail bank at the time, walked into the executive team and said, ‘we've got a big problem’. I remember the hour.”
Facing impostor syndrome and time management issues
I often hear people talking about impostor syndrome and time management issues. Sometimes I hear about these issues from a friend, a direct report, and occasionally from myself. We are always challenged by them and they can affect our mood, our ability to be productive and our judgement.
From Zero to CTO Christophe Popov | CTO Craft
ex-CTO at Football Index Christophe Popov tells CTO Craft about his experiences as a new technology leader, the skills he had to develop, what works for him now and where he's headed over the next five years
Google Spent Years Studying Effective Bosses. Now They Teach New Managers These 6 Things
Using Project Oxygen, an internal study that analyzed more than 10,000 manager impressions including performance reviews, surveys, and nominations for top-manager awards and recognition, Google identified eight habits of highly effective managers.
How to Use Skip Level 1 on 1s to Majorly Improve Your Managers as a Senior Leader
Do you know how your managers are doing? Would you be surprised if any of them suddenly had a few team members quit?
Agile, Engineering & Product
Rebuilding our tech stack for the new Facebook.com
Facebook.com launched in 2004 as a simple, server-rendered PHP website. Over time, we’ve added layer upon layer of new technology to deliver more interactive features. Each of these new features and technologies incrementally slowed the site down and made it harder to maintain.
Strategic DDD Remote Collaboration Toolkit
No sign up, installation, or payment is required to view the board. In order to use the tools you will need to copy them onto a board of your own. For that you can use Miro’s free tier. The free tier will allow you to invite guests so that you can collaboratively model together.
Spotify vs. Fitbit
The author criticizes the Spotify model of scaled Agile, but neglects to mention that Spotify built a company now worth more than $25B, while competing – and often winning – against both Apple and Amazon, two of the very best product companies in the world.
NoEstimates, Applied
A colleague recently posed the following rhetorical scenario about how to deal with a situation that presumably requires upfront estimates, to which I responded internally.
What Else?
The Nag Metric
A: We need more people to sign up/try this feature/engage with this content/convert to payer.
B: Okay. Let's add more call-to-actions and make them more prominent.
That’s it!
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Have an amazing week!
Andy