Tech Manager Weekly by CTO Craft - Issue #182
Hey hey!
This Friday, we'll be in conversation with Aubrey Stearn, previously of Nationwide and Oakam, who'll be giving fintech CTOs the inside track on the compliance and regulations that need to be on their watchlist. If you're working in this space, this is a must-watch:
📆 CTO Craft Bytes - Compliance and the FinTech CTO - Fri, 2 October 2020 12:30 – 13:30 BST
Remember, all our previous Bytes are recorded and available on Crowdcast: https://crowdcast.io/ctocraft
I'll be appearing on a panel with Forward Partners on Startup Burnout on Weds - if it's a topic that interests you, tune in! Strategies For Beating Startup Burnout: The Silent Startup Killer
Thanks as always to our Headline Partner, Amazon Web Services - if you’re interested in partnering, drop us a line!
Until next time
Andy @ CTO Craft
Reads of the Week
Challenges and opportunities to DevOps Adoption
Transitioning to DevOps requires a change in culture and mindset while the path to its successful implementation can be paved with many twists and turns. That’s why we at YLD have decided to uncover some of the challenges as well as the opportunities of integrating DevOps into the business.
Building Great Engineering Teams, with Gergely Orosz
If you have ever come across The Pragmatic Engineer, you probably know the man behind it, Gergely Orosz. More than a simple blog, or newsletter, it is a treasure trove of knowledge on the ins and outs of Engineering, Engineering Management and, in general, all things leadership in tech.
From our Partners
Capitalize on the connected home market - from AWS
The connected home market is growing at a rapid pace. Consumers are looking to connected devices such as thermostats, security cameras, appliances, lighting, and speakers to augment and enhance their experiences within the home. Learn more with this IDC whitepaper
🥝 🥝 If you’re interested in seeing our Partnership Opportunities, drop a reply to this email! 🥝 🥝
Culture & People
The Developer-Led Landscape
Starting in 2009, I began tracking each company whose products were sold to, purchase-influenced by, or consumed by software developers.
Not Very Productive
I follow the excellent John Cutler on Twitter. He regularly tweets thoughtful remarks on product development and has a talent for creating hard-working diagrams. The picture below shows the danger of focusing on near-term productivity.
How to Motivate Your Team Without Breaking the Bank
We all dream of having an energized team, totally motivated and hitting all their goals. If you’re lucky, you may work in such an environment. Congratulations, that comes from hard work by leaders like you.
The Best Way to Develop Your Team Isn’t Feedback
Every leader wants to get the best performance from their team. In startups, the importance of learning on the job and continuous employee development can’t be overstated. But how do you create an environment that helps people learn faster?
Cultivating the Kind of Culture Employees Crave
As the Chief Cultural Officer, of LeadingAgile, I view myself as an advocate for our employees. I’m super passionate about creating a working environment that is supportive, nurturing, inclusive, and respectful of all employees.
Leadership & Self-management
A Practical and Free Way to Get Great 360 Feedback
Do you know where you stand with your boss? Do you have a good sense of what your peers really think about you? Has it been a minute since your last formal 360 feedback review? Or, is a 360 Feedback something you’ve heard about, but your company hasn’t quite gotten there yet?
Use This Equation to Determine, Diagnose, and Repair Trust
Anne Raimondi was stumped. Two people she managed weren't getting along, and it was really impacting progress. In her private conversations with each of them, they had the same goals and wanted the same things. But in the room together, they'd disagree on everything.
Building a Connected Network of Brains with Jean-Michel Lemieux, CTO at Shopify
How do humans work? I did not take enough human sciences. I did not take enough biology about how the brain works. I was terribly equipped for leadership. As a society, it’s not like we train people to be good leaders.
Being a Tech Lead-Manager is Hard
When I first dipped my toes into management, my company and I worked out an arrangement where I was effectively both a tech lead and a manager. (This is also known as a “TLM”). It was a great way to transition myself into a new management role.
On Making Decisions
I manage software engineers and regularly collaborate with teams across our company.
Agile, Engineering & Product
A Better Code Review
"Everyone gets the experience. Some get the lesson." T.S. Eliot Contributing to a project is not an easy task, especially if you're new to the project, new to coding in general, or just not an active contributor.
Questionable Advice: Can Engineering Productivity Be Measured?
For software engineering in particular, I feel that metrics can be gamed, don’t tell the whole story, or in some cases, are completely arbitrary.
The Three Characteristics of Fast Growing Programming Languages
The justifications for creating a new programming language vary. If you’re a computer scientist like Mary Hawes or Grace Hopper, your concern is economics: the cost of programming generally, and for porting applications to new hardware platforms specifically.
Uprooting the Binary Tree
You go through our entire interview process and think “Where was the algorithm question? And why didn’t I have to design Facebook? The big companies are asking these questions, why didn’t you?” It’s true, we don’t ask algorithm questions during our interview process nor do we ask you to design an arbitrary system. Let me explain why.
What Else?
How do you get better at nailing leadership interviews?
Most people think of interviewing as espousing your virtues in the hopes that a company will hire you. I think that's wrong. I think companies hire people to solve problems, so you need to be a solution to a problem.
That’s it!
If you’d like to be considered for the free CTO Craft Community, fill in your details here, and we’ll be in touch!
https://ctocraft.com/community
Please do remember to share this link if you know of anyone who’d like to receive TMW:
http://www.techmanagerweekly.com
Have an amazing week!
Andy