Sign in Subscribe
7 min read

đŸ« On Hiring, Software Vendors, Accountability vs Blame, Incompetence, Onboarding, Pairing, Flow Efficiency, MLOps: TMW #325

Hello again!

You might remember our recent survey on Leadership Health, in collaboration with Lohika - the survey has now closed, and we've been busy pulling together some of the most interesting insights. For example, 83% of technology leaders work on their development at least every month, yet over half of leaders haven’t set personal goals for 2023. A huge thanks to everyone who got involved.

If you'd like to see the full report, click here.

We're almost at the end of the Early Bird tickets for CTO Craft Con London in May, which means prices are going to increase at some point this week. If you're thinking about joining us (along with 250 or so other CTOs and engineering leaders from around Europe), now's the time to secure your ticket. Remember to use the code "Community-23" to enable member ticket prices - if you're reading this email, that means you!

Have a wonderful Easter, and leave some chocolate for the rest of us...

Until next time!

Andy @ CTO Craft

Spotlight Q&A with Chief Technology Officer, RVU (uSwitch, Confused.com), Paul Ingles | CTO Craft
Paul Ingles is CTO at RVU and discusses his upcoming conference talk, how to create a team culture of innovation and the power of journaling.
CTO CraftAndy Skipper
CTO Craft Con: The Strategic CTO | London 23-24 May
CTO Craft Con will bring together over 200 Chief Technology Officers and other senior technology leaders from the most exciting start-ups, scale-ups, unicorns, and big tech companies to elevate their tech strategy in London, 23-24 May 2023.
CTO Craft Con London 2023

Reads of the Week

On hiring
Creating scalable, consistency and noise-free interview evaluations.
Robbie CluttonRobbie Clutton
LinkedIn - Future of Skills
The skills to stay competitive in the new world of work.
Economic Graph

From our Sponsors

Jellyfish's second annual summit will take place on May 16 - 17, 2023 and this year, our virtual summit will feature distinguished speakers leading engineering, product, and finance teams. Join us as we share insights, best practices, and industry trends.

Register today!

Thanks as always to all the amazing sponsors helping CTO Craft bring you resources like this newsletter, our events, community and more:

AWS, Albany Partners, Code Climate, Google Cloud, iTechArt, Jellyfish, LinearB, Lohika, 101 Ways, O’Reilly, PGS Software, Pentalog, Skiller Whale, Swarmia, Uplevel, YLD

Leadership, Strategy & Business

Numbers To Know For Managing (Software Teams)
Learning how to manage is a long race - it takes many years and each lap offers new learnings. Along the way, anchors emerge that can help orient a manager when a number of other variables are in flux.Below we offer a number of these anchors. They are based on philosophy, experience, and analysis;

Stay SaaSy
Questionable Advice: “People Used To Take Me Seriously. Then I Became A Software Vendor”
I recently got a plaintive text message from my magnificent friend Abby Bangser, asking about a conversation we had several years ago: “Hey, I’ve got a question for you. A long time ago

charity.wtfmipsytipsy
Leadership Tip 21: How to Know if People Are Working Hard - Johanna Rothman, Management Consultant
Too many managers don’t know how to manage remote people. Worse, those managers, or their organizations, don’t trust people to do a good job. The organization installs spyware to see if people are working. That’s classic Theory X behavior. However, people are smarter than the spyware. Many of these

Johanna Rothman, Management Consultantjohanna
Accountability is Not Blame
accountable, adjective, “required to render account” Tidy First? starts with, “Software design is an exercise in human relationships.” Since human relationships don’t come naturally to me, I’ve been digging into how relationships work before starting on the second book in series. So far we have:
Software Design: Tidy First?Kent Beck

Culture, People & Teams

Culture & Methods Trends Report March 2023
The two biggest factors influencing organisational culture in early 2023 are the highly publicised and hugely disruptive layoffs across the tech industry and the emergence of Large Language Models such as ChatGPT.
InfoQShane Hastie
Incompetent but Nice - Jacob Kaplan-Moss
A question I’ve never been able to answer to my satisfaction: how do you manage people who are nice but can’t do the work?
Jacob Kaplan-Moss
Learnings from Measuring Psychological Safety
Asking people how they feel about taking certain types of risks can give insight into the level of psychological safety and help uncover issues. Discussing the answers can strengthen the level of safety of more mature teams and help less mature teams to understand how they could improve.
InfoQBen Linders
Improve Onboarding in Teams Through the Magic of Storytelling
An overview of some tips that may help you enhance the onboarding process and increase its efficiency
Better ProgrammingAmin Rashidbeigi

Technology, Operations & Delivery

In-Depth: The Costs And Benefits Of Pair Programming
Four important insights from scientific studies of pair programming versus solo programming
The LiberatorsChristiaan Verwijs
The many flaws of Flow Efficiency
The number one metric organisations should be using? Nope. Here are the many reasons why flow efficiency is flawed and impractical.
ASOS Tech BlogNick Brown
Buy vs Build... Over Time
What to think when you realize you chose wrong.
Neward & AssociatesTed Neward
The choice between model-centric or data-centric MLOps
The decision challenges data scientists to choose which component will play a more important role in the development of a robust model.
IT Brief AustraliaAndreea Munteanu

Stress, Wellbeing & Growth

The Burnout Blueprint
You know the feeling: Everything is a chore, and you feel like you’re drowning in your craft. You know your responsibilities are important

MediumColin Jonov
TBM 208: “Do You Have Specific Examples?”
“Do you have any specific examples?” The question can be both helpful and triggering. Consider two examples: Performance Feedback: You’re in a performance review situation, and your manager makes a broad statement like, “You need to slow down to bring other people along on the journey!” What do you

The Beautiful MessJohn Cutler
10 Best Personal Development Goals For Leaders
Leadership is much more than just the title itself. Here are the ten best personal development goals for leaders to be successful at the workplace.
EngagedlyAaron Adams
5 Red Flags of Burnout and How to Overcome Them
Burnout can affect anyone, from busy professionals to caregivers, students, and more. It is a state of physical, emotional, and mental

MediumBETTER EVERY DAY âœšđŸŒˆâ˜€ïž

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:

https://techmanagerweekly.com

Have an amazing week!

Andy

Published by:

Andy Skipper