🦧 WFH vs Teamwork, Ambiguity, Managing Managers, Behavioural Interviews, Leap-Year Bugs, Change Freezes, Workplace Stress: TMW #369

Hello, hello, hello - it's Monday!

We've launched two new Circles in 2024 already, and it looks likely that we'll continue creating a new group every month throughout the year. Members get full access to Campus alongside monthly Circle sessions, where they can ask for input on challenges and areas of development, or just get support on difficult situations. Some of the topics the groups have discussed recently include:

Engineering strategy, entitled engineers, reporting metrics to the board, motivating remote engineers, centres of expertise, working with executive recruiters and onboarding as a new CTO.

Drop us a line if you'd like to know how Circles work - it's the best way to get immediate feedback, create a supportive network and build confidence as a technology leader.

Campus members are in for a treat this week - we have a new course going live, new videos and studies, as well as something very special that we've been working on for some time... If you're not a member yet, now is the perfect time to dive in!

Don't forget: we're running our second Tech Leader Compensation Survey right now - nearly 500 people have already taken part, and it only takes a few minutes. Please do take a peek! We'll be releasing the report in a month or so.

That's it! On with the links, see you next week

Andy @ CTO Craft

Campus by CTO Craft: The Go-to Resource for Senior Technology Leaders

Created for CTOs, by CTOs: A transformative learning community for senior technology leaders in startups and scale-ups

CTO Craft Campus

Zero to CTO – Daniel Bartholomae is in the Spotlight | CTO Craft

Daniel discusses his leadership journey, the three skills every leader needs and his hourglass board game creation.

CTO CraftSarah Haselwood

CTO Craft Events

CTO Craft Con: London | 8-9 May 2024

CTO Craft Con will bring together over 500 Chief Technology Officers and other senior technology leaders from the most exciting start-ups, scale-ups, unicorns, and big tech companies to elevate their engineering culture in London, May 2024

CTO Craft Con London 2024

CTO Craft Bytes: Beyond just an OpenAI wrapper

Nowadays, some products and features are indeed “just OpenAI wrappers”. But, to build compelling products that take advantage of GenAi models, there is still a lot of work, thought, and deliberation needed. What techniques and patterns do we need to learn to effectively unlock the potential of this revolution?

EventsRachel Thomas

Mixers: We have a number of Mixer events coming up shortly in Gothenburg, Sofia, Bristol, Manchester, Bucharest, Munich and Berlin - read more here and book your place. Are you interested in launching a Mixer in your city? Drop us a line!

Reads of the Week

New Engineering Managers Have a High Failure Rate — This Figma Leader is on a Mission to Fix It

Are leaders setting up new engineering managers to fail? Marcel Weekes (VP of Engineering at Figma) sure thinks so. He unpacks his playbook for supporting the tricky transition from senior engineer to people manager and tested tactics for avoiding the common traps.

First Round ReviewFirst Round Staff

In-Depth: How Does Working From Home Influence Teamwork?

An exploration of scientific studies and their conclusions about working from home versus working from the office

The LiberatorsChristiaan Verwijs

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AWS, Albany Partners, Code Climate, Coherence, HeadChannel, Google Cloud, Jellyfish, Polly, Skiller Whale, Softwire, Sema, Unblocked, Uplevel, Vention, YLD, 101 Ways

Leadership, Strategy & Business

TBM 274: How Capable Leaders Navigate Uncertainty and Ambiguity

What do leaders who are skilled at navigating complexity know how to do? What do they do differently? What would you observe if a leader had these skills? That’s the question Tom (author of the Innovation Tactics card deck) and John posed themselves in a recent conversation. These skills are typically lumped under “soft skills” and “culture fit”.

The Beautiful MessTom Kerwin

Manager of managers — Outcomes over output

As you grow senior in your role as an engineering leader a shift starts occurring. You start being measured on the ‘outcomes’ you deliver…

Total Engineering ManagementNitin Dhar

TBM 275: “Bad” Strategy. Why?

I often speak to people who lament the fact that their company strategy doesn’t match the “good strategy” descriptions discussed in books, talks, research, and popular examples. “With so much information out there, why don’t we have a real strategy?” The delta between what they believe is possible and what exists at their company is wide.

The Beautiful MessJohn Cutler

Managing Up — Stories and Guidelines for Working with Senior Leaders

You could rephrase ‘managing up’ as how to work with important people so that they want to work with you more, not less. This is a key skill for career growth for obvious reasons.

Scarlet InkDave Anderson

Culture, People & Teams

Super Specific Feedback: How to give actionable feedback on work output

“Ninety minutes of your time can enhance the quality of your subordinate’s work for two weeks, or for some eighty-plus hours.” - Andy Grove, CEO of Intel

Wes Kao's NewsletterWes Kao

Tech Works: Embrace Inclusive Leadership Now

Black leaders in tech on how engineering managers can adopt intentionally inclusive leadership practices today.

The New StackJennifer Riggins

How to Deal with Negative Behavior

Thoughts on the aspects a manager should take into account when the negative behavior of someone on their team is impacting others - or themselves.

Péter SzászPéter Szász

How I build and run behavioral interviews

This is an adaptation of an internal doc I wrote for Wave. I used to think that behavioral interviews were basically useless, because it was too easy for candidates to bullshit them and too hard for me to tell what was a good answer. I’d end up grading every candidate as an “okay, I guess” because I was never sure what bar I should hold them to. I still think most behavioral interviews are like that, but after grinding out way too many of them, I now think it’s possible to escape that trap.

benkuhn.netTim

Technology, Operations & Delivery

List of 2024 Leap Day Bugs

Well, it’s 2024 and leap day has come once again. As I’ve done in prior leap years, I’ve captured as many bug reports and outages as I can, along with links to the source where possible. For those have been following along, you’ll notice these have been organized a bit

Code of MattMatt Johnson-Pint

The Problem with Maintenance Windows and Change Freezes

It seemed like a good idea in 2001, it wasn’t. It’s an anti-pattern for stability.

Get Good at Delivering Software™️Dave Mangot

How to strive for simplicity in an legacy environment

There is no question that a simple environment is the better environment. This is also true for software engineering.

André Neubauer

Parkinson’s Law: It’s Real, So Use It

Yes, just set that deadline.

The Engineering ManagerJames Stanier

Stress, Wellbeing & Growth

Reducing Workforce Stress in the Tech Industry in 2024

Introduction

MediumGiles Lindsay

I didn’t have time to write a short letter

Egyptian Stone Hieroglyphs | Credit: Paul Ijsendoorn I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead. Whether attributed to Mark Twain, Cicero, Pascal or Nietzs…

Yaniv PreissSkip to content

How to Leverage Perspective To Manage Leadership Anxiety – Scott Cochrane

Scott Cochrane A Leader's JourneyScott Cochrane

I Took the Gallup StrengthsFinder Test — And Discovered Why I Struggled at Work

It is surprising to see what a 30-minute test can tell us about our career choices.

Management MattersAnil Karamchandani

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