tl;dr in tech by Joe Karlsson - Issue #13
tl;dr: Engineering managers are “attracted to formulas, algorithms, and structures” and this kind of thinking can create too much structure when applied to team management. Camille gives an example: Engineering managers do not scale well beyond 7 - 8 direct reports, and teams can also downsize quickly i.e. people quit. Therefore, “the temptation is to create a clean tree structure for your organization” to rebalance numbers, but this can have adverse consequences quickly. Camille advises “to nudge it back into shape over time, or very occasionally, reorganize into something more appropriate.”
tl;dr: Coleman recommends the following management style: having a “hard outer boundary for work with soft requirements on approach.” This requires trust in the product and engineering teams to choose approach trade-offs wisely, and allows for some freedom, but the team knows that freedom is not infinite. “The team can explore and experiment to a point, but doesn’t have forever to mess around.”
tl;dr: “The stay interview is essentially the opposite of an exit interview.” Examples of question: What’s your favorite and least favorite thing about working here? What might tempt you to leave? If you could change something about your job, what would it be? What talents are not being used in your current role? What would you like to learn in your current role?
tl;dr: “We want to share how we decided to work with technical debt and how Evolutionary architecture and SRE help us balance innovation and quality in mobile development.” Maksim provides several examples, such as how each team can dedicate up to 20% of their capacity to technical improvements.
tl;dr: “By collecting data from thousands of developers, the annual State of JavaScript survey is able to identify current and upcoming trends in the ecosystem.”
tl;dr: “I finally managed to get my hands on some DDR5 RAM to complete my Intel i9-12900 high-end PC build! This article contains the exact component list if you’re interested in doing a similar build.”
tl;dr: Attention all Senior Devs! “Use your privilege. As privileged tech community members, it’s your job to help fight the gatekeepers on your teams. It is your job to make space at the table for those who have been kept out.
tl;dr: This video really puts a lot of things into perspective about how ‘easy’ I have it as a cis white man in tech. Bree does a great job of breaking down how discrimination happens in the tech hiring pipeline.