Christof Damian: Friday Links 22-21

Two weeks of links. Sorry.

I have been thinking and catching up with my leadership reading, especially around the first team concept.

The flatground skateboard video is worth a watch, and the Ziggy Stardust podcast is great too.

Leadership

First Team Mindset - The concept from the book "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team" I have been looking into this again over the recent weeks, here is a collection of resources. I have a better idea about what this means as a director compared to a CTO now.

The Top 5 Mistakes European Startups Make in US Expansion - maybe this applies to all new markets?

Scaling product teams, and other leadership lessons with Megan Murphy, VP of Product at Hotjar [Podcast] - some good ideas in this one, especially around decision-making

TBM 27b/52: Why Most Strategies Lack Clarity - "The unlock, I think, is realizing that you can confidently communicate a coherent strategy that also acknowledges uncertainty."

Supporting Your Team When the News Is Terrible - this is helpful since news always seems to be terrible

TBM 27/52: When Is Change More Likely? - "in most corporate settings there is a lot of change theater that is highly disruptive, but ultimately doesn’t really have a good shot of meaningfully changing behavior"

How to avoid the growing pains of communicating at scale - "The success of any company, large or small, relies on effective communication." - if you get communication right, you are nearly there

Stop Overcomplicating It: The Simple Guidebook to Upping Your Management Game - nothing new, just a good summary the key is "simple works"

STAR method for interview questions. - stuff I learned while looking for a job

DORA Metrics: the Right Answer to measuring engineering team performance - you just have to remember that these only measure one side of the team, usually focused on the technical delivery

Engineering

Learnings from 5 years of tech startup code audits - mostly security insights, but also some general tips.

Remote Development at Slack - this seems to be reinvented in every company

Plurals at Etsy - it would be a lot easier if everybody spoke English (I am looking at you Poland!) or if we just ignore plurals

Cloudflare outage on June 21, 2022 - BGP strikes again

Transparent memory offloading: more memory at a fraction of the cost and power - Facebook doing it at bigger scale

Technology

On the Dangers of Cryptocurrencies and the Uselessness of Blockchain - Schneier knows

AppSignal’s Next Level Of Front-end Error Tracking - I miss AppSignal

Shadowy Strava users spy on Israeli military with fake routes in bases - clever

Environment

US supreme court rules against EPA and hobbles government power to limit harmful emissions - SCOTUS has been misbehaving for a while. What even is the point of the government now?

EU’s 3 billion trees by 2030 goal: where we stand - not going well

Urbanism

What I Mean When I Say 'Ban Cars' - the view of one of the War On Cars people. I agree mostly.

Street pedestrianization in urban districts: Economic impacts in Spanish cities [paper] - "We find that pedestrianization increases retail stores' sales volumes." ... which everybody already knows and then ignores

Rome to impose new rules to curb ‘wild west’ e-scooter incidents - I am all for e-scooters behaving themselves. Why are we not doing this for cars?

Barcelona by bike - a perfect city for cycling? - yes

People Hate the Idea of Car-Free Cities—Until They Live in One - change first, ask later

More flowers, fewer cars: the rewilders turning parking spaces into parks - parklets are one simple way of tactical urbanism

America Always Gets This Wrong (when building transit) [YouTube] - the pictures from China are quite telling: build it, and they will come

AP-7 highway: no trucks at certain times and additional lanes over summer weekends - removing tolls is still going wrong

Random Flatground

One Hour Of Slow-Motion Flatground Skateboarding [YouTube] - mesmerising

Ziggy Stardust at 50 [Podcast] - I was never a big Bowie fan, as I never owned an album. I like how he reinvented himself all the time. Too many bands turn into their own cover bands.

Congress definitively endorses medicinal use of cannabis in Spain - I am for legalisation of cannabis, even if I am not a fan of the recreational use.

redactle - another Wordle inspired game. I am not good at this.

Spanish airline to launch zeppelin trip between Barcelona and Mallorca - 2026!

A Box of NOTHING from McIntosh: The LB200 - in case you want to make your "cheap" hifi look expensive

UK firm can electrify original Land Rover Defender for £24,000 - very slowly moving into my price range

Microscopic mites that have sex on our faces at night could face evolutionary oblivion, say scientists - did I want to know this? Maybe not. But now you do too.

GTD in 15 minutes – A Pragmatic Guide to Getting Things Done - refresher