Steven from Drive To Improve interviewed me and Fernando Palomo about balancing technical and business needs of a company. Steven did a very good job and made it did feel much shorter than it was. Good to see Fernando again too, working with him at Splendia was brilliant. Excuse my English and hair.
12 “Manager READMEs” from Silicon Valley’s Top Tech Companies https://hackernoon.com/12-manager-readmes-from-silicon-valleys-top-tech-companies-26588a660afe Make your peers your first team. https://lethain.com/first-team/ Aurora Serverless MySQL Generally Available https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aurora-serverless-ga/ Churn Prediction: First Contact https://overflow.buffer.com/2018/08/13/predicting-churn/ Workplace Wellness Programs Don’t Work Well. Why Some Studies Show Otherwise. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/06/upshot/employer-wellness-programs-randomized-trials.html 5 reasons to check out the World Bank’s new data catalog https://medium.com/world-of-opportunity/5-reasons-to-check-out-the-world-bank-new-data-catalog-e342f3889cc2 Google Public DNS turns 8.8.8.8 years old https://security.googleblog.com/2018/08/google-public-dns-turns-8888-years-old.html TravelTime Platform https://app.traveltimeplatform.com/ Running an All-hands https://medium.com/@gokulrajaram/all-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-all-hands-but-were-afraid-to-ask-b13f7b97f2d9 AppSignal Ruby gem 2.7: Improvements and bug fixes https://blog.appsignal.com/2018/08/13/ruby-gem-2-7.html Experiences with running PostgreSQL on Kubernetes https://gravitational.com/blog/running-postgresql-on-kubernetes/ Schneier: Identifying Programmers by their Coding Style https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/08/identifying_pro.html What Is a Good Unit Test? 5 Must-Haves https://blog.ndepend.com/good-unit-test-5-must-haves/ L1 Terminal Fault Speculative Execution Issue https://aws.amazon.com/security/security-bulletins/AWS-2018-019/https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/08/speculation_att.html Our 2018 budget is $11 Million, here’s exactly how we’re using it (Part 2 of 3, Buffer Budget Series) https://open.buffer.com/transparent-budget/ One weird trick made me a better programmer / speaker / product person (SSL expired atm) https://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2018/one-weird-trick-better-programmer-speaker-product-person/ Simplifying Data Studio embeds and social sharing https://www.blog.google/products/marketingplatform/analytics/simplifying-data-studio-embeds-and-social-sharing/ The Problems and Promise of WebAssembly (Project Zero) https://lwn.net/Articles/762856/rss Debian: 25 years and counting https://lwn.net/Articles/762854/rss
The Manager's Path Cover I should start a list of books I wish I read earlier. This one would definitely be on that list. Thankfully it is fairly recent, so I don't have myself to blame. Most people that I know in some kind of lead or management role stumbled into them. This was certainly the case for me. One day you are the lone developer in a small shop or start-up and without your fault it does start to grow. All is well until you have a handful of people in the team, suddenly there is a need for some structure and dare I say the word "management". A lot of developers, including myself, are introverts and also prefer the technology side of a company. Taking on the role of a lead or manager will force you to talk to more people and reduces your time on the keyboard. I never wanted to manage people, but working at my start-up (guideguide, war stories another time) I realised that someone had to do it and if I cared for the company it probably had to be me. This is where "The Manager's Path" comes in. It explains the path you might take from being a lone contributor to taking on more responsibilities like mentoring, leading on the technical side, to managing teams and finally being a CTO. It explains every role in great details with real life examples and asks questions to assess your own situation. Even if you are happy to just being a developer this might be helpful to understand the other side and what to expect from your lead. Maybe it also helps to decide that management is not for you yet and you want to learn more about the technology before you take the next step. Or you decide you just are happy where you are and might never go further than on the technical side. I did see myself in a lot of the chapters and wished I had someone tell me these things 20 years ago. Now I will keep it on hand as a reference to look up when I have to reassess roles and help others to grow. While my title is Technical Director at the moment, in the book I am somewhere between manager of team(s) and manager of managers with a sprinkle of CTO. I wonder if there are similar books for other professions, reading this book might be good, but a lot of things are specific to technical careers. A five star from me. ★★★★★ The Manager's Path on Goodreads My random highlights
New data tools for relief organizations: network coverage, power, and displacementhttps://research.fb.com/new-data-tools-for-relief-organizations-network-coverage-power-and-displacement/ Chaff Bugs: Deterring Attackers by Making Software Buggierhttps://arxiv.org/pdf/1808.00659.pdf Everything Goes in a Context Buckethttp://randsinrepose.com/archives/everything-goes-in-a-context-bucket/ Repeat yourself, do more than one thing, and rewrite everythinghttps://programmingisterrible.com/post/176657481103/repeat-yourself-do-more-than-one-thing-and Is group chat making you sweat?https://m.signalvnoise.com/is-group-chat-making-you-sweat-744659addf7d Data Studio’s new features help you tell more compelling storieshttps://www.blog.google/products/marketingplatform/360/data-studio-new-features-help-tell-compelling-stories/ Double Shippinghttps://zachholman.com/posts/double-shipping You don’t need standuphttps://medium.com/@jsonpify/you-dont-need-standup-9a74782517c1 GLB: GitHub’s open source load balancerhttps://githubengineering.com/glb-director-open-source-load-balancer/
Kickstarter Engineering Ladderhttps://gist.github.com/jamtur01/aef437a79fee5a9cefdc The Software Engineering Job Ladderhttps://blog.usejournal.com/the-software-engineering-job-ladder-4bf70b4c24f3 Sizing engineering teams.https://lethain.com/sizing-engineering-teams/ Imaginary problems, the root of bad softwarehttps://medium.com/@george3d6/imaginary-problems-d4f2921bd1b8 An Introduction to Elasticsearch SQL with Practical Examples - Part 1https://www.elastic.co/blog/an-introduction-to-elasticsearch-sql-with-practical-examples-part-1 Generating Random Numbers in Rubyhttps://blog.appsignal.com/2018/07/31/generating-random-numbers-in-ruby.html PNG anticshttps://www.jwz.org/blog/2018/07/png-antics/ Remote Spectre exploits demonstratedhttps://lwn.net/Articles/761100/rss What Are Machine Learning Models Hiding?https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2018/07/26/what-are-machine-learning-models-hiding/ Pretty big side-effect https://pavelmachek.livejournal.com/142883.html No bosses, no managers: the truth behind the ‘flat hierarchy’ facade https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/30/no-bosses-managers-flat-hierachy-workplace-tech-hollywood My First Line of Code: Linus Torvaldshttps://youtu.be/S5S9LIT-hdc