#1 - The Tech Lead
Hey reader!
The Tech Lead is a weekly newsletter on software, product & leadership. I read a lot of articles every week, and I thought it would be a good idea to summarize the best articles in an email format.
I hope you enjoy this issue. If you find it useful, please forward it to your colleagues. You can always send me feedback by replying to this email!
Stay Safe!
Meri
Leadership
Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell
By Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, and Alan Eagle • 240 pages
A friend recommended this book to me and I have to say I’ve been hooked. I’ve been learning a lot about leadership from Bill Campbell’s apprach. I especially agree that engineers should be empowered and included early on in the process:
“If you ever tell an engineer at Intuit which features you want, I’m going to throw you out on the street. You tell them what problem the consumer has. You give them context on who the consumer is. Then let them figure out the features. They will provide you with a far better solution than you’ll ever get by telling them what to build.”
Tech
Is High-Quality Software Worth the Cost?
Martin Fowler • 13 min
This old post by Martin Flowler found its way to my twitter feed a couple of days ago.
We all know how hard it is to balance writing clean code vs releasing valuable featuers to the customer. In this essay, Fowler argues that writing quality software is actually cheaper.
Dan Abramov • 5 min
In this article, Dan Abramov discusses how developers tend to obsess over clean code. And when refactoring can be a disaster!
Open-source
Drew DeVault • 4 min
In this blog post, Drew DeVault reflects back on his recent visit to FOSDEM, and particularly on one talk that struck him. The talk was about the sustainability of open source, and how big companies can choose which projects to support, given some of the latest open-source scandals.
Teams
basecamp • 18 min
Most of us switched to remote work since the begining of lockdown, one side effect we were not prepared for is Zoom burnout. There are a few helpful articles out there about combating Zoom fatigue. But, If you want to take it up a notch, you might want to look at how your team uses Slack.
Group chat apps can help teams collaborate, however they can also get overwhelming with too many notifications demanding your attention.
Inspired by this guide from basecamp, my team coined our own Slack etiquette; after all even the Slack team have their own Slack rules!
Articles I wrote
builtin • 6 min
The product engineer concept has been trending since it was first introduced in this article in 2018. However, one problem I still see in many teams is the lack of empowerment of engineers: They are merely considered as code factories.
In this essay, I discuss the need for a close collaboration between product and engineering.
How I Failed To Deal With Legacy Code
Better Programming • 7 min
As a senior developer, I’ve had to deal with legacy code in one way or another since day one. In this write-up, I reflect on my past mistakes, what I learned from each situation and how I would do things differently today.
Random
Andreas Zwinkau’s collection of unusual bug stories is sure to make you crack a smile!
I’ve been mesmerized by this quarantine flip book by s.e.e.t.h.r.o.u.g.h
Thank you for making it this far!
If you enjoyed this issue, please forward it to your friends and colleagues. You can always send me feedback by replying directly to this email!
🙌