https://www.simplethread.com/20-things-ive-learned-in-my-20-years-as-a-software-engineer/
A Human-Centered Approach to Developer Productivity
Worth the read, it has nuggets like “Software Developers Are Humans” YES! Elementary, my dear Watson. But still, CEOs don’t get this and CTOs are not pushing hard enough. Developers are not cogs.
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9994260
We invested 10% to pay back tech debt; Here’s what happened
A very good in-depth read on technical debt (never call it that outside of tech!).
https://blog.alexewerlof.com/p/tech-debt-day
How to Create Luck
Don’t we all need a little luck? When Columbo (one of my favorites) is asked about his work, he claims luck is a good part of it. When I look at my career, luck is a good part of it (my girlfriend leaving was the Kickstarter - luck is weird). “My entire worldview changed when I realized that luck can be created.”
https://www.swyx.io/create-luck/
Programmer salaries in the age of LLMs
LLM=Large language models=ChatGPT if you didn’t know the jargon (I had to Google, sigh). What happens to programmer salaries?
Theory-building and why employee churn is lethal to software companies
A thought-provoking article.
“The software project and its programmers are an indivisible and organic entity that our industry treats like a toy model made of easily replaceable lego blocks. They believe a software project and its developers can be broken apart and reassembled without dying.” I was most successful, when the churn of the team was near zero. Many of my coachees are successful when the churn is near zero. Here is a theory.
https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2022/theory-building/
Velocity defeats itself. Get acceleration instead
Some nice pictures of spherical cows. An understanding of velocity in software development and an argument for measuring acceleration. “Therefore, improve acceleration in software teams by doing work to reduce mass.” I’m not a fan of velocity or any measure for defining speed. If leads to a feature factory (all roads seem to lead to a feature factory instead of Rome). Which doesn’t mean you should learn how to go faster.
https://jessitron.com/2022/12/22/velocity-defeats-itself-get-acceleration-instead/
Please avoid these 7 common mistakes when working with OKRs
Everyone does OKRs. Everyone does them wrong. If they work for you as a CTO, fine (I doubt it). Otherwise, read here.
Part II: The failure points from $5m to $100m in ARR
Another O.M.G. post. Everything in this post is good. “Our trickiest inflection point was hitting Dunbar’s number — at 150 people, everything went to chaos.” I’d argue it happens at 50+ but yes.
https://tracy.posthaven.com/part-ii-the-failure-points-from-$5m-to-$100m-in-arr
Microservices is a Big Ball of Mud
“Many candidates proudly told tales of how they developed their projects with a microservice architecture. Often [..] it does not require many questions to see that they used a rocket launcher to kill a mouse. Microservices are hard.” I feel the tipping point, don’t you?
https://code-held.com/2022/07/28/microservices/
The Product Decision Stack – Martin Eriksson
Many companies I see struggle with the gap from idea to delivery. They don’t have a vision/strategy framework in place. And if they do it, it’s more cargo culting. But you need “What should we do? Why are we doing that? How do we want to do it?” Start here.
https://www.mindtheproduct.com/the-product-decision-stack-martin-eriksson/
Steve Blank Is a Venture Studio Right for You?
Good read on a seldom talked about topic from the expert in the field “Three types of organizations – Incubators, Accelerators, and Venture Studios – have emerged to reduce the risk of early-stage startup failure by helping teams find product/market fit and raise initial capital”
https://steveblank.com/2023/01/17/is-a-venture-studio-right-for-you/
subverting the software interview
Although I don’t like category theory, I enjoyed this one. And the punch line.
https://nliu.net/posts/2021-03-19-interview.html
Tech Companies Are Irrational Pop Cultures
I always say our industry is a pop culture - or fashion industry. But what does it mean?
https://softwarecrisis.dev/letters/tech-is-a-pop-culture/
Names should be cute, not descriptive
Yes.
https://ntietz.com/blog/name-your-projects-cutesy-things/
A classic of modern Zen literature. But if you’re not into Zen - but you could - it’s interesting on many points for us CTOs, for example, the story of the four horses I found amusing. Or about calmness. So here it is, a short book, even if it’s not about tech (ha!).