Amazing CTO | More happiness and success
đ 27.1by Stephan SchmidtHappy Sunday, This weekâs insights include - đ¤ GitHub Copilotâs impact on developer productivity and happiness
- đ About scaling: Work Is Work - In which returns diminish
- đŁď¸ One-on-ones with executives
- 𤣠Funny: Version Numbers
Good reading, have a nice Sunday â¤ď¸ and until next week, Stephan Stories Iâve encountered last weekđ Work Is Work - In which returns diminish. Scaling is so fundamental to our industry. Scaling is core to our startup ideology. Many CTOs struggle because they donât understand the fundamentals of scaling. A classic text about scaling and organization. You might have read it already, but if you havenât, read it now then come back to the newsletter. https://codahale.com/work-is-work/ đş How to Disagree with Someone More Powerful than You [Video] Many of my coachees need to disagree with their CEO. And many donât know how and just eat up whatever comes down. This leads to unhappiness and demotivation. Here is a small video on how to disagree with someone more powerful than you https://hbr.org/2016/03/how-to-disagree-with-someone-more-powerful-than-you Software Component Names Should Be Whimsical And Cryptic Funny - but impactful - must read. âSee, the scope and purpose of something change faster than its name can. For fun, I did a search on Github READMEs just now for the phrase despite the name. About 20,000 resultsâ https://betterprogramming.pub/software-component-names-should-be-whimsical-and-cryptic-ca260b013de0 Quantifying GitHub Copilotâs impact on developer productivity and happiness âWhen using Github Copilot I am more productive - 88%â Are you using AI assistance yet? https://github.blog/2022-09-07-research-quantifying-github-copilots-impact-on-developer-productivity-and-happiness/ One-on-ones with executives Another excellent read from Will, the author of âAn Elegant Puzzle.â https://lethain.com/one-on-ones-with-executives/ What we learned from passing our SOC 2 Type II audit Again very good hands-on experience from implementing a security standard and surviving an audit. Many fresh CTOs ask âWhere to start with security?â Here you find some easy-to-implement things to get you started. Having low-hanging fruits implemented makes a huge difference to your security already. And it gets you on track to a security-focused engineering culture. https://tailscale.com/blog/soc2-type2/ Why We Donât Have an Exit Strategy The article talks about exists, about how âmost acquisitions outright kill your company.â Seeing companies being acquired and then running against the wall so often, I agree. The most important part is, that the company is aligned with the âno exit strategyâ. What I see too often are founder teams who are not aligned. One founder wants to flip as fast as possible, one wants to build something great, and one wants to become famous. Those teams canât build a business strategy together. This results in unalignment, chaos, fighting, and friction. No exit strategy is fine, just be aligned around that. https://blog.doist.com/no-exit-strategy/ 𤣠Funny: Version Numbers Funny story. I once was not allowed to roll out some open source software the developers urgently needed, because company policy was âno betasâ. I got the open-source developer to bump the version to 1.0 and we could roll out the - same - software. https://thedailywtf.com/articles/version-numbers Futurist prediction methods and accuracy "[..] it appears that futurists often have a fairly poor track record of prediction" Who would have thought. But a good article on predictions. One of the core problems of a CTO is predicting the future. What do we need to scale? What database do we need in five years? Is Vue going down or up? Predicting the future is difficult, or you would play the lottery and not read my newsletter. One thing that makes predicting the future easier is a good business strategy that is stable and a tech strategy that aligns with it. Too many CTOs build tech strategies that are not aligned with the business strategy, too many CEOs have no stable business strategy but expect CTOs to keep development productive. âSuperforecastingâ is a nice term though. https://danluu.com/futurist-predictions/ What Makes a Senior Engineer? Writing Software vs Building Systems A question I often discuss with my CTO coachees. In my book, there are many âunusualâ requirements for senior engineers. They need to be able to manage people, lead initiatives, and understand business. Here itâs âSenior Engineers care about building Systemsâ Some good points if you need to flesh out your senior engineer roles. https://codewithstyle.info/software-vs-systems/ đ¸ Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs Controversial âIf you get a Chipotle gift card when you meet a deadline and a public shaming when you miss a deadline, guess what buddy: youâre in hell.â https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/excuse-me-but-why-are-you-eating 𤣠You can never have too many backups. Also, you can never have too many backups Hehe. https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/29/who_me/ | 