If you only read one thingLessons in Giving Away Your People (21 minute read) When I was a fresh manager, I was angry when people left. I took it personally. “It’s a hard pill for any manager to swallow. A high performer on your team that you’ve come to rely on announces they are leaving their role.” After years, I’ve learned long term relationships are more important than keeping people. If it’s the right time to go, let them go and help them find their next fulfilling step.
Stories I’ve enjoyed this weekOpenAI readies new open-source AI Could be fascinating. I’ve been playing with local LLMs. Every CTO needs to learn about open source and local LLMs. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/openai-readies-open-source-ai-221445003.html random(random(…)) results in …? (0 :-) minute read) 🤯 #MindBlown — This is something I see too often, especially with junior coders and when they try to make things secure. random(random()) is worse than random(). encrypt(encrypt()) might be worse than encrypt(). Coachees often ask me where to start with security. Start with the basics. https://openprocessing.org/sketch/1575230/ Vint Cerf’s Career Advice for Engineers (6 minute read) https://spectrum.ieee.org/vint-cerf-advice First, my advice to websites: If you have three pop-ups before I can read your content, you’re doing it wrong— oh, and another two after a pause. WTF?! As a coach, I like the first one of course *“If you really want to do something big, get help, and preferably from people who are smarter than you are.” But you might have figured that out yourself. The gold nugget *“You can learn something from virtually everybody.” Yes, you can learn something from everybody. As a kid, when there was nothing more around, I’ve read the girl’s books of my sister. And learned something. See? Taxonomy of procrastination (15 minute read) Who doesn’t procrastinate? Some good thoughts. Also, some good thoughts for your engineers. https://dynomight.net/procrastination/ Deadlines as Technology (3 minute read) I’m not a fan of deadlines. Deadlines are a management tool for those that don’t know any other. This article, though, is about deadlines as a technique. And I do think CTOs are too lenient with their direct reports when delegating work. Delegation should always be tied to an expectation of how long it takes, call it a deadline. This is the first step for holding people accountable and make delegation work for you. https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2023/deadlines-as-technology/ Summarize any Article as a Dialog Between two People with Bing Chat (10 minutes read) This product shows how you can come up with new ideas on how AI fits your product. AI is not only chat or recommendation. But without someone in your staff - at least an intern - focusing on AI, you will not come up with these ideas that match your business. https://www.aidemos.info/summarize-any-article-as-a-dialog-between-two-people-with-bing-chat/ Why we created Taxi, and why we felt the need for Another Schema Language (12 minute read) Looks nice. One wonders why every programming language does express structs differently. https://orbitalhq.com/blog/2023-05-12-why-we-created-taxi Pushing through when no one cares (8 minute read) You’re not alone. I mean you the reader. “I believe what I was the most unprepared for was being an « underdog ». Somebody that builds something nobody cares about.” https://elpha.com/posts/vbuzm9rg/pushing-through-when-no-one-cares DoppelBot: Replace your CEO with an LLM (9 minute read) I would try that. *“To test this, we fine-tuned OpenLLaMa on Erik’s Slack messages, and @erik-bot was born.” This is something I thought of too. What as an experiment I’d train an LLaMa to write this newsletter with my ideas and opinions? Perhaps it has already happened? No, It’s still me. Would the AI only reiterate my ideas or add new ones. One that feel like mines? CEOs are overworked. An AI that answers questions in the CEOs way? I’d try that. And soon I’ll be on a podcast talking about CTOs in the age of AIs. https://modal.com/docs/guide/slack-finetune Context switching is the enemy of productivity, here’s how to avoid it. (3 minute read) Yes. Yes. And YES. Developers should think and write code. Not context switch to fix bugs. Not work on three features at once. Not watch compliance videos. Not sitting in meetings. I’ve once—against corp policy-removed all phones. I learned to appreciate one of my managers who read mail only three times a day (morning, noon, before leaving). Beside this simple insight, the article has some great productivity tips which fall in line of less context switching is better. My best tool for this is Pomodoro (currently in one) https://tatask.com/blog/multitasking-is-a-myth OpenAI: Small Teams, Big Impact (5 minute read) “DALL-E was brought to life by 2-3 individuals who were working on a side project. This side project eventually paved the way for the creation of DALL-E.” Too many startups have too many employees and think they need even more to achieve things. You only need a lot if you have no vision, no strategy and no clue what you are doing. If your mode of operation is to throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks, then of course more people can throw more spaghetti. https://sriramkrishnan.substack.com/p/openais-agility Google I/O and the Coming AI Battles (28 minute read) https://stratechery.com/2023/google-i-o-and-the-coming-ai-battles/ “The surprise is that Google would be caught so far out of pocket about AI” - wrote an AI to beat people at AI, write AI papers, all the publicity on AlphaZero and then dropping the ball. Again, if you have no vision and strategy, this is happening. Prompt Engineering vs. Blind Prompting (19 minute read) “A lot of people who claim to be doing prompt engineering today are actually just blind prompting [..] There is also a lot of skepticism about whether prompt engineering can truly be described as “engineering” or if it’s just “witchcraft” spouted by hype-chasers.” https://mitchellh.com/writing/prompt-engineering-vs-blind-prompting Moving from Blame to Accountability (8 minute read) Many of my coachees struggle with accountability. And then end up with blame. They don’t start with blame, but helplessness leads to blame. I encourage every manager to hold people accountable for their responsibilities from the beginning. Accountability leads to better performance and learning. Blame leads to nothing. https://thesystemsthinker.com/moving-from-blame-to-accountability/ ChatGPT Prompt Engineering for Developers CTOs ask me how to start AI. They have large ideas in their heads and wonder how to tackle AI, where to start this huge topic. As always, start with small steps. Let developers start with this short course. https://www.deeplearning.ai/short-courses/chatgpt-prompt-engineering-for-developers/ Join the CTO newsletter! | |
