If you only read one thingTeam Interaction Modeling with Team Topologies — Team Topologies (21 minute read) “Is your organization no longer delivering value as quickly as it used to? Maybe your teams are struggling with too much context switching, and their current workload no longer fits in their head. Are your teams being pulled in many directions? Are those teams disengaged with their daily work?” Yes, yes, yes and yes. But the interesting thing about this article, is to model teams according to an interaction model. This can help many CTOs and technical managers untangle their teams and structure them in a way with less friction. Just as the book (Must Read!) this article is golden. https://teamtopologies.com/key-concepts-content/team-interaction-modeling-with-team-topologies Graph of the week
Evolution of Software Architecture from https://benorama.com/the-evolution-of-software-architecture-bd6ea674c477
Stories I’ve enjoyed this weekThe 5 Reasons Not to Use Scrum (6 minute read) I slip in one of my articles. This week was a first, I got two stories on the frontpage of Hackernews on two consecutive days (~20k visits). Both were about Scrum. Struggling with what I think of Scrum for years, there I’ve said it, “don’t use it!” https://www.amazingcto.com/the-5-reasons-not-to-use-scrum/ 💥 All data lost (0 minute read)](https://firefish.social/notes/9iqefgi8rzfksnqc) A very sad story. Some communities lost all their social data because backups didn’t work. When I would get $1 for every CTO telling me their backup is safe because they are on AWS - OMG would I swim in money. Here: Directory with Helm manifests moved, ArgoCD thought these resources are no longer there, garbage collection activated, “but deleting a namespace deletes everything it contains.”, all data lost, manual (!) backup tests done wrong, “missing the flag to run volume backups with Restic” I guess I know what you do on Monday, check that your backups are working. And for the first time someone on Linkedin shared my opinion about backups. If you do not have offsite backups, e.G. you’re on AWS and keep a copy on Google cloud, you have no backups at all. https://firefish.social/notes/9iqefgi8rzfksnqc 🦙 Llama 2 is about as factually accurate as GPT-4 for summaries and is 30X cheaper (19 minute read) Local AI is coming. I’ve got an 4090 to run Code-Llama-Instruct because my 2080TI was too slow. The 4090 is fast, but a fan is clanking, lucky me. Why Flutter Is The Best Choice For Startups (8 minute read) If you don’t need to, especially <20 engineers, why have an iOS and an Android developer to do the same thing? Flutter is the first cross mobile framework that works. Having more developers (2 Flutter instead of 1 Android + 1 iOS) could be the difference between success and failure. Should you make that decisions as CTO or delegate to devs? No, it’s a business decisions, YOU’LL make it. https://www.christianfindlay.com//blog/flutter-startups 🧑🚀 SPACE framework: 5 dimensions to measure developer productivity (8 minute read) Another one in the discussion about productivity. This one is a good one though. “SPACE: Satisfaction and well-being, Performance, Activity, Communication and collaboration, Efficiency and flow” https://blog.codacy.com/space-framework/ Amazon CEO tells staff to work in office three days a week or look for another job (7 minute read) Remote policies are heating up, 3 days office at Amazon or you’re free to go. A chance for all startups. For years the big tech companies have sucked up talent, now startups have a chance to easier get tech talent with a better remote work policy. Your chance! https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/aug/29/amazon-ceo-staff-work-in-office-job-workers The best approach I’ve seen for hiring junior engineers (5 minute read) In the beginning, if you have the money, hire senior. Then hire juniors managed by those seniors. If you don’t have money start with juniors. Either way, do it the right way “Hiring junior engineers is challenging. I’ve seen so many junior engineers get hired but then be supported poorly.” https://www.rubick.com/hiring-new-engineers/ Why We Glorify Overwork and Refuse to Rest (12 minute read) Too often have I been asked “Stephan, why are you’re developers already at home at 18:00.” and I’ve said “Because they did their work for the day”. There was always pressure on me to overwork developers, but I was never fired for resisting. BUT “Most of us prefer being too busy to not being busy enough.” Interesting read. https://hbr.org/2023/08/why-we-glorify-overwork-and-refuse-to-rest From $erverless to Elixir (9 minute read) Serverless is expensive. If you have millions to spend, go for it, but don’t tell me your runway is short. https://scribe.bus-hit.me/coryodaniel/from-erverless-to-elixir-48752db4d7bc How to Develop Solution-Oriented Mindset in Your Life and in Your Team? (10 minute read) We have a problem mindset as developers. Business comes with an idea, we point out the problems and find the holes in the story. Provide solutions instead of “NOs”. CTOs need to establish a culture of “YES”. My way to do this is telling developers, “There is a time for yes, and there is a time for no. We start with the yes but all of your concerns will be considered later. Kick me, if not.”. If you want to address tech debt, quantify it first (12 minute read) In depth article on technical depth. Their site goes down because of AI, but their blog churns out better and better content. https://stackoverflow.blog/2023/08/24/if-you-want-to-address-tech-debt-quantify-it-first/ Why not to use Rust ;-) 2022 Annual Rust Survey Results (7 minute read) Read the report. Biggest reason people stop using Rust: Too hard. Biggest reason people don’t start Rust: Too hard. My reason (for going from Rust to Go): Too hard (and the compile times!). Before you adapt Rust, think about all the implications for a language with a very tough learning curve. https://blog.rust-lang.org/2023/08/07/Rust-Survey-2023-Results.html Inside the Decline of Stack Exchange (22 minute read) More numbers, Stack Overflow is toast, they could salvage their brand with 100% jump into AI copilot help, but they are to anxious and will lose all. Sad. https://www.thediff.co/archive/inside-the-decline-of-stack-exchange/ Join the CTO newsletter! | |
