#1 - Intentional Technical Leadership

Hey my friend!

Welcome to the first issue of the Intentional Technical Leadership Newsletter! 👋🏻

Each week I'll share some interesting articles, podcasts, videos, or tweets which are helping me think more about how to be a better technical leader.

Hopefully, you'll find them useful too.

🔖 Interesting Reading

Quick wins to create an inclusive remote organization

Like many tech leaders right now, I'm sure you've been juggling the remote vs hybrid vs back to the office debate with your teams. I'm firmly in the "remote first" camp, having worked largely remotely since 2015.

This is a great article which shares some tips for creating an inclusive remote organisation whilst being mindful of time zones.

Yes, You Should Estimate Software Projects

An interesting article on estimating your projects by Gergely Orosz, an ex-Engineering Manager for Uber. Estimating is always hard but he argues that you should estimate and it helps to focus the teams.

It's good to have a conversation around how teams get better at estimation as it's often a difficult skill to master but one that most businesses need your teams to look at.

🎧 Great Listening

Memos Over Meetings

I've been listening to the Levels Health podcast, "A Whole New Level", a lot recently after being introduced to the company via Noah Kagan's podcast.

Whilst they do talk a lot about their metabolic health tracking application, I've heard the CEO Sam Corcos talking a lot about their remote team and ways of working.

This episode talks about building a culture of async meetings using the idea of writing memos or documents rather than having meetings.

This encourages a culture of writing things down for your future self or any new starters and constantly iterating on the documentation you create.

There's lots to unpack in this episode so check it out!

👉🏻 Something from Me

Never get too comfortable

A wrote this a while ago when I felt like I was coasting in the role I was in.

I was doing the same thing every week and felt really stuck so I started to look for opportunities to grow outside of my day-to-day work.

This article was a wake up call for myself and something you should think about if you're not enjoying your current job.

🌶️ Hot Take

There's always some hot takes on social media and this week's comes from Brian P. Hogan, a technical writer and ex-engineering manager.

He writes on Twitter:

Twitter Alt Text:

Hot take:

"full stack developer" is a scam created by the tech industry to get one developer to do three jobs (front end, backend, devops) for the pay of one dev.

Being a generalist is good. But.... have you tried doing all three of those things lately? It's... a lot.

— Brian P. Hogan (@bphogan) March 30, 2022

I've got mixed feelings on this. The idea of "full stack developer" is a great for most teams as it helps to unlock end-to-end delivery of new features.

Somebody who can help to do both your front-end and back-end work and help to look after your infrastructure. But is it really 3 jobs in one?

I've been involved in hiring full-stack developers and it often works when your front-end and back-end align (i.e Node.js + JavaScript). I've found it a tougher sell when your back-end technologies differ (e.g. Java, Go, C#).

Team members often want to specialise in their areas of interest and I'm not always convinced they want to do both.

What do you think?

I hope you enjoyed this week's selection of intentional technical leadership articles and you've found some new ideas.

Hit reply and let me know what you think.

I love learning with you all so please send me any interesting articles, videos or podcasts you have found.

Speak to you soon,

Marc