CTO Insights - Issue #117
Software Engineering and Technical Leadership
Welcome to CTO Insights #117!
The newsletter is based on top Software Engineering and Technical Leadership content from the past week, it is free and made for your weekly reading.
If you got the link from a friend, make sure to subscribe here to get a fresh issue every Sunday morning.
This week’s favorite - A 10-step process for team leaders to reduce meeting overload.
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Featured
Easily Move To The Cloud
Kalix is a platform that facilitates working with distributed data and distributed systems.
It requires zero operations and allows anyone to build high-performance, data-centric, cloud-native services. Check it out.
Architecture
No More Double Payments In Your Distributed Payments System
If you dabble in Service Oriented Architecture, then you’re probably aware of how difficult it can be sometimes, especially when it comes to billing and payments.
While it may look pretty on the surface, there’s an enthralling process that must be executed with precision behind it all. You’ll love reading about this one!
How Does a Graph Service Platform Work and Do You Need It?
A Graph Service Platform may be an excellent asset to have if you’re looking to improve your fraud detection game for your platform.
Grab’s engineering team has gone all out with insightful data, examples, graphs, and charts to explain the whole process.
Scalability
How to Reduce the Development Time of a React Project to Almost 70–80%?
Explore some very assuring changes that can make your development process more productive while you save a good amount of time.
The main benefit includes learning how to see the result of code changes in the browser without refreshing the page every 2 seconds.
Leadership
Rethink Your Employee Value Proposition
A lot of leaders believe that the formula for attracting and keeping talent is simple: Just ask people what they want and give it to them. The problem is, that approach tends to address only the material aspects of jobs that are top of employees’ minds at the moment, like pay or flexibility. And those offerings are easy for rivals to imitate and have the least enduring impact on retention. Companies instead should focus on what workers need to thrive over the long term, balancing material offerings with opportunities to grow, connection and community, and meaning and purpose.
Culture
Measuring to Optimize
Will you scale better by training more productive engineers or by simply hiring more of them?
If this is something you’re thinking about, chances are high that this post will help you out. It’s helpful in revealing metrics that will cut down inefficiencies and find areas that are worth focusing most on.
Product
The Secret to a Product Culture Shift
What do you think? 🤔 Would it be easy to go from a tech-focused mindset to a customer-focused mindset?
If you said “It’s expensive, takes time, and is overall quite difficult”, you’d be right!
But, according to this story, the change starts in engineering!
8 Things We Wish We Heard Before Getting Into Product Management
Taking a minute to skim through this insightful post may save you a lifetime of mistakes and regrets.
“Product managers get into this field because they want to help people. But you will likely never see the fruits of your labor.”
Aha.io is among the world’s best product development software. They’ve compiled 8 pieces of advice that anyone getting into Product Management should be aware of.
Other
Hard Truths From a Software Engineer Who Got Laid Off
I have to be honest, there really are some hard truths inside this post that entice a bit of fear in all of us. It might even sound a bit pessimistic, but this is actually something we all might need in order to prepare better.
After all, it can happen to anyone. This story will introduce some much-needed awareness on this topic.
Which Meetings Should You Kill?
Think of this as a crash course on meetings and exceptional time management. ⏳📓
You’d be surprised by how many “professionals” have no clue how to run meetings that don’t waste time and get something done.
This post may or may not offer some well-deserved leverage and help you avoid wasting time in your meetings.
3 Essential Scrumban Metrics for Elite Software Teams
Are you part of an elite software team? Maybe you manage one? Or, maybe it’s none of the above? Well, you don’t need to be elite to take advantage of the advice and insights shared in this one.
If you and your team have trouble meeting deadlines, there might be something for you here that can make you an “elite software team”.
The Correlation Between Code Ownership and Software Quality
This might just be the fastest way to learn about the correlation between code ownership and software quality out there. There are studies that thoroughly explain it, but this post removes the boredom from it all.
This is actually a summary of Code Ownership and Software Quality: A Replication Study by Michaela Greiler, Kim Herzig, and Jacek Czerwonka. I recommend you check it out.
Missing link in Culture section?