CTO Insights - Issue #119
Software Engineering and Technical Leadership
Welcome to CTO Insights #119
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.
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This week’s favorite - What Comes First In Your Company?
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Architecture
The OpenAI’s GPT-3 Architecture, on a Napkin
Before we dive deeper into architecture, if you are not familiar with GPT-3, make sure to check this story.
Now, let’s start by breaking down the architecture of OpenAI’s ChatGPT-3. This is a step-by-step, clear, and very concise explanation of the tool with all the technical terms, charts, and diagrams your mind can handle.
Scalability
Lessons for Getting to 100 Happy Customers, Faster
Retool’s CEO, David, shares his most essential lessons on how to grow faster. He shares his own journey from growing Retool, proving it’s more than possible to do this quickly.
The story is written from a Product-Market Fit perspective, but you can find plenty of inspiration, motivation, and insights on scalability.
Leadership
What Comes First In Your Company?
“Put the company first, the team second, and yourself last”
This is the approach many leaders practice.
The author, Will Larson (a writer and a software engineering leader) has a different opinion, and he makes a few very compelling arguments proving there is a better way to lead and improve.
HR’s New Operating Model
The way companies manage employees is drastically changing. The changes don’t seem to stop, so our goal should be to find the best way to adapt.
This article talks about five new emerging models of managing employees. If you’re struggling with these changes, this post will offer some insight.
Culture
Purposeful Work: The Secret Weapon in the New War for Talent
If you’re struggling with retaining your employees, creating a culture around offering purposeful work can help greatly with this issue.
There’s more detail inside, but the main way to structure this is to make work interesting, connect jobs to the company's mission, and foster continuous learning.
Other
20 Tips for Evaluating Early-Stage Companies & Making the Leap
Learning how to evaluate a company could get you that new job you can brag to your friends about all day.
Here are 20 tips on how to do this, all explained in-depth. As a result, this is not a short post, but thankfully it’s Sunday, so you probably have an hour to spare. 😄
Just Use Postgres for Everything
If you’re a Start-up, there may be a way to speed up your development process significantly. The basic idea is - “Use Postgres for Everything”.
To be more precise, you can use Postgres for all your backend needs. It can replace various technologies that might be slowing you down, such as Kafka, RabbitMQ, Redis, and more.
You should think about this yourself and determine whether this approach could actually be worth it.
Writing Docs Well: Why Should a Software Engineer Care?
Have you ever given more serious thought to technical writing as a software engineer? 🤔
It offers a lot of advantages. Here are some of the most important ones.
Build shared understanding
Use it as a tool to improve your thinking
Influence others
You can read the more in-depth explanations inside. ☝️
The Affects of The Age Factor in Organizations
If you have any struggles with the workforce at your organization, this article may be of help.
It gives a few valuable insights regarding recruitment and retention of employees, explaining which one might benefit you most.
Closing Notes
Thanks for making it this far! 🙏
I hope you enjoyed this week’s issue. Use the thumbs up/down buttons to rate and don’t forget to share the newsletter with fellows.