CTO Insights - Issue #120
Software Engineering and Technical Leadership
Welcome to CTO Insights #120
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 - How To Build Software With Courage During a Recession
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Architecture
Distributed Systems — Key Concepts & Patterns
If you work at a modern tech company and you want a deeper understanding of distributed systems, this is a must-read for you.
In this one, you’ll get familiar with the history of distributed systems as well as a few key concepts that define them. You’ll also get a look at the almost complete timeline of distributed systems.
Crane: Uber’s Next-Gen Infrastructure Stack
How does Uber go about fixing the following problems?
difficult scaling
manual operations issues
limited use of cloud infrastructure
With Crane. Every single important detail about this project (and the results) is available in the same post.
Scalability
How to Power Millions of Real-Time Decisions
Lyft built LyftLearn Serving, a decentralized and flexible system that would help them make hundreds of millions of real-time decisions every day.
With this, they have fewer limitations and fewer problems for their teams. The story and process of creating LyftLearn Serving is one that can bring a lot of value when it’s scaling time.
Leadership
Top Skills for an Engineering Manager
It’s easy to guess that the Engineering Manager role is a difficult one. Leading teams, managing budgets, picking projects, allocating resources, and so on. It takes a particular skill set to succeed.
The author is an experienced Engineering Manager and he writes about the top skills an engineering manager should have to set himself/herself up for success.
Product
Passion - The Game-Changing Quality for Product Managers
Steve Jobs and Jack Welch believed that passion is a "game-changing quality" in employees.
This one highlights the importance of passion, especially for product managers. The author also shares how to make the most out of this powerful emotion.
Other
How To Build Software With Courage During a Recession
What if, during a recession, you innovate and experiment instead of cutting back on exploratory products? 🤔
The author shares how a value-based product development approach can do wonders.
Knowing the common roadblocks to innovation and how to solve them is the first step. Next it is up to you to contribute to a company culture where bold and actionable ideas can flourish.
Chasing Growth vs. Choosing Profit
The idea that a company can either grow fast or be profitable is absolutist. And it is simply not true.
Aha!’s CEO himself offers reassurance that any company can grow fast and be very profitable at the same time. Even though this is something not all of us are used to, it’s worth reading what he has to say with examples of his own company journey.
Saving Millions on Logging: Finding Relevant Savings
HubSpot identifies high-cost areas in the storage of application logs and drills down to what’s draining the most funds. They then present a possible way to significantly reduce the cost of logs.
If this is something your organization is struggling with, then don’t miss this opportunity for a solution.
The Six Ways of Optimizing WebAssembly
There’s really no way to hype you up about this one. If you want to know six very effective ways for optimizing WebAssembly, be my guest.
The most I can say is that each method is explained in great detail.
Three Ways to Develop Contextual Awareness as a Leader
If you think that the same effective measures in the past will always work in the future or present, you MUST read this article.
Three pieces of advice that you’ll find out more about inside are:
Build self-awareness
Develop a learner mindset
Develop a data-oriented mindset
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.