CTO Insights - Issue #121
CTO Insights - Issue #121
Software Engineering and Technical Leadership
Welcome to CTO Insights #121
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 - The Benefits of Engineering Org Values
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Architecture
Uber: Optimizing Push Notifications for Maximum Engagement
Push notifications are highly effective for provoking action. However, getting the timing right is usually what counts most.
In this story, Uber Eats talks about its CCG and how it manages the quality, ranking, timing, and frequency of its push notifications.
Scalability
Breaking the Limitations of Annotation Tools
Marken is a solution Netflix created out of their need for a scalable annotation tool. The solution is now used by teams across Netflix, using its modular architecture and efficient data storage to support annotation at scale.
Inside are all the code snippets, graphs, and charts you need. Learning about Marken is anything but boring.
Leadership
The First 60 Days of a Leadership Role
“Listen and experiment, don’t start changing everything.” - this is what it basically comes down to when you start a new leadership role.
Unfortunately, that’s never where it ends. You still have to prepare, build relationships, manage stress, set goals, prioritize, and more. There’s enough advice to go around inside this insightful article.
Culture
The Benefits of Engineering Org Values
Any team can become more cohesive, better at decision-making, and have a clearer sense of purpose simply by having a well-defined set of values at your organization.
This guide dives into all of that and the author shares some very practical tips on how to make it all happen.
Why You’ll Want to Do Collaborative Peer Reviews
How to design your peer reviews to get better peer feedback? There’s the old way, and then there’s a better way. The latter will be what you’ll read all about in this post.
You’ll probably have some questions as you read it, but you’ll find very insightful answers to your questions at the bottom of the post.
Other
Why Scale Bottom-Up In Your Organization?
Bottom-up growth may be the key to sustainable and equitable growth, increased innovation, more effective problem-solving, and overall stronger teams.
“Organizations, who design systems, are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.”
It’s a comprehensive article that dives into much more than just the psychological aspect of it.
How to Use Corporate Legibility to Help Your Career (as a Software Engineer)
An initial effort toward understanding a company’s culture and structure will go a long way to advancing your career.
It’s a must-read article, containing a simple yet effective secret to making better decisions and making a high impact on the company’s success.
A Framework for Prioritizing Tech Debt
We all love solutions for taking the load off of technical debt. So, here’s another one.
The solution actually lies in how you prioritize your tech debt. This framework suggests doing it based on three factors: severity, risk, and cost.
You’ll get plenty of examples and arguments to help you determine whether this is the right framework for you.
Tech Debt Day (Not a Holiday)
This is another story of one of the most successful ways to deal with tech debt. It’s explained through a real-life example.
You’ll get to see the full method, a first-hand look at the process, and the final results of this entire endeavor.
The Ultimate Guide To Software Architecture Documentation
Take out your notepads because this is about to be a very insightful crash course on software architecture documentation.
It shares how your documentation should look, who you should involve, what it should include, what techniques to use to make it better, and so on. Another must-read!
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.