Join 📚 Favorites And Reflection Questions
A batch of the best highlights from what Todd's read, .
it is so hard to be honest when you generalize.
No Time to Spare
Ursula K. Le Guin, Karen Joy Fowler (Introduction)
Tradeoffs are easiest to make if they are expressed in the same units. How can a developer decide if it is better to save a week, save $10,000, or add new features?
Lean Software Development
Mary Poppendieck and Tom Poppendieck
Good curator/hypergrowth managers:
• Curators don’t spend time [arguing internally for headcount](https://lethain.com/create-capacity/), because they know the headcount ins’t coming; they create more impact by picking the right work and ensuring that work’s effective implementation. Hypergrowers know that headcount growth will solve most current problems in the long-run
• Curators view every project as essential, ensuring their team’s work is successful short-term, and that it ladders up into a larger strategy over time that accelerates the team’s impact. Hypergrowers have so many bets that they focus on a portfolio approach where only some, not all, bets need to gain traction
• Curators are in the data to align their team with the real opportunity, and are stubborn about starting work whose premise doesn’t connect with their understanding of the data. Hypergrowers know that the underlying shape of the data is changing rapidly and their mental model may easily be out of date since last month
• Curators treat hiring and onboarding as one-off projects, and know that the hire has to fit into their specific team. Hypergrowers treat hiring and onboarding [as a program](https://lethain.com/programs-owning-the-unownable/), and know that the memberships of each team will change significantly over the next year
• Curators lead teams of real, specific individuals, and work to find task-individual fit. Hypergrowers lead teams of rapidly shifting individuals where tasks and individuals shift too often to optimize task-individual fit
• Curators know that growth won’t fix their organizational missteps, and engage with issues directly (e.g. if a team is too small to handle an on-call rotation, they merge teams). Hypergrowers know that missteps will be solved indirectly by organizational growth without requiring direct resolution
• Curators know that team morale is a precious resource, and invest explicitly into maintaining morale. Hypergrowers know that the rapid expansion of the company’s valuation will paper over most morale issues
• Curators find ways to grow their career that [avoid artificial competition with colleagues](https://lethain.com/career-narratives/). Hypergrowers often make the mistake of viewing career growth through the size of their team
• Both know that poor quality and technical debt will slow forward progress, even though time is constrained for different reasons
• Both prefer [properly sized teams of 6-8 engineers](https://lethain.com/sizing-engineering-teams/)
Good Hypergrowth/Curator Manager.
lethain.com
...catch up on these, and many more highlights
Readwise