The Frugal Architect
The Frugal Architect” is a concise guide that delivers powerful insights into building architectures that are not just economically sound, but also forward-thinking and adaptable to changing business landscapes.
Psytrance Guide
Psytrance Guide is a website dedicated to the Psytrance music genre. It provides information about the genre’s history, artists, and offers reviews of tracks. If you have an interest in Psytrance, you might find this website informative.
Fourth Annual iOS Music Player Showcase
This blog post by Barrowclift discusses iOS music player apps. It offers reviews and insights into various iOS music player options. If you’re an iOS user looking for a music player app, this post could help you explore some of the available choices.
You are going on a quest
This article explores career paths for engineers, primarily focusing on roles like CEO, CTO, and VP of Engineering. It provides a practical framework for career growth, stressing the importance of maintaining technical expertise or transitioning to engineering-focused leadership positions.
Building an iPod for 2022
Ellie’s article detailing her project to modernize a 5.5th gen iPod Classic for 2022 is interesting. It’s a unique DIY approach that combines a love for music with tech skills and environmental responsibility, repurposing an older device with added features.
How I Built Three Billion-dollar CompaniesㅣFrank Slootman, CEO at SnowFlake
I took a lot of jobs that other people wouldn’t take. Broken products, failing businesses. But, you know, the irony is you learn a great deal from having to run things that are not in good shape, that have problems because, you know, in the fullness of time when you get to run, you know, much better opportunities, you know, you’ll know what to look for, things that are right with businesses, things that are not right. You know, in tech, it’s a little bit like playing cards. You need a good hand and you need to know how to play the cards. You need both. I mean, if you don’t have good cards, it doesn’t matter how well, you know, you play them because the cards are no good, but you have good cards and you know how to play them. That’s the perfect combination.
How to Do the Thing You’ve Been Avoiding
I love this term from psychology. It’s the common belief that other people think exactly like you do — or, in research-speak, that people “see their own behavioral choices and judgments as relatively common and appropriate to existing circumstances.”
As a result, we may do or avoid things because we assume other people think the same.
But we don’t actually know if they think the same.
Is it possible to care at scale?
Caring at scale can’t be done by the CEO or a VP. But what these folks can do is create a culture that cares. They can hire people who are predisposed to care. They can pay attention to the people who care and measure things that matter instead of chasing the short term.
Six Week Cycles
First, we work in six-week cycles. Six weeks is long enough to build something meaningful start-to-finish and short enough that everyone can feel the deadline looming from the start, so they use the time wisely. The majority of our new features are built and released in one six-week cycle.
Our decisions are based on moving the product forward in the next six weeks, not micromanaging time. We don’t count hours or question how individual days are spent. We don’t have daily meetings. We don’t rethink our roadmap every two weeks. Our focus is at a higher level. We say to ourselves: “If this project ships after six weeks, we’ll be really happy. We’ll feel our time was well spent.” Then we commit the six weeks and leave the team alone to get it done.
Seven Shipping Principles
This isn’t just about productivity, now or in the future, but also about pride in the work. The delight that comes from working with code and design that’s properly built. It’s hard to put a specific price on that, but easy to recognize the smile it puts on your face.
This is not a general license to gold-plate everything. We intentionally constrain ourselves through the cycles in Shape Up, such that we don’t end up spending 2 months on stuff that warranted 2 weeks worth of work. Not every batch of work is going to be a 10/10. But if it’s less than 8/10, it probably shouldn’t go out the door. If it’s less than a 7/10, there’s no way it should go out the door, except as an emergency patch you immediately return to cleanup.
Product Strategy is Really About Offense vs. Defense
Identifying offensive bets tends to be a bit easier than identifying defensive ones. Offensive bets generally meet the following criteria:
- They move key business outcomes in a meaningful way — usually acquisition, retention, or monetization.
- They are leveraged and compounding.
- They make meaningful progress in a direction aligned to your strategy. Even if they don’t move business metrics today, they move you closer to significant business impact in the future.