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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Michael Lopp
Read between
July 27, 2018 - June 15, 2019
I ask the same question in every interview I have: “Where do you need help?”
First, this guy I work for degrades to jerk when the sky falls. Second, he values me enough to keep me around. The question remains: are you going to hang around waiting for him to be a jerk to you?
“The Joel Test: 12 Steps to Better Code
an off-site, and I call it the bright-and-shiny inflection
they start to see the beginnings of solutions to complex problems that have been nagging them for months.
Stop coding. The theory is this: if you want to be a manager, you must learn to trust those who work for you to take care of the job of coding. This advice can be hard to digest, especially for new managers. It’s likely that one of the reasons they became managers is due to their productive developers, and their first reaction when things go to crap is to revert to the skills that built up their confidence. That’s writing code.
the joy of ownership,
decision-friendly environments
A good project manager thrives on measuring, controlling, and crushing entropy.
Gantt charts are great at showing the order of operations for building software, but never in history of ever have they effectively been used to measure when to ship that software.
“My job isn’t just building product; I also build people.”
Part of your credibility as a leader is your public and repeated declaration that it’s your job to help your team succeed, but you have another task: you need to keep building stuff.
You’re not going to know whom you hired for months. This doesn’t mean you can’t improve your odds.
My preference is that the manager is the person who is the bellwether for vision because that’s their job for the group.
You need a map of the people you work with,
Doesn’t drink coffee? Really? Why?
the joy of understanding,
Folks, I’m a nerd. I need rapid-fire content delivered in short, clever, punchy phrases. Give me Coupland, give me Calvin and Hobbes, give me Asimov, give me the Watchmen. I need this type of content because I’m horribly afflicted with NADD.
problems: incrementalists and completionists.
curmudgeons.
“Let’s do this thing, let’s make sure it gets done, and let’s make sure it gets done right.”
This means that if you have a mechanic for a manager, you need to push the information in a structured, well-known, and consistent manner.
“Hey how the hell are you?”
I was carefully gathering content.
Don’t confuse an extremely open mind with cluelessness.
Inwards : These types of managers are responsible for a small team of folks working on a single product or technology.
Holistics : Traditionally, holistics make up the middle layer of management.
This is why they’re never in their office; they’re running around gathering information.
Outwards : These are the senior managers. VPs, CEOs.
Free electrons are high-functioning and have strong opinions about everything
The model is called Skill vs. Will.
High skill, low will:
“The Crew ” I have a document in my Dropbox titled “The Crew.” It’s a list of each person that I’ve worked with in past 20 years that I would hire if I began a startup.
Board of Directors — The CEO’s boss. They can fire the CEO.
Milestone — Poorly defined, heavily over-communicated date within the software development cycle, where the software development team reflects on how screwed they are.
NADD (Nerd Attention Deficiency Disorder)
Staff Meeting — A weekly meeting with all your direct reports. Failure to run this type of meeting on a regular basis will result in a breakdown in communication and much wasting of time.
