This has been a terrible, staggering year in so many ways. It's also been a disproportionately interesting and meaningful year for me professionally, and I wanted to share some of what I learned in 2017 about engineering and infrastructure management.
-
Show this thread
-
There is a surprisingly broad category of work where a single dedicated person saves person-years of rushed efforts later: ensuring systems are scaling (and not regressing), cost accounting, build tooling, code hosting, etc. Prefer two people, one is still the loneliest number.
1 reply 16 retweets 104 likesShow this thread -
A core management skill is bridging between your management’s and your team’s expectations in a way that is authentic to both’s values. If you never say no to your team, you’re not actually managing them. If you never change your management’s mind, you’re not being a manager.
1 reply 61 retweets 276 likesShow this thread -
A less obvious advantage of having a broad set of skills is that you can succeed in a wider variety of situations. When your manager changes, you switch companies, priorities change, etc.
1 reply 5 retweets 51 likesShow this thread -
I hope we can do more to emphasize that line management is a distinct job than managing managers. The skills are different, and line management is an extremely rich, deep field that we should celebrate more.
2 replies 9 retweets 90 likesShow this thread -
Stereotype threat, the idea that simple being aware of stereotypes about you meaningfully reduces your related performance, was a new and eye-opening learning for me (see Whistling Vivaldi by Claude Steele).
6 replies 6 retweets 56 likesShow this thread -
I--and almost every manager I worked with--was certain that cold sourcing did not work and was a waste of time. We wrote up a process, followed it, and damningly it consistently worked for all of us. Humbling example of strong conviction in a reasonable but entirely false belief.
5 replies 6 retweets 69 likesShow this thread -
Replying to @Lethain
You mean cloud sourcing? Couldn’t Google for cold sourcing
1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
Cold sourcing means finding people who could plausibly be e.g. engineers at your company and then contacting them without first having a relationship with them, a "warm" introduction from e.g. an employee, or having them make an inbound contact to your company.
-
-
Is that process or at least its principles available publicly?
1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @KimStacks @patio11
Will Larson Retweeted Will Larson
If you're still interested, I wrote up some more notes on cold-sourcing inhttps://twitter.com/Lethain/status/950381281543507968 …
Will Larson added,
Will Larson @LethainReferral hires have amazing close rates, but their availability will end up constraining your hiring velocity. The oft uniform nature of personal networks also lead to monocultures. Fortunately, there’s an easy fix! Cold sourcing. https://lethain.com/cold-sourcingShow this thread0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.