Tally Barak

Should all caps be used? I did a deep dive into it, and here is the summary in the following article: https://lnkd.in/du4DuVeZ

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I keep seeing a classic tug of war: - Product Managers want to deliver new features - Tech Leads want to clean up debt What to prioritize? What work to do first? There is often a lack of understanding between parties. And that's totally understandable. Tech Leads often don't feel what pressure Product Managers are under from the business, while PMs have no clue what potential disasters are looming with all that debt. Even with packed agendas, a good remedy to this can be crossing over to the other side. Walk a few miles in the other's shoes. Sit in on a few meetings. Just to listen and foster understanding. After that, the importance of cleaning up technical debt will be evident 👹 #mlops #devops #machinelearning

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82% of #developers indicated that they have experienced #burnout. These issues should be discussed and resolved with managers in 1:1 meetings. However, most one-on-one meetings have become task-reporting sessions that no longer focus on the growth and wellness. #EngineeringManagers want to help in overcoming these challenges genuinely. However, with the burden of meetings, resolving blockers, and securing budget, they have limited time to fully focus on team growth and #wellness. Taking this issue from both perspectives, we have developed StratGeek, which helps your team achieve more with less without overloading.🌱 We track development processes to offer insights in sprint planning, retrospectives, daily scrums, developer motivation, stable code, effective reviews, proactive alerts, scheduled reports and much more.📊 Join our early adopters by contacting StratGeek. Let's build a healthier #WorkEnvironment together! 💪 #TeamLead #WorkLifeBalance #SprintPlanning #Motivation #Review #WorkCulture

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Just finished the course “How to Be More Strategic in Six Steps” by Pete Mockaitis | How to Be Awesome at Your Job! Check it out: https://lnkd.in/dBsAYYbq #strategicthinking.

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I've, personally, been fortunate not to meet any particularly grumpy developers. However, I couldn't agree more with the emphasis on the importance of healthy, positive, competent communication in tech - it's something I've always felt is inadequately discussed! I understand how easy it can be to single-mindedly pursue the advancement of one's technical skills - truly, I feel that struggle in my bones. But gosh, adept communication can take your career and your team to the next level. And, for what industry isn't that true, right? But in tech, we're uniquely surrounded with opportunities to not only improve our communication skills but also leverage the benefits of them! Internally, of course - a Scrum team, for example. The opportunity for practice and growth here is abundant thanks to the routine of the various Scrum ceremonies. You're given plenty of face time to get to know one another and learn how to cultivate positive, effective interactions at both an individual and team level. With these social skills, we create an environment in which each individual feels heard and supported. We also create a team environment where everyone feels empowered to be candid, because competent communication is about being able to passionately disagree while remaining respectful. Opposing ideas are debated, opinions thrive, and the product, in turn, thrives. Externally, too! Let's pivot to the customer experience. In SaaS, customer interactions are not transient. These are long-term relationships, and thus one has the potential to become more than a nameless technician in a call center, and rather a trusted advisor. And with that privilege comes honest feedback, and grace in the event of an escalation. Consumers in today's world crave authenticity, and this will become even more apparent with the advent of AI. Truly, you will never regret honing your communication skills. You will build authentic, long-lasting relationships, ultimately benefiting both the customer and the company.

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📚 Well, let's Dive into the "Product Way of Thinking" with Marty Cagan! Hey folks! As a part of the "never too late to learn new things" - I'm planning to start a reading marathon of Marty Cagan's books, specifically all about Product Building! I have heard a thing or two about these books before, and even read some parts of one of those, but never had a chance to read them start to finish. In my career, I've been lucky to work with people who are very good and experienced product managers/leaders. I have learned a lot by observing how they work: discover, change, adapt, transition etc, as I have tried to contribute to the process from the engineering side in various capacities (developer / tech lead / team lead / engineering manager) by "learning while doing". But now it is time to dig a bit deeper into the basics. I'm guessing many of you have read these books, and if so, I'm eager to hear your thoughts and insights. And if you haven't read them either, like me, well, then join in. 📖 At this point the aim is to read at least two from the series of 4 books: "Transformed" and "Inspired", and see if the other two ("Empowered" and "Loved") would be of relevance for me. Not sure how much time it will take, but I'm planning to share my thoughts as I go through each book. https://lnkd.in/gpdvYqEK #productbuilding #productdevelopment #productmanagement #productwayofthinking #transformed #inspired #martycagan

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Get users' feedback during development! It's easy to overlook this crucial step. I learned this firsthand while working on Project Christmas for a year. After giving an alpha version to trusted friends today, I discovered a critical flaw: the app lacked messaging. As a result, most the alpha testers had no clue how to navigate the app or its purpose. I'm now focused on rectifying this by implementing a robust onboarding process and incorporating more messaging. Remember, getting users' feedback is paramount. Learn from my mistakes! #UserFeedback #Development #Onboarding #MistakesLearned

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Feedback isn't just about fixing mistakes—it's about celebrating wins and building confidence. Let's make feedback fun and productive! 🎉 https://lnkd.in/dtturGC4 #WorkCulture #FeedbackMatters #TechLeadership #ConstructiveFeedback #teamwork #leadership

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Everyone forgets that software needs to be maintained after it's built. After every addition to the codebase, the available capacity for new developments is not the full team capacity. It's the full team capacity MINUS the sum of the maintenance costs for everything that was built before. That's why large tech companies are large and move slowly. It's also how small teams grind to a stop when they over-complicate.

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One common opinion I see among inexperienced technical leaders is that code is king. Any action that does not result in more code being written is not considered important. Writing documentation, testing, or any kind of meeting at all are seen as a distraction from the most important thing of all: writing code. When their teams aren't delivering, they help in the only way they know how: by rolling up their sleeves and doing the tickets themselves. Interestingly enough, we just received results from our developer experience survey. The biggest impediments to productivity as seen by our engineers are a lack of documentation, a lack of alignment, unclear and inconsistent priorities. These are the most important things that a leader must provide. Things like documentation, PRDs, and refinement meetings might not be glamorous, but they are necessary. Unless everyone is on the same page about what they are doing and why, productivity will suffer. By focusing on completing tickets instead of resolving higher level issues, these leaders are doing a disservice both to themselves and the people they are trying to help. A leader that cuts through ambiguity and puts their team's work in context is a force multiplier, a leader who keeps all the context in their head and tries to play a part-time individual contributor is an impediment.

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Having a coach and mentor who is working with you is the best way to learn.

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I want to share some recent thoughts about people management/interviewing... Why do so many companies still pay for people's time but have yet to be a result? So often, I face many companies that expect engineers to work 40 hours per week. But I have never heard what the company expects to get with that new member. From my perspective, that looks silly cause hours do not mean the result. The companies usually have yet to have any result-focused expectations from engineers! That is not smart for many reasons. Some engineers are slow but have an excellent creative mind or do their job very carefully; some others are speedy but unfocused and can make many bugs (and run your POC 4 times faster), and some engineers are challenge-focused and quickly become bored from routine tasks; some have perfect expertise, and done all expected results in 20 hours, such people usually have few projects at the same time, all people are different, and carefully take people to their position - is essential for company success!. I believe smart interviewing—when we understand the interviewee's lifestyle and HOW they solve challenges—is the future of recruiting. Recruiting is not about buying 40 hours of this guy's life; it's about the expertise/skills/motivations/minds of people. It is more critical to take people who do not use all of the expected technologies but can solve your challenges than to bring aboard people who know everything but do not solve your challenges!

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I spent yesterday at the LeadDev LeadingEng conference. It was one of the best conferences I've been to for a while, both in terms of who was there (let's not forget, the point of a conference is to confer 😀 ) and also the care and attention that had clearly gone into the programme. Rarely has a conference programme felt so joined up to me, the advantage of the conference being single track was that each presentation or full conference workshop could build on the learnings and information from the previous ones. This was clearly by design. The room was split into tables of seven people and you were allocated a table with people in a similar type role which really helped with conversations and connection. My main takeaways: - We're all struggling with the constraints that we are under as Engineering leaders, particularly in times of slow or no growth. Understanding the commercial perspectives of the businesses that we work for can help drive better decision making. - Change is constant and strategic options help us guide our organisations and react to opportunities - Ultimately what we want as Engineering leaders, and our businesses need, is for us to maximise the value creation from our teams, irrespective of size or structure. Overall it was a super engaging and motivating day, where I met some great people and learnt a lot. Well done LeadDev!

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Feature Friday: Faster Doc Generation & Better Auth Handling We recently rolled out a couple of quality of life enhancements to streamline the documentation process in Dev-Docs. First up is batch documentation generation. Instead of iterating through each function/method with shift+command+d, you can now generate comprehensive docs for your entire codefile in just 1-2 AI calls.  Both methods provide value, but batch documentation is definitely a convenient accelerated option. Additionally, we've improved how Dev-Docs handles authentication issues. If your token expires while generating docs, you'll now get a clear "Not Authorized" notification to simply re-authenticate.  Small upgrades, but they add up to make the overall documenting experience just a bit smoother and faster. More workflow optimizations are on the way. Demo in the comments. #DevDocs #CodeDocumentation #ProductUpdates #DeveloperUX #FeatureFriday

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Why are developers so pedantic about language? It's a common complaint I hear when talking to non-developers and "the business" especially. There are a few reasons: 👉 Clarifying Processes: Software makes business processes explicit. Doing that requires precision of thinking - computers can't cope with vague descriptions. Precise thinking requires precise language. 👉Shared Understanding: Over time, the exact meanings of terms get lost or change, especially with staff turnover. Maintaining a "Ubiquitous Language" helps keep everyone aligned with the original intent, which prevents miscommunication and confusion. So being pedantic about language helps clear and consistent conversations about topics that need precise definitions #software #business #ubiquitouslanguage #pedantic #developers

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Developer platforms are meant to be convenient, right? But many aren't up to par. What's going wrong, and how can we make a difference? - Many platforms lack a user-centric design. Developers, the main users, should be deeply involved in the design and testing phases to ensure the platform is both practical and user-friendly. - There's also a flawed management approach. IT leaders should manage platform teams like startups, building small, agile groups responsible for ownership, tech assistance, and clear documentation. - Platforms need to keep the right balance between guidance and flexibility. They should provide golden paths for everyday tasks and set cages as boundaries yet still accommodate complex or unique user needs. We designed Transformatic with these principles in mind to enhance developer #velocity and improve #DevEx. What other challenges do you see with #IDP, and what solutions would you recommend? Share your insights.

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