Tech Lead Journal

“The goal of software is often to sustain an organization. An organization invests in software in order to achieve some goal and hopefully to sustain itself in helping it achieve that goal." Mark Seemann is an acclaimed author, international speaker, and a highly experienced developer. In this episode, Mark shared some insights from his latest book, “Code That Fits in Your Head”, on how to write sustainable software and manage software complexity. Mark first started by sharing why he wrote this book and explained why software development is hard. He also pointed out the difference between software engineering and other physical engineering disciplines, especially on the set of constraints. Mark then explained the importance of writing sustainable software and shared the perspective that code is a liability instead of an asset. Towards the end, Mark shared about the Rule of 7 as a guideline to manage code complexity and a few practices we can use to build sustainable software, such as checklist, vertical slice, x-driven development, and command query separation. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:06:26] Code That Fits in Your Head - [00:07:49] Software Development is Hard - [00:10:55] Software Engineering vs Physical Engineering - [00:15:01] Sustainable Software - [00:17:58] Code is a Liability - [00:19:55] Rule of 7 - [00:22:43] Checklist - [00:31:23] Vertical Slice - [00:35:52] X-Driven Development - [00:39:47] Command Query Separation - [00:45:07] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:49:38] _____ Mark Seemann’s Bio Mark Seemann is a bad economist who’s found a second career as a programmer, and he has worked as a web and enterprise developer since the late 1990s. As a young man, Mark wanted to become a rockstar, but unfortunately had neither the talent nor the looks – later, however, he became a Certified Rockstar Developer. He has also written a Jolt Award-winning book about Dependency Injection, given more than a 100 international conference talks, and authored video courses for both Pluralsight and Clean Coders. He has regularly published blog posts since 2006. He lives in Copenhagen with his wife and two children. Follow Mark: Website – https://blog.ploeh.dk Twitter – @ploeh LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/ploeh Our Sponsor Today’s episode is proudly sponsored by Skills Matter, the global community and events platform for software professionals. Skills Matter is an easier way for technologists to grow their careers by connecting you and your peers with the best-in-class tech industry experts and communities. You get on-demand access to their latest content, thought leadership insights as well as the exciting schedule of tech events running across all time zones. Head on over to skillsmatter.com to become part of the tech community that matters most to you - it’s free to join and easy to keep up with the latest tech trends. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/89.

Liz Fong-Jones, co-author of the "Observability Engineering" book and Principal Developer Advocate for SRE and Observability at Honeycomb, discusses observability and its importance in the industry. She explains the core analysis loop, cardinality, and dimensionality, and the concept of debugging from first principles. She also talks about observability-driven development and the observability maturity model. Other topics include implementing observability, the challenges of understanding complex cloud-native microservices, and the importance of social alignment in observability.

“You don’t know what you don’t know. So when you’re learning something, it’s very hard to identify your own knowledge gaps, especially if you’re a programmer and you’re moving from one language to another." Jeremy Walker is the co-founder of Exercism and Kaido. In this episode, Jeremy first shared about Exercism, a not-for-profit online platform for learning different programming languages. He explained the importance of programming in the idiomatic way, the role of mentorship when learning new languages, and shared his experiences running Exercism as one of the largest open source program, such as how to get consensus and how to run remote distributed teams. Later, Jeremy then talked about Kaido, an employee culture platform for building happier, healthier, and better connected teams. He shared how companies could strive to do more to build company culture before then shared some practical tips on how we can improve our personal wellbeing. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:05:08] Exercism - [00:08:24] Programming in Idiomatic Way - [00:11:34] Mentorship When Learning Languages - [00:13:52] Inclusiveness & Equality - [00:17:04] Running Large Open Source - [00:21:19] Getting Consensus - [00:27:11] Running Remote Distributed Teams - [00:30:42] Kaido for Wellbeing and Culture - [00:37:00] Tips on Personal Wellbeing - [00:43:40] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:49:13] _____ Jeremy Walker’s Bio Jeremy Walker is the co-founder of Exercism and Kaido. He is a software developer and entrepreneur who has been building tech businesses and not-for-profits for over 15 years. He is passionate about building great places to work and creating opportunity through education. In his space time he boulders and gets geeky about coffee. Follow Jeremy: Exercism – https://exercism.org/ Kaido – https://kaido.org/ Twitter – @iHiD LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/ihidjeremywalker/ GitHub – https://github.com/ihid Our Sponsor Today’s episode is proudly sponsored by Skills Matter, the global community and events platform for software professionals. Skills Matter is an easier way for technologists to grow their careers by connecting you and your peers with the best-in-class tech industry experts and communities. You get on-demand access to their latest content, thought leadership insights as well as the exciting schedule of tech events running across all time zones. Head on over to skillsmatter.com to become part of the tech community that matters most to you - it’s free to join and easy to keep up with the latest tech trends. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/87.

“We need to consider our system that we built as sociotechnical systems. The system is more than the sum of its parts. It’s a product of their interactions. We need to focus on improving the performance of the whole, instead of separate parts of the system." Susanne Kaiser is the author of the upcoming book “Adaptive Systems with Domain-Driven Design, Wardley Mapping, and Team Topologies: Architecture for Flow”. In this episode, Susanne explained how she connected the dots between 3 different methodologies–Wardley Mapping, Domain-Driven Design, and Team Topologies–to design and build adaptive systems for a fast flow of change and why it is important for any organization to have adaptive systems. Susanne went in depth to explain about the Wardley Mapping strategic framework, its five sections, and how they support designing and evolving effective business strategies based on situational awareness and movement following a strategy cycle. She then explained how to translate from a Wardley map into Domain-Driven Design, how DDD helps in applying the Wardley Mapping doctrine principles, before then explaining how Team Topologies helps to create effective team boundaries and optimize team’s cognitive load. Towards the end, Susanne shared from her experience how we can apply this process in our organizations, as well as in legacy systems. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:07:00] DDD, Wardley Mapping & Team Topologies - [00:09:56] Adaptive System - [00:15:57] Wardley Mapping - [00:19:53] Doctrine Principles - [00:28:09] Domain-Driven Design and Team Topologies - [00:31:16] How to Apply in an Organization - [00:38:49] How to Apply to Legacy - [00:41:30] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:47:04] _____ Susanne Kaiser’s Bio Susanne Kaiser is an independent tech consultant from Hamburg, Germany, supporting organizations with building socio-technical systems. She is passionate about connecting the dots between Wardley Mapping, Domain-Driven Design, and Team Topologies as a holistic approach to design and build adaptive systems for a fast flow of change. Susanne was previously working as a startup CTO and has a background in computer sciences and experience in software development and software architecture since 2002. She is the author of the book “Adaptive Systems with Domain-Driven Design, Wardley Mapping, and Team Topologies: Architecture for Flow” (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Vernon), 2022). Follow Susanne: Website – https://www.susannekaiser.net/ LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/susannekaiser1/ Twitter – https://www.twitter.com/suksr Our Sponsor Today’s episode is proudly sponsored by Skills Matter, the global community and events platform for software professionals. Skills Matter is an easier way for technologists to grow their careers by connecting you and your peers with the best-in-class tech industry experts and communities. You get on-demand access to their latest content, thought leadership insights as well as the exciting schedule of tech events running across all time zones. Head on over to skillsmatter.com to become part of the tech community that matters most to you - it’s free to join and easy to keep up with the latest tech trends. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/86.

“Today, employees want more autonomy, e.g. work-life balance and working from home, and at the same time, they want more social inclusion to get as many authentic insights into the company and the new job as possible." Jens Olberding is the author of “Agile Recruiting” and an expert in agile HR management. In this episode, we opened our conversation discussing the great resignation trend and its underlying reasons. Jens then shared the concept of agile recruiting and explained how it is very much relevant to the latest changes in the current job landscape. He emphasized that recruiting should not only put focus just on the hiring departments’ needs but also equally on the candidates to understand better what they truly want from their career. Jens also shared a few recruiting best practices, such as getting the recruiting teams’ involvements in the recruitment process, building cross-functional teams, and the SuSiBOL interview technique that he shared towards the end to help in assessing candidates’ behaviors and competencies better. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:06:00] The Great Resignation - [00:07:33] Agile Recruiting - [00:11:10] What the Candidate Wants - [00:14:12] Recruiting Team Involvement - [00:15:55] Hire for Talent, Train for Skills - [00:18:50] Cross-Functional Team - [00:20:24] Assessing Potentials - [00:22:52] Communication Among Equals - [00:24:23] Preselection - [00:26:22] Diversity of Experience - [00:30:51] SuSiBOL Technique - [00:34:21] Onboarding - [00:39:14] Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:42:48] _____ Jens Olberding’s Bio Jens Olberding is an expert in agile HR management and recruiting. He is a qualified organisational psychologist and has a Master’s degree in Human Resource Management. He is also a lecturer for diagnostics and recruitment and teaches methods for competence-based recruiting processes. His focus is on supporting agile transformations and the development of agile HR organisations in medium-sized companies. As a coach for leadership and transformation, he accompanies teams, leaders and organisations on their way to more agility. Follow Jens: LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jens-olberding-130b618a/ Twitter – @jens_olberding Website – https://www.jo-agilehr.de/ Website – https://www.laeuft.io/ Our Sponsor Today’s episode is proudly sponsored by Skills Matter, the global community and events platform for software professionals. Skills Matter is an easier way for technologists to grow their careers by connecting you and your peers with the best-in-class tech industry experts and communities. You get on-demand access to their latest content, thought leadership insights as well as the exciting schedule of tech events running across all time zones. Head on over to skillsmatter.com to become part of the tech community that matters most to you - it’s free to join and easy to keep up with the latest tech trends. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/85.

“The route of becoming a technical leader is helping others up-skill and grow. Once you learn that helping others grow is your objective, then you become a leader." Laurențiu Spilcă is a development lead and trainer at Endava. He is an author of multiple books and a frequent coding livestreamer on YouTube. In this episode, Laurențiu shared his experience as a developer consultant and provided his view on dealing with the expectation for a consultant or tech lead to know about everything in technology. Laurențiu then shared the importance of soft skills and why it is important for every developer to improve them, in particular when doing code reviews and technical interviews. Laurențiu also shared advice on how to deal with toxic culture when consulting and the importance of not having emotional attachments to the projects. Towards the end, Laurențiu shared about his YouTube channel and coding livestream sessions, along with the reasons he started them. He also gave practical tips on how we can produce and structure our content based on his vast experience publishing books, courses, and livestreams. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:05:59] Developer Consultant Role - [00:09:06] Knowing About Everything - [00:12:17] The Case for Upgrading Tech Stack - [00:17:33] Importance of Soft Skills - [00:21:58] Improving Soft Skills - [00:24:40] Tips on Code Review - [00:29:26] Outsider Treatment - [00:31:01] Project Attachment - [00:35:35] Starting YouTube Channel - [00:37:00] Coding Livestream - [00:40:24] Tips for Producing Content - [00:42:35] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:46:13] _____ Laurențiu Spilcă’s Bio Laurentiu Spilca is a dedicated development lead and trainer at Endava, where he leads and consults on multiple projects from various locations in Europe, Asia, and the U.S. Laurentiu believes it’s essential to not only deliver high-quality software but to also share knowledge and help others to up-skill, which has driven him to design and teach courses related to Java technologies and deliver presentations and workshops. He is the author of Spring Security in Action and Spring Quickly. Follow Laurențiu: Youtube – https://www.youtube.com/c/LaurentiuSpilca Website – https://laurspilca.com/ Twitter – @laurspilca LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauren%C5%A3iu-spilc%C4%83-01a931107/ Our Sponsor Today’s episode is proudly sponsored by Skills Matter, the global community and events platform for software professionals. Skills Matter is an easier way for technologists to grow their careers by connecting you and your peers with the best-in-class tech industry experts and communities. You get on-demand access to their latest content, thought leadership insights as well as the exciting schedule of tech events running across all time zones. Head on over to skillsmatter.com to become part of the tech community that matters most to you - it’s free to join and easy to keep up with the latest tech trends. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/84.

“Treating everyone as remote is to keep everyone in mind as having the same level, same equality, the same access to information in communication exchanges between people." James Stanier is the author of “Effective Remote Work” and Director of Engineering at Shopify. In this episode, James shared insights from his latest book and began by sharing why remote work is here to stay and the basic setup for remote work. He then talked about the importance of managing our time and energy and establishing team norms for successful remote work. James then explained about the concept of treating everyone as remote, which led to the discussion about producing more artifacts and balancing between synchronous and asynchronous working style. We also extended the discussion on how one can become a more effective manager in the remote setup, including how to manage up and allocating time for team bonding and fun activities. Towards the end, James shared how we can self-assess our remote working practices by using the 12 questions in his book, and how remote is the path to equality and can become a great leveler for everyone. Listen out for: Writing “Effective Remote Work” - [00:06:53] Remote is Here to Stay - [00:08:36] Basic Remote Setup - [00:11:45] Managing Yourself - [00:14:38] Effects of Being Unobserved - [00:17:19] Treat Everyone as Remote - [00:19:59] Producing More Artifacts - [00:22:13] Types of Artifacts - [00:25:18] Sync vs Async - [00:30:01] Effective Remote Manager - [00:36:55] Managing Up - [00:39:43] Allocating Fun Time - [00:42:27] Remote Work Self-Assessment - [00:44:44] Remote: The Great Leveler - [00:47:36] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:53:29] _____ James Stanier’s Bio James Stanier is Director of Engineering at Shopify, a fully remote technology company. His latest book, Effective Remote Work, is being published by The Pragmatic Bookshelf in April 2022. His previous book, Become an Effective Software Engineering Manager, was published in 2020. Follow James: Website – https://theengineeringmanager.com Twitter – @jstanier LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jstanier/ Our Sponsor Today’s episode is proudly sponsored by Skills Matter, the global community and events platform for software professionals. Skills Matter is an easier way for technologists to grow their careers by connecting you and your peers with the best-in-class tech industry experts and communities. You get on-demand access to their latest content, thought leadership insights as well as the exciting schedule of tech events running across all time zones. Head on over to skillsmatter.com to become part of the tech community that matters most to you - it’s free to join and easy to keep up with the latest tech trends. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/83.

“There’s a substantial difference between building software and then building software for production and then building software for scale." Mohammed Alabsi is a seasoned technology leader, an angel investor, and a venture fellow at Insignia Ventures. Mohammed worked at Amazon for 10 years, before moving to Southeast Asia and helped scale up Bukalapak towards its IPO. In this episode, Mohammed started by sharing his lessons learned from his time at Amazon, working on EC2, advertising business, and B2B e-commerce. Mohammed then shared his journey at Bukalapak and described the challenges that he had to tackle during the scale-up stage, such as setting up engineering processes and governance, growing high-performing engineering teams rapidly, and building alignment across those multiple teams. He also gave great tips for leaders on the importance of managing up and keeping the leadership and stakeholders in the loop. Towards the end, Mohammed shared about his current role as a tech investor and advisor and gave some great advice on common mistakes startup should avoid, as well as advice for tech leaders in the early stage startups. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:05:31] Lessons from Amazon and AWS - [00:08:42] Common Scale-up Challenges - [00:11:12] Growing the Team Fast - [00:14:58] Process and Governance - [00:18:37] Teams and Alignment - [00:23:26] Managing Up - [00:25:46] Tech Investing and Advisory - [00:28:41] Startup Mistakes to Avoid - [00:30:03] Advice for Leaders - [00:33:01] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:33:59] _____ Mohammed Alabsi’s Bio Mohammed Alabsi is a seasoned technology leader with experience in the US, Asia and the Middle East. Mohammed’s career began with Maktoob.com where he helped build two businesses that were acquired by Yahoo! and Amazon. During his 10 years tenure at Amazon, Mohammed built AWS services powering the infrastructure of millions of tech companies worldwide. He was also a founding member of two of Amazon’s major businesses, in Advertising and Amazon B2B e-commerce. Inspired by Southeast Asia’s pace of technology innovation, he joined Bukalapak as an SVP of engineering. At Bukalapak he led a team of 800 technical staff, launched numerous products, and helped gear the business towards IPO. Mohammed is active in the startup scene, advising and investing in startups across ASEAN and the US. He is also a venture fellow at Insignia Ventures. Follow Mohammed: LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/alabsi/ Our Sponsor Today’s episode is proudly sponsored by Skills Matter, the global community and events platform for software professionals. Skills Matter is an easier way for technologists to grow their careers by connecting you and your peers with the best-in-class tech industry experts and communities. You get on-demand access to their latest content, thought leadership insights as well as the exciting schedule of tech events running across all time zones. Head on over to skillsmatter.com to become part of the tech community that matters most to you - it’s free to join and easy to keep up with the latest tech trends. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/82.

“Architecture is context. You can only make the right trade-offs between alternatives if you know the context drivers." Eltjo Poort is the architecture practice lead at CGI Netherlands with over 30 years of experience in the software industry. In this episode, Eltjo started by explaining the importance of architecture context and business drivers that can help an architect understand the different trade-offs and options in order to make the right architecture decisions. Eltjo shared the architect’s main responsibilities and how architects should avoid writing big and long architecture documents by understanding the different goals of an architecture document. Eltjo also shared his great insights on how we should deal with technical debt, “move slow and fix things”, and put a more balanced effort towards working on enablers in order to maintain sustainable pace in delivering great software. Towards the end, Eltjo shared a few anti-patterns that architects should avoid based on his article “Waterfall Wasteland and Agile Outback”. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:05:40] Architecture is Context - [00:11:10] Understanding Architectural Trade-offs - [00:13:51] Understanding the Business Drivers - [00:17:59] Incorrect Architecture Decisions - [00:20:41] Architect’s Responsibility - [00:23:45] Architecture Documentation Goals - [00:26:43] Dealing with Technical Debt - [00:32:30] Enablers - [00:36:38] Waterfall Wasteland and Agile Outback - [00:40:26] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:44:46] _____ Eltjo Poort’s Bio Eltjo R. Poort leads the architecture practice at CGI in The Netherlands. In his 30-year career in the software industry, he has fulfilled many engineering and project management roles. In the 1990s, he oversaw the implementation of the first SMS text messaging systems in the United States. In the last decade, he produced various publications on improving architecting practices, including his PhD thesis in 2012. Eltjo is best known for his work on Risk- and Cost-Driven Architecture, a set of principles and practices for agile architecting, for which he received the Linda Northrop Software Architecture Award in 2016. His digital architecture blog can be found at eltjopoort.nl. Eltjo is also a member of IFIP Working Group 2.11 on Software Architecture. In his spare time, Eltjo plays the violin in Symfonieorkest Nijmegen. Follow Eltjo: Website – https://eltjopoort.nl/ LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/eltjopoort/ Twitter – @eltjopoort Our Sponsor Today’s episode is proudly sponsored by Skills Matter, the global community and events platform for software professionals. Skills Matter is an easier way for technologists to grow their careers by connecting you and your peers with the best-in-class tech industry experts and communities. You get on-demand access to their latest content, thought leadership insights as well as the exciting schedule of tech events running across all time zones. Head on over to skillsmatter.com to become part of the tech community that matters most to you - it’s free to join and easy to keep up with the latest tech trends. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/81.

“Focus on what really matters. If everything matters, then nothing matters. Make sure that what you do is aligned with what really matters." Peter Stevens and Maria Matarelli are the co-founders of the Personal Agility Institute and the authors of the “Personal Agility”. In this episode, Peter and Maria shared what Personal Agility System is and how we can apply this framework in our daily lives. They highlighted how many people face typical challenges that hinder them from truly getting what they want by using the “life is an ocean” metaphor. Both of them then gave a complete walkthrough of the 6 powerful questions in Personal Agility System, especially highlighting the key question to find “what really matters”. Peter and Maria then shared how this framework is not just applicable to individual, but also to leadership and organizational agility, and how it can help create alignment and trust within an organization. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:05:55] How Personal Agility Started - [00:10:10] Personal Agility System -[00:16:43] Life is the Ocean - [00:18:55] 6 Powerful Questions - [00:22:26] What Really Matters - [00:31:45] Applying PAS to Leadership and Organizational Agility- [00:37:06] Alignment - [00:41:04] Alignment Trust - [00:44:59] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:52:19] _____ Peter and Maria’s Bio Peter Stevens is an Executive, Coach, Author, Scrum Alliance Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), and Founder or co-Founder of the Scrum Ambassadors, AgileExecutives.org, and the World Agility Forum. Peter serves as Chief Agility Officer for a Swiss digital health start-up. Peter also wrote Ten Agile Contracts: Getting Beyond Fixed-Price, Fixed Scope and Extreme Manufacturing. Maria Matarelli is an Executive Coach, Consultant to the Fortune 100, Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) and an international best selling author. Maria and her team consult businesses to reach breakthrough results by applying Agile methodologies. Maria is the founder and CEO of Formula Ink and co-founder of the Agile Marketing Academy. Together, Peter and Maria founded the Personal Agility Institute with the mission of helping people and organizations align what they do with what really matters to become who they want to be and achieve what they want to achieve. Follow both: Website – https://personalagilityinstitute.org/ Follow Peter: LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterstev Twitter – @peterstev Follow Maria: LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariamatarelli/ Twitter – @MariaMatarelli Our Sponsor Today’s episode is proudly sponsored by Skills Matter, the global community and events platform for software professionals. Skills Matter is an easier way for technologists to grow their careers by connecting you and your peers with the best-in-class tech industry experts and communities. You get on-demand access to their latest content, thought leadership insights as well as the exciting schedule of tech events running across all time zones. Head on over to skillsmatter.com to become part of the tech community that matters most to you - it’s free to join and easy to keep up with the latest tech trends. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/80.