Being a successful tech lead, good technical debt, the Lava pattern…

Hello there,

I am happy to see that the newsletter is so well received many. Please let me know what you liked and what you want more of in the future, by replying to this email, or message me at twitter/__florian. Let’s dive into today’s list.

„What Does It Take To Be a Successful Tech Lead?” by Jean Hsu

A wonderful collection if thoughts about what it takes to be successful as a leader in tech.

A tech lead is like the technical counterpart to a product manager — they’re a hub with many inputs. […] Success as a tech lead means finding ways to navigate seemingly competing priorities.

„3 Kinds of Good Tech Debt” by Jon Thornton

Great perspective on technical debt, seeing it more as a tool that one can use to „borrow from the future“ to get an advantage today.

If we define tech debt as work that will have to be done in the future, we can track spending in terms of the time that will be spent on that future work. We can also “invest” time in work done now. This mental model has helped me avoid spending foolishly and paying in maintenance for a system I couldn’t afford…

„The Lava Layer Anti-Pattern” by Mike Hadlow

A wonderful article describing the effects of the lava layers antipattern, and how one can fall into this trap. I think we are probably all guilty of jumping into an existing project and feeling the need to start refactoring.

If you use the argument that, “we will refactor it to the new pattern over time.” Consider that you may never complete that refactoring, and think about what the application will look like with two different ways of doing the same thing.

„My engineering standards” by Rich Archbold

Rich wrote a great article about the standards he sets for him and his teams. He has a very good bullet point list, but I think the biggest value of reading the article is to think about what your standards are, and if you actually communicate those to your teams. It might be time to make your own bullet point list, communicate it, and also stick to it.

„A Gentle Introduction to Kubernetes” by Aymen El Amri

I think we all know Kubernetes.. kind of. Just like we all know Regexs or OSI layers. But it never hurts to go deeper, especially with Kubernetes, a technology we basically all depend on.

„Design patterns for container-based distributed systems [PDF]” by Brendan Burns and David Oppenheimer

One of the great papers, that everybody should have read, and you can be one of those people. ;) The authors describe three kind of patterns: Single container, single node and multi node. Well worth your time!

So, this was the second edition. If you liked this, please let other people know about it. Have a wonderful weekend!

Cheers,
Florian

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