Some blogs I enjoyed reading this month…
The 8 Must-Have Non-Technical Skills in Software Development
Non-technical skills, or soft skills, are essential to be successful. Even more basic though, is team fit for which these skills are a must. This blog covers 8 of these. One-on-ones are a good time to encourage these in people so they see the value in practising them at a team level.
Differences Between a Manager and a Leader
I’ve covered this topic before but I like this post. It’s quite a long read with many good points contrasting management and leadership. I like this “Leading by example is most easily completed when the leader is willing to perform the same tasks that they expect of others.”
Want to improve your management style? Screw the Golden Rule
This is a good reminder, for me a least! “You shouldn’t treat other people the way you want to be treated because the other person isn’t you.” Treating people how they want to be treated means finding out how they want to be treated! It’s simple really, but it takes effort and patience to get there.
How to Prepare for a One-on-One Meeting as an Employee
This is one to share with your team and use for yourself. One-on-ones are a valuable time which makes preparing for them as important. This blogs covers good focus areas and really encourages openness and self-awareness for someone to ask these questions.
What Self-Awareness Really Is (and How to Cultivate It)
Understanding self-awareness is a necessity for every manager! Describing internal & external self-awareness simplifies assessing yourself and others. Note to self: ask more ‘what’ questions, not ‘why’.
The 8 best questions to ask during a one-on-one meeting
I always welcome more one-to-one ideas and this post has some good suggestions.
Engineering growth: tracks
Career growth tracks take time to get right, however, the effort is paid back in the guidance they can offer people. As each company is different tracks will vary too, but you can draw ideas from others and there is plenty to get from this one!
How to Write a Blog Post
I do struggle to write blogs, as writing doesn’t come naturally I can get easily distracted. Here is good advice from an experienced blogger that I’m sure many can benefit from. I’m not sure I would go through all of the steps before posting a blog but getting a blog started by writing as much as you can as soon as you can is critical…for me at least! In the past, I start writing but get stuck on wording the in the first paragraph that I lose my main focus for the blog, now I list bullets of what’s in my head to flesh out later.
How I review code
Reviewing code is a skill that everyone in an engineering team should have, sometimes it doesn’t come easily. This post includes reviewing code from different points of view and is a good read even if you’ve been reviewing code for many years. Reading this is prompting me to put together a code review guideline document to encourage open, consistent, and humble feedback. I can’t agree more with this – “I look for code that is well-documented (both inline and externally), and code that is clear rather than clever. I’d rather read ten lines of verbose-but-understandable code than someone’s ninja-tastic one-liner that involves four nested ternaries.”
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