How do you measure success?
Learn how to measure success properly and navigate the complex world of office politics.
I was part of different organizations that measure success in different ways. Some were very metrics/data-driven, while others were very project/feature-driven.
Data-driven organizations define “What success looks like?” with metrics that are aligned with actual user impact (signup conversion, user engagement, user retention, etc.). 🙌 📈
Project/feature-driven organizations celebrate deliveries/releases with less focus on the actual impact that the thing that was shipped made on customers. 🙌 🚢
What is the success-measuring mindset in your org? Is success measured with metrics that tell about the actual user impact? Or do you just ship and consider that a success? Let me know in the comments 💬
I found a few new newsletters for this digest. I hope you will like them as much as I did! 🆕
The Shift in Metrics: How Product Engineers Measure Success (7 min)
In this great article,
talks about how to measure success properly. A lot of times, engineering teams fall into the trap of defining goals simply as “Complete project X” or “Get Y to GA” without properly thinking about the impact of what they are doing. This leads to an illusion of progress that can be quite costly for the company as ROI is simply not there 💸. In this article, you will find those common traps of measuring “outputs” and their proper “outcome” alternatives.
I am curious how do you measure success in your team? Let me know in the comments 💬
Audience: Software Engineers / Engineering Managers
Value: Learn how to measure success properly
ToT Rating: ⭐⭐🌟
6 Simple Strategies To Navigate Office Politics Like a Pro (8 min)
A lot of engineering managers frown upon office politics. One definition of “politics” is this:
“The activities associated with the governance of a country or area, especially the debate between parties having power.”
Tweaked for “office politics” it could be:
“The activities associated with the governance of a company, organization or a team, especially the debate between employees having power.”
You are part of that game, like it or not.
It reminds me of the phrase, “No design is also a design.” which underscores the idea that even if you are not consciously designing a system, the design will be produced - a bad one, most likely. Analogously, even if you choose not to participate in office politics, you will still be an actor in it - albeit a very passive one. So take charge and raise your environmental awareness with the advice from
in this one.Audience: Engineering Managers
Value: Learn about office politics
ToT Rating: ⭐⭐
5 Mistakes That Made My Documents Terrible (5 min)
If you are struggling with writing documents, this article is for you.
shares real-life mistakes in document writing that you can learn from. This will at least give you an idea of what you should not do when writing documents - which will probably get you at least half way to being a great tech writer. 📇Audience: Software Engineers
Value: Learn how not to write documents
ToT Rating: ⭐⭐
How Uber Unified Checkouts Across Billion-Dollar Business Lines (10 min)
A common scenario happens in many tech companies.
A cross-cutting concern emerges in several teams.💡
All teams implement their solutions for the same thing. 👨💻
Solutions diverge. UX inconsistencies emerge. Feature parity is lost. 🍝
The company decides to “platformize” the cross-cutting concern.💡
This is exactly what happened with Uber’s payment operations. This article is all about the decoupling, boundaries, and separation of concerns.
Audience: Software Engineers
Value: Learn about a successful decoupling story
ToT Rating: ⭐⭐
Being an Engineering Manager at Meta (7 min)
Have you ever wondered what it’s like to work at Meta? This article gives a sneak peek into Meta’s engineering culture. Things that separate Meta from most companies are engineers' autonomy, the bottom-up culture, and the focus on speed of shipping (something that was covered in the last issue). If you want to learn more about Meta’s engineering culture, this one is for you.
Audience: Software Engineers / Engineering Managers
Value: Learn about Meta’s engineering culture
ToT Rating: ⭐
What to Expect from Your Manager (9 min)
This is a great summary of how to set the right expectations with your manager. Don’t let your relationship with your manager be governed by inertia. Take control with this simple advice and make the most of it.
Audience: Software Engineers
Value: Learn how to set expectations with your manager
ToT Rating: ⭐
That’s if for this Friday! ✅
See you next week! 👋