How often do you give feedback?
Learn about the negative impact of not giving feedback and how to avoid playing the role of a "victim"
I did not always have the habit of giving feedback.
Once I read about the right format of doing that (radical candor), I started giving feedback more often. For me, this made sure of one thing - I stopped accumulating frustrations. I did not vent feedback in an unhealthy way due to using the proper format for giving feedback.
Giving feedback, if done properly, is truly a win-win kind of thing. You get to let go of negative emotions, and the other side gets to learn & grow.
In today’s digest, you will also learn how not giving feedback makes everything half-baked and mediocre. Nobody wants to do half-baked, mediocre work.
So to avoid that dive right in! 📰
“Looks good to me” is a lazy default: Why managers should give feedback on work output
Wes Kao's Newsletter
We often hear about the importance of giving feedback. As a manager, this is even more prevalent.
reverses things a bit and tells you what goes wrong if you do not use those subtle opportunities to give feedback. Quality standards in your team lower, work output becomes mediocre, and you end up with more work on your plate and a less empowered team. So next time you are tempted to easily spit out “looks good” you will think twice because of this article.
Audience: Engineering Managers
Value: Learn about the negative impact of not giving feedback
ToT Rating: ⭐⭐🌟
The victim trap of engineering managers
I was falling into the trap of perceiving myself as the victim and others as villains in the past. This led to me being passive-aggressive and very frustrated with my work. You do not want to be in that spot. To take charge and avoid painting yourself as the victim read this article.
Audience: All Tech professionals
Value: Learn how not to act as a victim
ToT Rating: ⭐⭐
Setting yourself up for success in 2025
Of all the recent “New Year resolution templates/helpers,” I find this one to be the most useful. Sit down for one hour and use
‘s advice to figure out what gives you energy and what drains it.Audience: All Tech professionals
Value: Figure out what gives you energy
ToT Rating: ⭐⭐
Navigating Your Job Search: What You Should and Shouldn’t Do
As you might know, the tech market is quite tough for employees right now. It is getting very hard to even land interviews. If you are on the lookout for a job, you need all the help you can get. This article gives great advice for increasing the chances of getting those interviews lined up.
Audience: All Tech professionals
Value: Learn how to get more interviews
ToT Rating: ⭐
How Airbnb Built a Key-Value Store for Petabytes of Data
Read all about how AirBnb engineers built their data store… three times.
Audience: Software Engineers
Value: Learn about in-house built data stores
ToT Rating: ⭐
How to achieve a golden CI/CD pipeline
Every team in your organization needs a delivery pipeline. You don’t want all those teams to implement their pipelines. To avoid that read this article.
Audience: Software Engineers/Engineering Managers
Value: Learn how to standardize CI/CD pipelines
ToT Rating: ⭐
Confessions of a Big Tech recruiter
This is an interview with Blake Stockman, a former recruiter of Google, Meta, Uber, and Flexport. He shares some great insights into the recruitment process and some golden advice - like to never share your salary expectations upfront.
Audience: Software Engineers/Engineering Managers
Value: Learn about big tech recruitmentt
ToT Rating: ⭐
Being Collaborative May Hurt Your Chances For Promotion
This one delivers some cold truth about how over-indexing on the side of being a good team player can hurt your career.
shares advice on the right balance of highly impactful work and NPTs (an abbreviation I just learned now - non-promotable tasks).Audience: Engineering Leaders
Value: Learn how to balance being a team player with strong career growth
ToT Rating: ⭐
Thanks for the shout-out Jovan!!