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Hierarchy of spaces, default to meeting, rolling out career frameworks πŸ’‘

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πŸ’‘ Monday Ideas

Hierarchy of spaces, default to meeting, rolling out career frameworks πŸ’‘

Monday Ideas β€” Edition #61

Luca Rossi
Jul 24, 2023
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Hierarchy of spaces, default to meeting, rolling out career frameworks πŸ’‘

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Hey, Luca here! Welcome to the Monday Ideas πŸ’‘

Every Monday I will send you an email like this withΒ 3 short ideasΒ about making great software, working with humans, and personal growth.

You will also receive a long-form, original article on Thursday, like the last one:

How to Invest in Engineers' Growth πŸŽ“

How to Invest in Engineers' Growth πŸŽ“

Luca Rossi
Β·
Jul 20
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To receive all the full articles and support Refactoring, consider subscribing if you haven’t already!

Get full access to Refactoring ✨

p.s. you can learn more about theΒ benefits of the paid plan here.



β—―ΛšGitStart β€’ Code as a Service

I have been in touch with Hamza and the guys at GitStart for some time now, and I am excited to promote it in the newsletter!

GitStart turns backlog into code. You can see it in action on the repos of Cal.com, Supabase, and SourceGraph. Here’s how it works:

  1. Set up your repo and assign tickets

  2. Fully dedicated devs hack together

  3. Review and merge PRs

Here is why GitStart works:

  • πŸ”’Β Secure Git Sharing - companies of all sizes, including banks, use GitStart tooling to securely share subsets of their code.

  • πŸ’Έ Pay for code, not the time we spend coding - pricing is per PR. Only pay for those you merge.

  • 🌱 Grow the next generation - your implementation details are someone’s growth opportunity. GitStart is a paid career accelerator with alumni in Amazon, Facebook, and Google.

Learn more about GitStart ✨


1) 🧘 A Hierarchy of Spaces

Last month I spoke with my friend Jean about productivity vs carving out space for yourself.

She told me about a time, years ago, when she felt extremely exhausted and didn’t want to engage in creative things anymore. She always thought of herself as a creative person, so she wondered:Β maybe I am not creative anymore?

Over time she realized that her need for creativity and self-expression would still emerge, but there were otherΒ needsΒ andΒ spacesΒ that had to be fulfilled before she could go to the next level.

So she came up with aΒ hierarchy of spaces, similar to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs:

  1. 🟣 Space to not be exhaustedΒ β€” this is about your basic needs, like good sleep and eating well. Even basic needs can be challenging with young kids and demanding work, but if you don’t take care of those, you can’t move up to the next level.

  2. πŸ”΄ Space to do whateverΒ β€” this is about giving yourself the permission to spend someΒ unproductiveΒ time. Like watching Netflix, or doing absolutely nothing.

  3. 🟑 Space to enjoyΒ β€” only once you have some spaciousness to do whatever, you can engage in activities you like and enjoy doing. These might be games, hobbies, and anything that makes you happy.

  4. 🟒 Space to be creativeΒ β€” this is about activities that let you express yourself in a way that is uniquelyΒ you. Jean believes that true creativity can only emerge once you have satisfied your other spaces.

You can find the full chat with Jean here πŸ‘‡

Refactoring
Hustling, remote culture, and personal space 🧘
Watch now (47 min) | Last week I had a fantastic chat with Jean Hsu, who is VP of Engineering at Range, and writer of the popular newsletter Tech and Tea. Jean has been an obvious inspiration for me, for a long time. Her focus on improving how people work in tech shows in everything she does…
Read more
3 months ago Β· 22 likes Β· 2 comments Β· Luca Rossi

2) πŸͺœ How to roll out a career framework

Rolling out a new career framework is tricky because people are very personally and directly affected by it.

In my experience, a good rollout starts with a good creation process. This is true for pretty much anything that is company-wide: OKRs, career frameworks, remote policies, etc.

The challenge of such processes is that they should strike the right balance between being participated by the team (bottom-up) and following the vision of the leadership (top-down).

  • ⬇️ Top-down directionΒ delivers consistency and fast decision-making.

  • ⬆️ Bottom-up contributionΒ makes things grounded with your team’s reality, creates consensus, and leads to better decisions in the end.

So, I am a fan of theΒ W FrameworkΒ for this, created by Lenny Rachitsky and Nels Gilbreth. It is made up of four steps:

  1. Context: Leadership shares a high-level strategy with Teams

  2. Plans: Teams respond with proposed plans

  3. Integration: Leadership integrates into a single plan, and shares with Teams

  4. Buy-in: Teams make final tweaks, confirm buy-in, and get rolling

This is a generic strategy that you can apply to pretty much anything that requires wide participation.

What does it look like for a career framework? Here is a possible implementation:

  1. Context:Β Leadership provides high level direction: fundamental levels and tracks based on current team composition and future strategy.

  2. Plans:Β Teams (e.g. your senior leaders) come back with the qualities and responsibilities they would like to see for the various levels.

  3. Integration:Β Leadership challenges, integrates these elements and shares back with teams.

  4. Buy-in:Β Final tweaks, Q&A + people get assigned to the levels.

More ideas on creating and executing career frameworks πŸ‘‡

Refactoring
Career Frameworks β€” Part 2 πŸͺœ
Hey! Today we are back with the second half of this two-part series about career frameworks. First of all, I want to thank you all because the response to the first post has been amazing! So many of you reached out to share their experience, ask more questions, or just say thanks…
Read more
a year ago Β· 6 likes Β· Luca Rossi

3) πŸ“‘ Default to meeting vs default to docs

Meetings, though expensive, are very easy to summon. You don't need any particular process: you create an event on the calendar and invite the relevant people.

That's why they become the easy default.

Any async/written counterpart, instead, needs work to be set up. If you want to make async the new default, you should design it to be as effortless and reliable as meetings.

How do you understand if what you have in place today is good enough? Ask yourself a couple of questions:

  • πŸ“‘ Documentation β€” if you want to create a doc about some specs/information, how easy is it to do? Do you know where to put it? How confident you are that it will be found by other people and used in the future?

  • 🀝 Decisions β€” if you need to converge with others on something, do you have a reliable place to do it in written form? Do you trust this place not to get lost and to be referenced in the future?

Good answers to these questions are the result of hard, deliberate work that builds up over time. So even if you feel you are not there yet, don't get discouraged and keep working on it!

You can find more ideas to reduce meetings in this previous article πŸ‘‡

Refactoring
How to Reduce Meetings πŸͺš
I spend 10-20% of my time doing some consulting to teams who want to work better together. I do this to stay grounded to reality, and not to turn eventually into one of those ivory tower writers who talk about things they don’t really know anymore. In these chats, the absolute #1 complaint I hear is: …
Read more
8 months ago Β· 22 likes Β· Luca Rossi

🐺 QA Wolf

In case you missed it, last week we promoted QA Wolf and their unique, cost-effective approach to get you to 80% automated end-to-end test coverageΒ in just 4 months. Plus, they include unlimited parallel test runs, 24-hour maintenance, and a Zero Flake Guarantee.

Schedule a demo and see for yourself! πŸ‘‡

Learn more about QA Wolf ✨

(p.s. and ask about their 90-day pilot!)


And that’s it for today! If you are finding this newsletter valuable, consider doing any of these:

1) βœ‰οΈ Subscribe to the newsletterΒ β€” if you aren’t already, consider becoming a paid subscriber. You can learn more about theΒ benefits of the paid plan here.

Get full access to Refactoring ✨

2) ❀️ Share itΒ β€” Refactoring lives thanks to word of mouth. Share the article with your with someone who would like it, and get a free membership through the new referral program.

Read with your friends 🍻

I wish you aΒ great week! β˜€οΈ

Luca

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