Monthly Digest — November 📌
500 subscribers, article highlights and great communities
Hi everyone! Today I am introducing a new kind of post: The Monthly Digest 📌
You may expect an email like this every month, with the following topics:
📣 Updates about the newsletter and what comes next.
✨ Highlights — a recap of what I have written this month, for those of you who may have missed something.
📚 Great readings I came across and I think you should really know.
🎁 Bonus — anything useful, unconventional, or funny, that benefits our work but doesn't fit the other categories.
This month has been packed full of exciting things, so let's dive in!
📣 Updates
First things first, there are now 500+ of you who read Refactoring every week! 🎉
It's a fantastic milestone, especially thinking we are only two months in since I started. To be honest, I was already pretty excited last month, when we got to 200. So I am a bit at a loss for words now.
You have also been leaving fantastic feedback! Comments like these👇 are what keeps me going week after week, so thank you! 🙏
Your content is awesome! I'm really impressed with the quality and I like the way you do the graphics — Rocco
I love your posts! — Itai
Absolutely love your work. Trying to adapt your four types of work into our organization — Dinesh
✨ Highlights
I have written 4 articles this month. If you have missed any of them, you can check below:
📈 Why You Should Measure Your Development Process — like the title says, you should really do it. And this article has everything to get you started: FAQs, common pitfalls, real world experience, and resources.
🗺️ What Product Planning Framework Should You Use? — I have spent 15+ hours reviewing the best product frameworks I could find, from companies that have successfully built great products at scale, like Netflix, Airbnb, and Amazon. All this incredible knowledge, condensed in 1000 words!
💩 The Worst Possible Solution — a surprising technique, taken from a real experience, that brings great results when you have to brainstorm new ideas with others. Think at the worst ideas, and the best will come by themselves. For real.
☯️ The Entrepreneur and the Professor — the responsibility model at the heart of many successful agile organizations, such as Spotify. It's a simple principle that can be applied with profit to teams and companies of any size. I really love this concept, and couldn't help but write about it.
📚 Readings and Communities
At its core, it's simple: great writing comes from great reading. It's an input / output relationship.
Sure, my work experiences matter a lot, but I strive to keep an habit of reading good content every week, on which I can provide my take.
A good chunk of what I read comes from two kinds of sources: Newsletters and Communities.
📬 Newsletters are great because content comes to me in a predictable way, instead of requiring me to search for it all the time. I love this format and it's one of the reasons I started Refactoring as a newsletter — as opposed to, for example, a regular blog.
🤝 Communities are also great because they marry the content side with the chance of creating new relationships. The best communities make you grow while also expanding your network.
This month I want to list a few newsletters and communities I regularly draw inspiration from:
🎨 Lenny's Newsletter — by Lenny Rachitsky
Lenny has been one of the first PMs at Airbnb, and his newsletter provides great insights on Product and Growth topics.
If you are subscribed to the paid version, you also get access to the Slack community, which is full of great conversations on the same topics, by real industry leaders.
It's also one of the few Slack spaces I am part of that feels civil and well curated. Maybe it's because a few Slack VPs hang in there (yes, the bar is that high) and everyone wants to make a good impression 👀
✍️ Blogging for Devs — by Monica Lent
It's no secret that this is my first stint at writing regularly, and Monica's newsletter has been incredibly helpful with that.
Blogging for Devs is an email course about starting a blog, and doubles as a newsletter with actionable tips about writing and growing your audience.
It has also a paid version where you join a private community of developers / writers. It launched just one month ago, but it has already been great to me when it comes to getting feedback, making new friends and learning new stuff.
Very recommended to those always saying "I know I should be writing, but..." — I know many of you, and you know who you are!
🔨 Dev Interrupted — by LinearB
There are not many communities where you can genuinely connect with leaders in their respective fields. Dev Interrupted is one of these, and is focused on engineering management and leadership.
I hang in there and I am constantly amazed by the quality of conversations. If you are a manager, or an engineer interested in team dynamics, culture, and metrics, you should really join.
❤️ How can I make Refactoring better for you?
Closing in, after two months of writing, I would really love to learn more about your experience with Refactoring. I want to know how I can improve — and I would like to hear that from you!
For this reason, I have created a very simple survey where you can contribute and leave feedback. You find it below — it should take no more than 2 mins!
Thank you so much 🙏
Hey, I am Luca 👋 thank you for reading this through!
Every week I publish some advice about product and engineering management. If you liked this post and you haven’t already, you can subscribe below and receive weekly updates in your inbox!