The Best of Refactoring in 2023 🎄

A compendium of the best things we did together this year!

Hey! We are close to the end of the year so, as always, I am reviewing what we have done this year, and picking our most popular articles!

So, let’s start with a few highlights:

📈 60,000 Subscribers

This has been an incredible year for Refactoring. We have recently crossed 60,000 subscribers, which means the overall progression now looks like this:

1. 2020 → 900 subscribers

2. 2021 → 10,000 subscribers

3. 2022 → 25,000 subscribers

4. 2023 → 60,000 subscribers

This is just incredible and I can’t thank you enough for following on this journey 🙏

🤗 600 people in the community

This is also the year where the community grew the most! We have gone from ~200 to 600 members, and we are doing more things together than ever:

• 🎟️ Events — we organize live interviews with awesome guests where members can join live and ask questions.

• 📗 Book Club — every two months we pick a book, read it, and review it together in a live call. The full write up is then published in the newsletter.

• 🥁 Show & Tell — every month we celebrate the achievements and small wins of our members.

• ➡️ Coming up — I anticipate the articles I will write so that people can contribute with ideas and insights. The best ones are included in the newsletter and the author is quoted.

A recent community book review

Now, while 600 people is a fantastic number, it is still 600 out of 60,000 — that is, it’s the 1%.

As much as I promote it and tell everyone that it’s awesome, community is demanding. Community is for people who:

1. Have the courage to ask for help when they have a challenge, and, in turn

2. Are willing to help others without asking for anything in return.

It takes a bit of time and dedication, but I can assure you that it is worth it. The friendships, connections, and wisdom created together in the community are now the true heart of Refactoring ❤️

I would love to have you onboard!

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📚 Book Reviews

Speaking of community, the book review editions that we started this year have been consistently among the most popular on the newsletter. Here are the books we have reviewed so far:

• 📕 Team Topologies

• 📗 Good Strategy / Bad Strategy

• 📙 Atomic Habits

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🎙️ Interviews

Also, here are write ups from some of the most popular community events:

• 🪴 How to Design a Great Tech Career — with Thiago Ghisi

• 🧘 Hustle, Remote Culture, and Personal Space — with Jean Hsu

• 🗺️ How to Plan Software Under Uncertainty — with James Cowling

• 🏆 How to Write an Accomplishment Journal — with Matt Van Itallie

• 🔨 How to Build a Company around Crafters — with Kaz Nejatian

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📖 Guides

This year I also started writing monthly guides, which have instantly become a huge success!

Each guide puts together multiple articles I have written in the past, in a coherent package that you can use and apply at work. They are by far the most researched and in-depth pieces I have ever written, and are usually more than twice as long as a regular Refactoring piece.

Guides fit the general Refactoring structure, that organizes articles and ideas into tracks and topics. Refactoring covers three main tracks: Software Engineering, Engineering Management, and Personal Growth 👇

Each track is further organized into topics, and for each topic you have several articles. Finally, ideas from articles are also published individually in the Monday emails.

You can navigate the full tree inside the Refactoring Library:

The Software Engineering track in the Refactoring Library, further organized into specific topics.

So, each guide acts as a primer for one topic. Here are the ones I have written so far:

• 📊 How to Use Engineering Metrics

• 📑 How to Write Documentation

• 🏯 How to Structure Engineering Teams

• 🔍 How to Choose Technology

• 🧰 How to Create a Great Remote Team

• ✨ How to Create a Great Engineering Culture

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🧵 Essays

Finally, here are the individual essays that were the most popular:

• 🌱 Personal Knowledge Management

• 🧺 How to Organize Personal Work

• 🕹️ How to Build Side Projects

• 🗂 The Four Types of Work

• 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 How to Run Great 1:1s

• 💬 How to Name Things

• 🤖 How to Use AI in an Engineering Team

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📌 Bottom line

This year was incredible and I have big plans for 2024 that I can’t wait to tell you about.

• 🏅 If you are a paid subscriber — thank you for your support from the bottom of my heart. I work super hard to make this the best money you could ever spend on your personal and professional growth.

• ✉️ If you are a free subscriber — thank you for your support, too! I would love to have you onboard on a full plan and let you see everything that Refactoring has to offer, from the community, to the library, to all the full articles.

I wish everyone merry festivities and to spend some good time with your loved ones! 🎄

See you next week!
Luca