Plato

Layoffs, reorgs, restructurings: the ZIRP era is over and it creates sudden changes in the industry. And yet, as engineers (and leaders), it's our job to create a safe environment for our teams and make sure they maintain high morale and productivity, while keeping awareness about the current situation at the same time. It's a balancing act for many, but Javier Lopez, with his 20 years of experience in the industry, has some clues to share. Read his article about engineering resilience to learn about: 🔹 What it means to truly listen to your team, and which recurring topics direct reports mention in their 1:1s 🔹 Which steps you can take to communicate more transparently 🔹 What it truly means to trust your team Check the comment section to access the article 👇

As an engineering leader, summer can be a unique opportunity to focus on different aspects of our work. Whether it's refactoring/handling tech debt, getting new features ready for September, engaging in planning and research for future projects, or just... resting, this season offers a chance to catch up and prepare for the busy times ahead. We’re curious, how do you spend your summer, engineering-wise? Vote and share your thoughts!

Great reads of the week 📑 1️⃣ Working backwards: creating effective PR/FAQ Documents by Miroslaw Stanek — Translating technical work for product teams is sometimes a hard task. Inspired by Amazon's "Working backwards" approach, Mirek created guidelines + a template for you to create great documentation (and speak the same language as business/product people) 👉 https://lnkd.in/gba9mDQR 2️⃣ How to help underperformers by 🌀 Luca Rossi — Some great insights on how to manage underperformers...and a good reminder that 80% of the issue is usually not with the individual 👉 https://lnkd.in/ggSTQNJq 3️⃣ Testing too late: a case study by Brie Ransom — Brie is THE quality engineering boss, and you can trust her when she talks about testing. And what she says is that separating programming and QA sprints leads to poor collaboration and many inefficiencies. Read her article to discover how she tackled the issue(s) 👉 https://lnkd.in/ggTn97Xq 4️⃣ Degradation vs disruption by Alex Ewerlöf — Degradation, disruption, or outage? There's more nuance between these than we think. Check out Alex's article to learn more about the concepts, and the role of a reliability engineer to mitigate those 👉 https://lnkd.in/g2DA7hNY 💌 Follow us on Substack: https://lnkd.in/eSy8mGyk

We’ve known Javier Lopez, VP of Engineering at Carta for many years now, and he’s been a mentor, both to Plato mentees and to our team. Kindness, empathy, and team spirit are what defines him best, and his 20 years of experience at companies like GuideSpark, Patreon, and Carta make him a leader we all want to follow. The good news is that he’s shared with us his insights to create efficient and resilient engineering teams in troubled times! Read his guide here 👉 https://lnkd.in/gpYS679d

Summer is a good opportunity to rest, of course, but also to reflect on the first few months of the year. Questions like these might pop up: How did I perform? Did I achieve my goals? What's next for me? Do I do whatever it takes to be where I want to be? etc. Wondering about these is normal. Finding the answers is a bit harder. That's why we created a mentorship platform in the past, and why we're building EngOS: to learn from the compound experience of world-class leaders, and copy, and adapt their strategies and tactics. And today, here’s a huge opportunity to learn from one of those leaders: Tamar Bercovici, VP of Engineering at Box. Plato co-founder Jean-Baptiste Coger sat down with Tamar to understand how she went from backend software eng to VP at Box so that you can find inspiration in her path and apply some of her recipes to your own career. Let's go! 👉 https://lnkd.in/gfHznse9

If you want to ramp up your engineering leadership game, here are the good reads of the week 📚 1️⃣ “How GitHub rebuilt their push processing system” by Arpan KG — a very interesting real-life, at-scale, case study about decoupled architecture 👉 https://lnkd.in/gGbpV7w4 2️⃣ “The Trough of Despair” by Kent Beck — We love Kent's wisdom. And this nugget is spot-on again. Things always get worse before they get better 👉 https://lnkd.in/gTMHTr4D 3️⃣ “A Docker Deep-Dive Cheatsheet” by Caleb Mellas — A very complete (paid) article that you can unlock for free and bookmark to use whenever you’re working with Docker 👉 https://lnkd.in/gZmXtP8b 4️⃣ “My Experience at #PlatoElevate2024” by Hemant Pandey — Always a pleasure to read that people enjoyed attending Elevate and that they came back home with insights 👉 https://lnkd.in/gfjqpxMQ 5️⃣ “Why your Engineering Team needs an Operating system” by... Plato cofounder Quang HOANG —We’re biased, but if you’d like to understand what an EngOS (engineering operating system) is, this is a go-to 👉https://lnkd.in/gKww2273 6️⃣ “Deadlines are not so bad, I’ll tell you why” by Gregor Ojstersek — A good reminder on why setting constraints can help you achieve better results 👉 https://lnkd.in/gTEZvUgk 7️⃣ “Communicate like a Senior: Phrases used by the best leaders” by Jordan Cutler — Some “techniques” leaders use to create rapport and get buy-in. I’m using quotes there because that’s natural for many leaders (and that can become natural after some training!) 👉 https://lnkd.in/g2ZjbgqZ Let us know which one you prefer 😉

Here’s a prime example of AI gone wrong: 1️⃣ At first, you're super excited about what the technology will allow you to do, so you start exploring and thinking about ideas. 2️⃣ You create a proof of concept, but the truth is that it's not good enough or feels "gadgety". 3️⃣ Then you have a few options: either improve it, and it can be very time-consuming; launch it as is and not bring enough value for users... or feel discouraged and scrap it. Both cases are suboptimal. But some people managed to build awesome AI/ML platforms from the ground up, tackling problems one after another. One of them is Sudhir Tonse, Director of Engineering at DoorDash. And Sudhir shared his experience in an in-depth guide, where you’ll learn: 🎮 What it means to know your game, when talking about AI/ML. 📈 How to improve your feature/platform incrementally 🧠 His biggest learnings regarding AI (and its future) ☁️ How to dream big (and start small) ...and much more! Click the link below to check his guide 👇 https://lnkd.in/gUkYU7sx

One of the highlights of #PlatoElevate2024 was our partnership with The New Club — a members-only network for Women in Engineering ✨ It’s refreshing to see and support such initiatives! The workshop they organized was incredibly insightful: “Building High-Functioning Organizations within Growth Companies: The Importance of Diversity” — with The New Club’s founder Dominique Huang and Mikaela Ann Smith, CEO of Smith & Whitten and expert on hiring and retaining diverse teams. A big thank you to Dominique and Laura Du (connecting women in engineering) for trusting us and bringing their community to Elevate!

Have you heard of Bing Gordon, ex-chief creative officer at EA and now a partner at Kleiner Perkins? There’s one thing he said that stuck with us: "𝘌𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘢 𝘴𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘨𝘰𝘭𝘥𝘦𝘯 𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘭𝘴" And those rituals have a few characteristics: 1. They are named 2. Every employee knows them by the first Friday 3. They are templated. In other words, rituals are repeated, structured activities or practices within an organization, that reinforce its culture, values, and goals. The best engineering teams have developed those rituals to guide how their teams operate day after day. Think about: OKRs at Google, V2MOM at Salesforce, 6-pagers at Amazon, or if we go further past, Six Sigma at Motorola. And after years of working closely with engineering leaders, we’ve started to collect those, to form what we call 𝐄𝐧𝐠𝐎𝐒. Learn more about EngOS, and how it can impact (positively!) your engineering organization 👉 https://lnkd.in/gKww2273

We were busy preparing Elevate last month and forgot that every year since 1949, May is Mental Health Awareness Month. There’s one topic that’s oftentimes overlooked in tech organizations: burnout. The term itself is taboo in the professional world, but Irina Stanescu (aka The Caring Techie) experienced it in the past and made it her mission to help everyone fight and prevent it. Last year at Elevate, she shared her framework and strategies to build burnout-proof organizations. Check out the recording to learn: ◾ How to identify early signs of burnout ◾ What is the true cost of burnout for companies ◾ Her 5-step framework to build burnout-proof organizations Watch the recording 👉 https://lnkd.in/gMUTStAa Check Irina’s newsletter 👉 https://lnkd.in/gYmAEkai