Build Your Culture Like a Product — Lessons from Asana’s Head of People

• 👥 Build a people strategy by talking to employees across all levels, not just leadership
• 📊 Use engagement surveys to gather quantitative data on organizational health
• 🗺️ Create a prioritized roadmap for addressing key people/culture issues
• 📣 Over-communicate plans and changes until you feel like you're repeating yourself
• 🚀 Invest heavily in onboarding new hires, even if it temporarily slows productivity
• 🔺 Construct a “cultural pyramid” with mission, values, and impact decisions
• 🤝 Align company culture with product attributes and goals
• 🧠 Practice “conscious leadership” in the executive team by checking ego and embracing vulnerability
• 🌟 Focus on being a company-wide leader, not just a functional leader
• 🏗️ Build deep trust through accountability, transparency and showing vulnerability

10 things software developers should learn about learning

• 🧠 Human memory is intricate, involving spreading activation and unexpected connections.
• 📝 Two main memory systems: long-term memory and working memory; chunking aids in retention.
• 🕵️‍♂️ Experts recognize patterns quickly; beginners rely on reasoning and familiarity with code.
• 📔 Learning new concepts: abstract-to-concrete-to-abstract transitions are effective.
• 💡 Memorization remains important for faster problem-solving and pattern recognition.
• 🔄 Spacing and repetition are beneficial learning strategies.
• 💻 Problem-solving skills are domain-specific and require practice within that domain.
• 👓 Experts may find it challenging to effectively train beginners due to blind spots.
• 🔮 Prediction of programming ability based on factors like aptitude and practice is complex.
• 🌱 Having a growth mindset is crucial for effective learning and overcoming failures.

How to make architecture decisions

• 🏗️ Architecture decisions can be challenging, especially when they impact multiple teams or have wide-ranging consequences.
• 🤔 Not making an explicit decision can lead to informal decisions accumulating over time.
• 🚧 Constraints from decisions can be positive, creating "guard rails" for engineering teams.
• ⏰ The "last responsible moment" is a guiding principle for decision-making, but it can be hard to recognize.
• 👥 Collaborative and inclusive approaches to decision-making are crucial for buy-in and relevance.
• 📝 Lightweight decision records can help create a "shared memory" for architecture decisions.

How we decide what to build

• 🧭 Agree on product principles to guide decision-making and make it easier to say no to ideas
• 🗺️ Map out everything users want to avoid tunnel vision and explore all options
• ⚖️ Prioritize potential features by effort vs impact using 2x2 grids
• 👤 Make ownership clear to speed up decision-making and implementation
• 🧪 Test ideas with minimal effort through MVPs and prototypes before investing further

Why Work Rituals Bring Teams Together and Create More Meaning

• 🏢 Work rituals improve team performance and create more meaning for employees
• 🔄 Rituals differ from habits by having more personal significance and meaning attached
• 😌 People use rituals to cope with emotions like anxiety, grief, and to boost enjoyment
• 👥 Simple collective rituals can make tasks feel more meaningful to team members
• 🗣️ Bottom-up rituals created by employees tend to be more effective than top-down imposed ones
• 🔑 Even if work rituals feel awkward, research shows they can still improve team bonding

Mental Health in Software Engineering

• 🧠 Mental health issues in software engineering are common but not discussed enough
• 🚀 Leadership roles in tech startups can lead to increased anxiety and stress
• 🔄 Work-life balance is challenging but crucial for long-term success and well-being
• 🚫 Learning to say "no" and setting boundaries is important for mental health
• 🏃‍♂️ Physical activity like walking can help clear the mind and reduce stress
• 🤝 Empathy and understanding are essential for better team interactions
• 🆘 Seeking professional help for mental health issues is a sign of strength, not weakness
• 🗣️ Learning to communicate effectively and push back on unreasonable demands is crucial for developers
• 🏃‍♂️ Many businesses and managers operate in a chaotic manner, often setting arbitrary deadlines
• 💰 Raising prices can lead to better clients and less stress for developers
• 🧘‍♀️ Taking breaks, finding hobbies outside of coding, and maintaining work-life balance are important
• 🚶‍♂️ Simple practices like daily walks can help manage stress and anxiety
• 🕰️ Setting boundaries and treating work as just a job, not one's entire identity, is beneficial

That’s all for this week’s edition

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See y’all next week 👋