Additional Resources

Thanks to the suggestion of Pat Kua (https://www.thekua.com/atwork/) we are now collecting all the resources we used to write our book in medium posts for easier access (especially for those, who bought the print version) . We will start with all the links in ‘Additional Resources”, the next post will contain all the links we mentioned in the actual text.

Chapter 1: Scaling Hiring: Growing the Team

• A Primer for Startups and Job Seekers to BOTH Win the Talent War by Tammy Han http://firstround.com/review/a-primer-for-startups-and-job-seekers-to-both-win-the-talent-war Tammy gives advice to companies and Candidates on how to make the right choices
• “Thoughts on Diversity Part 2. Why Diversity is Difficult” by Leslie Miley https://medium.com/tech-diversity-files/thought-on-diversity-part-2-why-diversity-is-difficult-3dfd552fa1f7#.qf7o1j1a6
• Diversity (business) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity_(business) gives a good overview of the business advantages of Diversity
• Beginning with Ourselves — Using Data Science to Improve Diversity at Airbnb by Riley Newman and Elena Grewal https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/beginning-with-ourselves-48c5ed46a703#.uu6v7xc26 describes how Airbnb’s Data Science team improved diversity using some of the techniques they are using for customers

Chapter 2: Scaling Hiring: Interviews and Hiring Decisions

• Checking References: Top 10 Questions To Ask by Hcareers.com http://www.hcareers.com/us/resourcecenter/tabid/306/articleid/298/default.aspx gives detailed advice how to do reference checking
• Facebook published the videos of its internal anti bias training: https://managingbias.fb.com/
• “Biased by design” https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602154/biased-by-design/?utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=post from Y-Vonne Hutchinson shows how exclusion hurts tech companies.

Chapter 3: Scaling Hiring: How to Close, Onboard, and Beyond

• How to make a great offer: https://medium.com/@henrysward/a-better-offer-letter-4e9bf61a7365#.nmpcl89b4 by Henry Ward
• Good advice from Jo Avent — get feedback about your hiring process from candidates who declined: https://joavent.wordpress.com/2016/08/28/the-ones-that-got-away-the-value-of-finding-out-why-candidates-said-no-to-your-offer/
• A great article about the bias in favor of preserving the status quo: https://hbr.org/2016/04/if-theres-only-one-woman-in-your-candidate-pool-theres-statistically-no-chance-shell-be-hired by Stefanie K. Johnson, David R. Hekman and Elsa T. Chan

Chapter 4: People Management — Getting started

• “High Output Management”, Andy Grove. Perhaps the most efficient education in technical management in existence. For example, a complex issue, rendered simple: “A manager’s output = the output of his organization + the output of the neighboring organizations under his influence.”
• “Peopleware”, Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister. Perhaps more humane than Grove, but just as insightful. “The business we’re in is more sociological than technological, more dependent on workers’ abilities to communicate with each other than their abilities to communicate with machines.”
• “Mythical Man-Month”, Frederick Brooks. His influence can’t be understated. Get the edition with the “No Silver Bullet” essay added on.
• “Managing Humans”, Michael Lopp. A collection of bite-sized essays, as thought-provoking as they are delicious.
• “Leading Snowflakes”, Oren Ellenbogen. Focused specifically on helping engineers make the transition to engineering management.
• “Drive”, by Daniel H. Pink. His motivational framework of Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose was a major influence on the content of this book.
• “First, Break All The Rules”, Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman. What separates great managers from the rest? Read this book to find out.

Chapter 6: Scaling the Organisation

• Building Self-Sufficient Teams: Autonomy Vs Automatic by Tony Wilson http://hr.toolbox.com/blogs/performance/building-selfsufficient-teams-autonomy-vs-automatic-48841 talks about the important difference between autonomy and following repeatable tasks on auto-pilot
• Blamestorming & Other Telling Signs Your Organization is “Siloed” by Marla Gottschalk https://marlagottschalk.wordpress.com/2014/03/10/blamestorming-and-other-telling-signs-your-organization-is-still-siloed/ gives a few more warning signs when you organization is siloed.
• If you want to read more about how to perform retrospectives, see Alex’s Soundcloud blog post on the subject.
• To read more about lean principles in software, the Mary and Tom Poppendieck’s website is a great start: http://www.poppendieck.com.

Chapter 7: Scaling the Organisation: Delivery Teams:

• Using VSM (Value Stream Mapping) as data gathering for retrospectives by Luis Gonçalves.http://lmsgoncalves.com/2013/02/20/value-stream-mapping-as-data-gathering-for-restrospectives/ This blog post shows a great way how to utilize VSM in retrospectives and optimize the work of the team.
• The benefit of value stream mapping in software engineering by Charan Atreya http://www.kanbanway.com/the-value-of-value-stream-mapping-in-software-engineering This blog post describes how to map out your Value Stream using a conversation between two people as an example.

Chapter 10: Scaling Communication: The Complexity of Scale and Distance

• “Why Having an ‘Open-Door’ Policy Is Imperative for a Scaling Company,” by Jake Gibson, explains how communication develops while scaling and makes the great point that “uneven information distribution kills morale.”
• “Seven Key Studies on the Business Impact of Employee Engagement,” by Tamara Snyder, provides some great data how good communication and change management drives high performance and employee engagement.
• “The 5 Most Common Mistakes in Internal Communications,” by Glen Chambers, gives a great summary of an internal communication strategy.
• “Email transparency” by Greg Brockman shows how Stripe made all emails available to everybody
• http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-meeting-techniques-2015-8 from Drake Baer shows the three most important meeting techniques from Steve Jobs.
• https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140911080202-65643596-internal-communication-guidelines-norms Arno du Toit gives good advice about internal communication guidelines
• http://www.43folders.com/izero by Merlin Mann shows how to reach inbox zero.
• http://thenextweb.com/opinion/2015/07/26/bluetoot/#gref by Mic Wright is a great article about the actual intention of inbox zero, and suggests that you avoid ‘living in your inbox’ where your inbox is not only email, but also other communication channels.

Chapter 11: Scaling Communication — Communicating at Scale

• “Why Having an ‘Open-Door’ Policy Is Imperative for a Scaling Company,” by Jake Gibson, explains how communication develops while scaling and makes the great point that “uneven information distribution kills morale.”
• “The 5 Most Common Mistakes in Internal Communications,” by Glen Chambers, gives a great summary of an internal communication strategy.
• “Ask the CTO: Achieving friction-free status updates,“ by Camille Fournier, explains well how to get status updates without “tapping engineers on the shoulder.”
• http://startuphappiness.com/2010/01/28/all-hands-meetings by Marcy Swenson gives great advice about how an all-hands meeting changes when a company scales when the company has more than 10–15 employees.
• http://blog.sli.do/8-tips-for-organizing-a-killer-all-hands-meeting from Juraj Holub shows 8 tips on how to organize a great all hands meeting.
• http://www.zapposinsights.com/blog/item/all-hands-meeting-what-it-is-and-why-you-may-want-one by Erica Spelman explains why Zappos has all-hands meetings.
• https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140911080202-65643596-internal-communication-guidelines-norms Arno du Toit gives good advice about internal communication guidelines