I've read 350+ articles in 2023, mostly (300+) technical articles about Engineering &amp; Engineering Management and some about Career, Leadership, Financial Freedom, Psychology &amp; Writing.

Here are My 23 Favorites based on the number of insights I gained from them. They are ranked… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1739315781865722305 

1️⃣ Will Larson (@Lethain)

My 2023 Favorite: 
- Meetings for an Effective Eng Organization. (41 HLs)

→ Link: https://lethain.com/eng-org-meetings/

Others highly influential ideas I got from him this year:

- Writing an Engineering Strategy. (36)
- Writing Strategies and Visions. (23)
-… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1739317174160756832 

2️⃣ Charity Majors (@mipsytipsy)

💡My 2023 Favorite:
- Why Should You (Or Anyone) Become an Engineering Manager? (43 HLs)

→ Link: https://charity.wtf/2023/12/15/why-should-you-or-anyone-become-an-engineering-manager/

Others highly influential ideas I got from her this year:
- LLMs Demand Observability-Driven Development (29)
- Live Your… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1739320384472637672 

3️⃣ Dave Anderson (@scarletinked)

💡My 2023 Favorite:
- My Missed Career Opportunities, or Why I'm Not an SVP (18 HLs)

→ Link: https://www.scarletink.com/p/my-missed-career-opportunities

Others highly influential ideas I got from him this year:
- 12 Things I Learned in Big Tech (39)
- What Happens if You're Hit… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1739325619102495205 

4️⃣ Isabel Hazan (@isabelunraveled)

💡My 2023 Favorite:
- Why I Write. (23 HLs)

→ Link: https://mindmine.substack.com/p/why-i-write

Others highly influential pieces I read from her this year:
- Living in Alignment (19)
- Upper and Lower Companions (15)
- Processing Time(15)
- Finding Mental… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1739331412887560228 

5️⃣ Fabio Akita (@AkitaOnRails)

💡My 2023 Favorite:
- [Akitando] #119 - Rant: Aprendizado Na Beira Do Caos  (Learning on the Edge of Chaos) (41 HLs)

→ Link (original pt-br): https://www.akitaonrails.com/2022/05/30/akitando-119-rant-aprendizado-na-beira-do-caos-rated-r
→ Link (translated en): https://www-akitaonrails-com.translate.goog/2022/05/30/akitando-119-rant-aprendizado-na-beira-do-caos-rated-r?_x_tr_sl=pt&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=pt-BR&_x_tr_pto=wapp

Other highly influential ideas… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1739339985533194301 

6️⃣ Molly Graham (@molly_g )

💡My 2023 Favorite:
- 10 Things I Wish I Knew About Careers When I Started (36 HLs)

→ Link: https://mollyg.substack.com/p/early-career-advice

Others highly influential ideas I got from her this year:
- Learners vs Guides: Building Your Leadership Team (14)
- Manage the… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1739343490054537541 

7️⃣ Gergely Orson (@GergelyOrosz)

💡My 2023 Favorite:
- Real-World Engineering Challenges #8: Breaking Up a Monolith (34 HLs)

→ Link: https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/real-world-eng-8

Others highly influential writings I read from him this year:
- Inside OpenAI: How Does ChatGPT Ship So Quickly? (15)
-… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1739346143203524993 

8️⃣ Tanya Reilly (@whereistanya)

💡My 2023 Favorite:
- Having Impact in Engineering by Supporting Other People's Ideas (18 HLs)

→ Link: https://leaddev.com/technical-decision-making/having-impact-engineering-supporting-other-peoples-ideas 

9️⃣ Megan Greenwell (@megreenwell)

💡My 2023 Favorite:
- Interview with Megan Greenwell: “I prefer a bit of a commute to get me in the writing zone.” (18 HLs)

→ Link: https://famouswritingroutines.com/interviews/interview-with-megan-greenwell/ 

1️⃣0️⃣ Luca Rossi (@lucaronin)

💡My 2023 Favorite:
- Good Strategy / Bad Strategy 📗 (11 HLs)

→ Link: https://refactoring.fm/p/good-strategy-bad-strategy 

1️⃣1️⃣ Louie Bacaj (@LBacaj)

💡My 2023 Favorite:
- M&amp;Ms: America Is Antifragile

→ Link: https://newsletter.memesmotivations.com/p/m-and-ms-america-is-antifragile

Others highly influential ideas I got from him this year:
- The Original "PDF Hustler"
- M&amp;Ms: A Business Lesson from Beers and Strikes

Louie is a great friend and a… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1739405484161994816 

1️⃣2️⃣ Ravi Mehta (@ravi_mehta)

💡My 2023 Favorite:
- What’s Your Shape? A Product Manager’s Guide to Growing Yourself and Your Team (19 HLs)

→ Link: https://www.ravi-mehta.com/product-manager-roles/

Other ideas I got from him this year:
- Building Your Product Strategy Stack (13 HLs)

Ravi was highly… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1739408298531549681 

1️⃣3️⃣Gil Tene (@giltene)

💡My 2023 Favorite:
- #LatencyTipOfTheDay: Q: What's wrong with this picture? A: Everything!

→ Link: https://latencytipoftheday.blogspot.com/2014/06/latencytipoftheday-q-whats-wrong-with_21.html

Additionally, his talks on misery metrics were highly influential to me this year. 

1️⃣4️⃣Shreyas Doshi (@shreyas)

💡My 2023 Favorite: 
- Advanced Time Management Principles (that was actually a pretty long twitter thread)

→ Link: https://twitter.com/shreyas/status/1492345140492472321 

1️⃣5️⃣Juan Pablo Buriticá (@buritica)

💡My 2023 Favorite: 
- From Good to Great: A Capability Framework for Building Exceptional Product Engineering Teams

→ Link: https://buriti.ca/from-good-to-great-a-capability-framework-for-building-exceptional-product-engineering-teams-a8ca4e9e8f47 

1️⃣6️⃣Allan Leinwand (@leinwand)

💡My 2023 Favorite: 
- Six Tips for Staying Technical as a CTO

→ Link: https://shopify.engineering/six-tips-staying-technical-cto 

1️⃣7️⃣ Justin Rushing

💡My 2023 Favorite: 
- Client Tracing: Understanding Mobile and Desktop Application Performance at Scale (31 HLs)

→ Link: https://slack.engineering/client-tracing-understanding-mobile-and-desktop-application-performance-at-scale/ 

1️⃣8️⃣ Jorge Mazal (@jorgemazal)

💡My 2023 Favorite: 
- How Duolingo Reignited User Growth (12 HLs)

→ Link: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-duolingo-reignited-user-growth 

1️⃣9️⃣ Emily Nakashima (@eanakashima )

💡My 2023 Favorite: 
- On Becoming a VP of Engineering, Part 1: The Path to VP &amp; Part 2: Doing the Job (46 HLs)

→ Link (pt1): https://www.honeycomb.io/blog/becoming-vp-of-engineering-pt1

→ Link (pt2): https://www.honeycomb.io/blog/becoming-vp-of-engineering-pt2 

2️⃣0️⃣ Felipe Hummel (@felipehummel)

💡My 2023 Favorite: 
- The Value of Canonicity (19 HLs)

→ Link: https://building.nubank.com.br/the-value-of-canonicity/ 

2️⃣1️⃣ Yossi Kreinin (@YossiKreinin)

💡My 2023 Favorite: 
- People Can Read Their Manager's Mind (19 HLs)

→ Link: https://yosefk.com/blog/people-can-read-their-managers-mind.html 

2️⃣2️⃣ Alejandro Rodríguez (@arodriguez296)

💡My 2023 Favorite: 
- My Transition From Native iOS Developer to Being Able to Face Any Challenge (16 HLs)

→ Link: https://building.nubank.com.br/my-transition-from-native-ios-developer-to-being-able-to-face-any-challenge/

Absolutely loved Alejandro's article in so many levels. It is the perfect example and a real… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1739469147623301246 

2️⃣3️⃣ Adam Tornhill (@AdamTornhill)

💡My 2023 Favorite: 
- Brooks's Law - Software Project Management (13 HLs)

→ Link: https://codescene.com/blog/visualize-brooks-law/ 

BONUS:

2️⃣4⃣ Suman Karumuri (@mansu)

- Tracing at Slack: Thinking in Causal Graphs (21 HLs)

→ Link: https://slack.engineering/tracing-at-slack-thinking-in-causal-graphs/ 

BONUS:

2️⃣5⃣ Alex Ewerlöf (@alexewerlof):

- We Invested 10% to Pay Back Tech Debt; Here's What Happened

→ Link: https://blog.alexewerlof.com/p/tech-debt-day 

BONUS:

2️⃣6⃣ Michael Natkin (@michaelnatkin):

- Strong Opinions Loosely Held Might Be the Worst Idea in Tech

→ Link: https://medium.com/swlh/strong-opinions-loosely-held-might-be-the-worst-idea-in-tech-c3e65cb512f1

Alright, that is it! My Top 23 Picks from my 350+ Reads in 2023 Ranked by Insight &amp; Influence.

It was a lot of work compiling this list, 16+ hours. 
If you can, please 🙏 Like &amp; Retweet the first tweet below to help me to spread this.

https://x.com/thiagoghisi/status/1739315781865722305

My Top 23 Favorite Articles from my 350+ Reads in 2023

Will Larson (@Lethain) has written two books (An Elegant Puzzle & Staff Engineer) & many articles about Career Growth for Engineering Leaders. I have read all of them!

Below are his Best Pieces of Advice for a Remarkable Forty-Year Career in Tech.

↓↓↓

1️⃣ Collect People. Not Jobs, Companies, or Frameworks.

Collect People? WTF?

Jobs don't last forever, but your career and the people around you in the industry do.

It's uniquely valuable to start to reflect & collect people you admire and genuinely love to work with.

2️⃣ Stay longer at places where people get you.

Move quicker out of places where people don't get you and where you are wasting a lot of your energy and are mostly accumulating frustrations.

Learn what you can learn everywhere you go, but don't stay where you aren't valued.


3️⃣ Be Self-conscious about your Weaknesses, Real Experiences, and Limitations.

Don't confuse theoretical knowledge with practical experience.

You want to get hired for what you can actually do.

If you oversell yourself too much, you're setting yourself up for failure.

4️⃣ Always have a Portfolio of Options for your next move.

Generally, you should consider a portfolio of options and pick among them rather than comparing your current situation and a new one in isolation.


5️⃣ Build a Reservoir of Prestige.

Even if you enter the industry without much prestige, this is something you can deliberately build over time by working at increasingly well-respected companies, writing online, maintaining relationships, and speaking at conferences.


6️⃣ Be discoverable.

Heavily invest on your Personal Branding and Online Presence after 10+ years.

Getting access to most exceptionally interesting jobs depends on first being widely discoverable.

7️⃣ Don’t stay comfortable for too long.

Growth compounds and stagnation too.

If you stay somewhere that you’re very comfortable for too long, then you’re missing out on so much future growth.

Push yourself to change jobs every 3 years during the first ~10 years of your career.

Will Larson's Best Pieces of Advice for a Remarkable Forty-Year Career in Tech

Last week I shared that @xdg's piece on Mentoring Engineers was one of my favorites.

Here is why. Highlights:

Mentors should operate at 3 levels:

1️⃣ Goals - Figuring out what they really want
2️⃣ Situations - Handling the unfamiliar or difficult
3️⃣ Skills - Getting promoted

🧵

https://twitter.com/thiagoghisi/status/1617250051302248449?s=46&t=_QZBILfZVS1iXvZKhwYQ6Q

1️⃣ GOALS: Telling someone what they should want isn’t as powerful as helping them discover it for themself.

Goals are most meaningful when they are deeply understood.

The best goals come from within.

In the simplest form, it’s the “where do you see yourself in five years?" question, but that’s a big leap for most people to take in a way that’s authentic and not what they think they ought to say or what the mentor wants to hear.

Instead, probe for how well they understand their current situation:

• What’s going well?

• What’s not going well?

• What about your role do you enjoy the most?

• What’s most frustrating?

• If you could change one thing, what would it be and why?

2️⃣ SITUATIONS: To mentor situations, tell stories.

Faced with the question “what should I do?", a mentor should resist the urge to recommend and should look for an opportunity to tell a personal story instead.

Why answer indirectly with a story?

• Sharing a related experience reassures a mentee that they’re not alone

• Stories engage the listener’s brain, helping them focus more completely on what they’re being told rather than their own problems

• Stories let a mentee consider a situation through an abstraction – when they aren’t the protagonist of their own, immediate problem, they have a chance to see a situation more objectively and consider different perspectives.


• Finally, it preserves their agency and sense of control. A story is a teaching tool – “this worked for me” – but you leave the decisions up to them.

IMPORTANT: Be honest if you haven’t experienced a situation personally.

3️⃣ SKILLS: To mentor skills, you have to observe the mentee’s in action or output.

• For coding skills, code review or pair programming.

• For communication skills, sit in on a meeting they expect to actively participate in or watch them practice a presentation.

The MOST IMPORTANT thing ON MENTORING is to PROVIDE ACTIONABLE FEEDBACK.

It means being specific about your observations, what they need to learn or practice in order to improve & providing direction about what they could have done differently.

If your mentee doesn’t know what to do next, your feedback wasn’t actionable.

Mentoring is about listening.

Resist the temptation to offer unsolicited advice.

Tip: Career Ladder for Growth Conversations w/ your Mentor:

Look at the level above your current one. For every item, ask:

• Where do you see me on this?

• What am I missing, specifically?

• What steps can I take to demonstrate it?

• What support will I need to do that?

On Mentoring Software Engineers

I've read thousands of articles over the last 20 years in Tech.

Agile, Career, Distributed Systems, Engineering Management, Metrics, Programming, Testing, Types...

Below are The 22 Articles that Impacted my Career the most ➕ my main highlights from each one.

🧵🧵🧵

1️⃣ On Software Rewrites: "Things You Should Never Do, Part I" by Joel Spolsky (@spolsky).

→ Link: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-do-part-i/

~2013: It heavily influenced me probably 10 years back and explains a lot about why I’m not a big fan of “Green Field Projects.”

2️⃣ “Change Your Organization” as an IC, or “For Peons” by Jim Little (a.k.a @jamesshore)

→ Link: https://web.archive.org/web/20130721011202/http://agile2003.agilealliance.org/files/R1Paper.pdf

~2014: Be a Change Agent has been a goal of mine since forever. This paper gave me an approach that's proven to be effective & avoided many frustrations.

3️⃣ “Generalizing Specialists: Improving Your IT Career Skills” by Scott Ambler (@scottwambler).

→ Link: http://agilemodeling.com/essays/generalizingSpecialists.htm

~2008/2009 and It helped me a lot to understand how to think about my skills and to evolve as a professional focusing on being a “T-Shaped Engineer.”

4️⃣ Patterns for Effective Acceptance Criteria by Brett Ansley (@pbansley)

→ Link: https://brettsbabble.wordpress.com/2011/03/26/patterns-for-effective-acceptance-criteria/

~2012: I came across this one inside @thoughtwork's "internal wiki" while I was working there. It completely changed how I think about User Stories & BDD in general.

5️⃣ The Law of Leaky Abstractions by Joel Spolsky (@spolsky).

→ Link: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/11/11/the-law-of-leaky-abstractions/

~2016: it helped me to see how libraries, programming languages & frameworks will always abstract you from things that might be crucial for you to solve a deep problem.

6️⃣ How to Misuse Code Coverage by Brian Marick (@marick).

→ Link: http://www.exampler.com/testing-com/writings/coverage.pdf

~2014: It was mind-blowing in so many ways. It introduced me to the concept of "Faults of Omission" and made me go on the rabbit hole of Checking vs. Testing.

7️⃣ Test Mercenaries by Mike Bland

→ Link: https://mike-bland.com/2012/07/10/test-mercenaries.html

~2015: I'm always impressed by how much I learn every time I revisit this blog post. This explains in details how Google changed its Engineering Culture on Unit Testing around the time they acquired YouTube.

8️⃣ Mocks Aren't Stubs by Martin Fowler (@martinfowler)

→ Link: https://martinfowler.com/articles/mocksArentStubs.html

~2011/2012: I remember exactly where I was when I read it and had many epiphanies. It's that good.

Print it and read it on paper. Take notes, carry them around with you.

9️⃣ The Combined Engineering Software Model by Brent Jensen (@BrentMJensen).

→ Link: https://testastic.wordpress.com/2016/01/03/the-combined-engineering-software-model/

~2015: Although this was published in 2016, for me, it was a consolidation of the many mental models I learned from Brent & @alanpage listening to their podcast in 2015.

1️⃣0️⃣ Consumer-Driven Contracts: A Service Evolution Pattern by Ian Robinson (@iansrobinson).

→ Link: https://martinfowler.com/articles/consumerDrivenContracts.html

~2012: Read this on ThoughtWorks Anthology Book and it was mind-blowing. This article set all the foundations of we call "Contract Testing" today.

1️⃣1️⃣ Goto Fail, Heartbleed, and Unit Testing Culture by Mike Bland.

→ Link: https://www.martinfowler.com/articles/testing-culture.html

~2014: I've more highlights on this article than I have in most books. Probably the canonical article I would recommend anyone to read on Unit Testing and Engineering Practices.

1️⃣2️⃣ Being glue by Tanya Reilly (@whereistanya).

→ Link: https://noidea.dog/glue

~2019: Another article that has had a big impact more recently on my career. I've found myself recommending it to multiple folks struggling career-wise without knowing why. It's eye opening! 🤯


1️⃣3️⃣ Strong Typing vs. Strong Testing by Bruce Eckel (@BruceEckel).

→ Link: https://archive.ph/sNiUC

~2013: Not a game changer now, but kind of revolutionary for me when I switched from Java to Python. Made me think about a dimension of programming I was blind to: Types.


1️⃣4️⃣ Testing vs. Checking by Michael Bolton (@michaelbolton) &
James Bach (@jamesmarcusbach).

→ Link: https://developsense.com/blog/2009/08/testing-vs-checking

~2014: what seemed to be a subtle difference in my vocabulary revealed to me as a big gap in my knowledge on why automation alone was never enough.


1️⃣5️⃣ Implementers, Solvers, and Finders by Randall Koutnik (@rkoutnik).

→ Link: https://rkoutnik.com/2016/04/21/implementers-solvers-and-finders.html

~2022: What if we stopped using Seniority/Titles as a proxy and instead started to use the degrees of autonomy & what the job entails to describe things?


1️⃣6️⃣ How to mentor software engineers by David Golden (@xdg)

→ Link: https://xdg.me/mentor-engineers/

~2021: Sent this article to many staff engineers trying to structure & be more effective with their mentees.
Thanks @dballona for sharing!


1️⃣7️⃣ The Engineer/Manager Pendulum by Charity Majors (@mipsytipsy).

→ Link: https://charity.wtf/2017/05/11/the-engineer-manager-pendulum/

~2020: First article I read that made crystal clear the numerous benefits career-wise of switching back and forth between as an IC and as a Manager.


1️⃣8️⃣ Advanced Time Management Principles by Shreyas Doshi (@shreyas).

→ Link: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1492345140492472321.html

~2022: Exported this thread to read on Kindle & Had many epiphanies. The LNO (Leverage, Neutral, Overhead) Framework is  fundamentally different than everything I'd seen.


https://twitter.com/shreyas/status/1492345140492472321?lang=en

1️⃣9️⃣ On Pair Programming by Birgitta Böckeler (@birgitta410) & Nina Siessegger (@sssggr)

→ Link: https://martinfowler.com/articles/on-pair-programming.html

~2020: Hands down the best article on Pair Programming I've read. It reflects 💯 my experience and many good practices my team and I also came up with.

2️⃣0️⃣ The New User Story Backlog is a Map by Jeff Patton (@jeffpatton).

→ Link: https://www.jpattonassociates.com/the-new-backlog/

~2018: It helped me tremendously to create a methodology at Amex to slice initiatives into global releasable increments and avoid big-bangs.

More: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/behavioral-interview-answer-landed-me-three-650k-job-offers-ghisi/

2️⃣1️⃣ HOWTO negotiate your salary and benefits - for women by Valerie Aurora (@vaurorapub).

→Link: https://archive.ph/1ai4e

~2010: I've lost track of how many times I shared this with colleagues. It opened my mind and helped me to start to negotiate salary early in my career.

2️⃣2️⃣ Measuring Software Eng. Productivity by Laura Tacho (@rhein_wein) & How Uber is Measuring Eng. Productivity by Gergely Orosz (@GergelyOrosz).

→ Link 1: https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/engineering-productivity

→ Link 2: https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/uber-eng-productivity

~2022: Two seasoned Eng. Leaders sharing their views. 💚


The 22 Articles that Impacted my Career In Tech The Most

The Seven False Hopes of Software Management (1987). 

Each one reaches out with an attractive fallacy that leads nowhere. 

As long as you believe them, you’re going to be reluctant to do the hard work necessary to build a healthy & productive culture.

🧵

1️⃣ There is some new trick you've missed that could send productivity soaring.

People like to learn, and to improve. The line that there is some magical innovation out there that you’ve missed is a pure fear tactic, employed by those with a vested interest in selling it.

B.S!

2️⃣ Other managers get gains of 100, 200 percent or more.

Forget it. The typical magical tool that’s touted to you is focused on the coding and testing part of the life cycle.

B.S!

3️⃣ Technology is moving so quickly that you’re falling behind.

While the machines have changed enormously, the business of software development has been rather static. We still spend most of our time working on requirements and specification, the low-tech part of our work.

B.S!

4️⃣ Changing languages will give you huge gains.

Languages are important because they affect the way you think about a problem, but again, they can have impact only on the implementation part of the project.

Another variation of The High-Tech Illusion.

B.S!

5️⃣ Because of the backlog, you need to double productivity immediately.

The typical project that’s stuck in the mythical backlog is there because it has barely enough benefit to justify building it, even with the most optimistic cost assumptions.

B.S!

6️⃣ You automate everything else; isn’t it about time you automated away your software development staff?

Their main work is human communication to organize the users’ needs into formal procedure. That work will be necessary no matter what & it’s not likely to be automated.

B.S!

7️⃣ Your people will work better if you put them under a lot of pressure.

Response: They won’t — they’ll just enjoy it less.

B.S!

If leaning on people is counterproductive, and installing the latest technological doodad won’t help much either, then what is the manager supposed to do?

This!

The manager’s function is not to make people work, but to make it possible for people to work.

The Seven False Hopes of Software Management

I've watched 1000+ Conferences Talks over the last 20 years in Tech. I used to watch one every night after dinner for years.

Below are The 22 Talks that Impacted my Career the most ➕ my main highlights from each one.

🧵🧵🧵

1️⃣ Øredev 2011 - Sleeping with the enemy by Gojko Adzic (@gojkoadzic)

→ Link: https://youtu.be/hIMwTzAAQ-w

"The new mission of QAs should be teach programmers to collaborate, own quality together, automate tests or checks together."

Back in 2011, this was controversial. I 💚 it.

2️⃣ LKCE 2015 (Lean Kanban Central Europe) - Actionable Metrics for Predictability by Daniel Vacanti (@danvacanti)

→ Link: https://vimeo.com/146545310

I call Dan "The Kanban Metrics Guy". In this talk, he simplifies Little's Law so that a 5-year-old can understand it.

3️⃣ NDC Conference 2013 - Architecture: The Lost Years by Robert Martin (@unclebobmartin)

→ Link: https://vimeo.com/68215570

I attended a meetup with Robert in NYC in 2014 when I had just moved here. He gave a version of this talk. All the concepts got deeply stuck with me.

4️⃣ GTAC 2007 - Sufficiently Advanced Monitoring is Indistinguishable from Testing by Ed Keyes

→ Link: https://youtu.be/uSo8i1N18oc

All concepts in there are 20 years ahead of their time.

But unfortunately, most still don't understand it.

Watch it on repeat. You will thank me.

5️⃣ Agile Brazil 2010 - Ponha as cartas na parede, o uso eficaz do "Agile Card Wall" by Paulo Caroli (@paulocaroli)

→ Link: https://www.slideshare.net/paulocaroli/ponha-as-cartas-na-parede-o-uso-eficaz-do-agile-card-wall

Unfortunately, there are no recordings of this talk, but I remember it being awesome! Paulo is one of the best speakers I know.

6️⃣ LeadDevNewYork 2019 - Being Glue by Tanya Reilly (@whereistanya).

→ Link: https://youtu.be/KClAPipnKqw

This is one of the most influential talks of the decade.

If you have not watched it yet, stop everything you are doing and do it now.

7️⃣ GOTO 2016 - 7 Secrets of Maintainable Codebases by Adam Tornhill (@adamtornhill)

→ Link: https://youtu.be/0oDporwhToQ

Adam is also the author of one of my favorite books ever: Your Code as a Crime Scene.

8️⃣ GTAC 2011 (Google Test Automation Conference) - Test is Dead by Alberto Savoia (@pretotyping)

→ Link: https://youtu.be/X1jWe5rOu3g

9️⃣ Agile Brazil 2010 - Learning and Coolness, Beyond XP (Extreme Programming) by Klaus Wuestefeld (@klauswuestefeld)

→ Link (pt-br): https://www.infoq.com/br/presentations/learning-and-coolness-beyond-xp/

→ Link (blogpost/en): http://klauswuestefeld.blogspot.com/2010/07/l-learning-and-coolness.html

Klaus presented it from a text file for 400+ people. It was awesome!

1️⃣0️⃣ RailsConf 09 - What Killed Smalltalk Could Kill Ruby, Too by Robert Martin (@unclebobmartin):

→ Link: https://youtu.be/YX3iRjKj7C0?t=2518

This has the epic Uncle Bob's Speech on Professionalism.

Many kudos to @AkitaOnRails for adding Portuguese subtitles to this back in the day.

1️⃣1️⃣ Dev in Rio 2010 - Empreendendo uma comunidade de sucesso by Henrique Bastos (@henriquebastos).

→ Link: https://www.infoq.com/br/presentations/devinrio-henrique-bastos/

→ YTB: https://youtu.be/7om4TUUavd8

This talk was the waking up call for me to create @DojoTuba - a Coding Dojo Group in Tubarão, SC, Brazil in 2011

1️⃣2️⃣ Agile on the Beach 2019 - Visualising Software Architecture with the C4 model by Simon Brown (@simonbrown)

→ Link: https://youtu.be/x2-rSnhpw0g

Simon is also the author of the C4 Model, one of the best Architecture Models that I know, what UML was never able to be.

1️⃣3️⃣ IK MicroClass 2020 - Strategizing Your Multimillion-Dollar Retirement Plan by Ryan Valles (@ryanvalles)

→ Link: https://youtu.be/2_Hr-lqFAq0

Along with @GergelyOrosz's article 'The Trimodal Nature of Software Eng. Salaries', this talk was eye-opening.

https://twitter.com/thiagoghisi/status/1520329432996663296

1️⃣4️⃣ Agile Testing Days 2012 - Reinventing Software Quality by Gojko Adzic (@gojkoadzic)

→ Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8To_Nh68QPk

Make Impact, Not Software. I call this ‘The GPS Talk’.

Gojko is also author of a short book I often gift Product Managers I work with: Impact Mapping.

1️⃣5️⃣ Lone Star Ruby Conference 2010 - Real Software Engineering by Glenn Vanderburg (@glv)

→ Link: https://youtu.be/NP9AIUT9nos

Glenn and I are now co-workers at Nubank and he mentioned the latest version of his talk is much better.

→ Link (newer version): https://youtu.be/RhdlBHHimeM

1️⃣6️⃣ DevConFu 2013 - Integrated Tests Are A Scam by J.B. Rainsberger (@jbrains)

→ Link: https://vimeo.com/80533536

Along with the GOOS Book, @mfeathers's book & @thejayfields's book, it had a huge influence on me on how I approach Dealing with Legacy Codebases & Large Test Suites

1️⃣7️⃣ GOTO 2012 - Scaling Yourself by Scott Hanselman (@shanselman)

→ Link: https://youtu.be/FS1mnISoG7U

Don't know How to Scale Your Impact & Influence as an Engineer (inside and outside your company)?

This talk is the best definition I found on how to be a 10X engineer.

1️⃣8️⃣ Agile 2012 - Creating Maintainable Automated Acceptance Test Suites by Jez Humble (@jezhumble)

→ Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-L_2y6g5DI

1️⃣9️⃣ DevTernity 2017 - The Long Road by Sandro Mancuso (@sandromancuso)

→ Link: https://youtube.com/watch?v=vQDnW265XKU

I read Sandro’s book in 2014/2015 and many of his ideas had a huge influence on my career, especially his views around ownership, hiring and professionalism.

2️⃣0️⃣ Agile India 2012 - Programmer Anarchy by Fred George (@fgeorge52)

→ Link: https://youtube.com/watch?v=uk-CF7klLdA

I came across this talk when I was at  @thoughtworks in an internal mailing list. We (myself included) were allergic to management & titles and this was challenging both.


2️⃣1️⃣ SREcon22 Americas - Principled Performance Analytics by Narayan Desai & Brent Bryan

→Link: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zOu5cLBu4LI

How a new & much simpler approach called 2-Sigma Observability can massively reduce the number of false positive alerts & uncover some undetectable issues

2️⃣2️⃣ You Are Burned Out And Don't Even Know It by @HealthyGamerGG

→ Link: https://youtube.com/watch?v=jqONINYF17M

It should be called “Debugging Burnout” and should be mandatory to all managers.

Most people that talk about burnout have no idea about what actually (scientifically) causes it.

The 22 Conference Talks that Impacted my Career In Tech The Most

I tweeted 4000+ times, got over 9M+ impressions & gained 12k+ followers this year.

Below are My Top 10 Most Popular Twitter Threads in 2022:

🧵🧵🧵

1️⃣ The Curse of Leadership: There is no “that’s not my job” anymore:

https://twitter.com/thiagoghisi/status/1525073311369252865?s=20&t=2ZpgztIwUk4epyc9a1p31A

2️⃣ The 22 Technical Books That Impacted My Career in Tech The Most:

https://twitter.com/thiagoghisi/status/1604554739156258816

3️⃣ Insights on How Google Hires Engineering Managers:

https://twitter.com/thiagoghisi/status/1544653383000215552

4️⃣ Secrets for a Super Strong Career in Tech:

https://twitter.com/thiagoghisi/status/1586724155491504129

5️⃣ How to Onboard Yourself in 3 Weeks:

https://twitter.com/thiagoghisi/status/1584176648760328192

6️⃣ The Behavioral Interview Answer that Landed me Three $650k+ Job Offers at FAANGs:

https://twitter.com/thiagoghisi/status/1490737617008087040

7️⃣ Don’t Overfeed the Interviewer!

https://twitter.com/thiagoghisi/status/1537736827515244544

8️⃣ The 4 Ps of Engineering Leadership:

https://twitter.com/thiagoghisi/status/1495392844357398529

9️⃣ The 5 Engineering Leadership Levels of Ownership in Code Review, PR Comments & RFCs:

https://twitter.com/thiagoghisi/status/1490054087492222983

🔟 How to Build a Strong Career in Tech: A Thread.

https://twitter.com/thiagoghisi/status/1509780357528244227

1️⃣1️⃣ BONUS: The 20 Talks that Heavily Impacted my Career Trajectory in Tech:

https://twitter.com/thiagoghisi/status/1527966604947886080

1️⃣2️⃣ BONUS: Remote Pair Programming Good Practices: A Thread.


https://twitter.com/thiagoghisi/status/1499787988573716483

My Top 10 Most Popular Twitter Threads in 2022

I've read 500+ books and accumulated 55.000+ notes & highlights over the last ten years. 99% of those books were non-fiction & mostly around Software Engineering.

Below are The 22 Technical Books that Impacted my Career the most ➕ their highest-density chapters & pages.

🧵

1️⃣ The Software Craftsman: Professionalism, Pragmatism, Pride by @sandromancuso.

2️⃣ Working Effectively with Legacy Code by @mfeathers.

3️⃣ Working Effectively with Unit Tests by @thejayfields.

4️⃣ The Effective Engineer: How to Leverage Your Efforts In Software Engineering to Make a Disproportionate and Meaningful Impact by @edmondlau.

5️⃣ Impact Mapping: Making a Big Impact with Software Products and Projects by @gojkoadzic.

6️⃣ How Google Tests Software by @docjamesw, @jarbon & @joweeba.

7️⃣ Your Code as a Crime Scene: Use Forensic Techniques to Arrest Defects, Bottlenecks, and Bad Design in Your Programs by @AdamTornhill.

8️⃣ Big Data: Principles and best practices of scalable realtime data systems by @nathanmarz.

If you want to do better on System Design Interviews, start with this book instead of Designing Data-Intensive Applications.

9️⃣ The DevOps Handbook: How to Create World-Class Agility, Reliability, & Security in Technology Organizations by @RealGeneKim, @jezhumble, @patrickdebois & @botchagalupe.

🔟 Accelerate: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations by @nicolefv, @jezhumble & @RealGeneKim.

1️⃣1️⃣ Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow by @matthewpskelton & @manupaisable.

1️⃣2️⃣ Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests by @sf105 & @natpryce.

1️⃣3️⃣ Implementation Patterns by @KentBeck.

1️⃣4️⃣ Programming Interviews Exposed: Secrets to Landing Your Next Job by @monganmd, @giguere & Noah Suojanen.

1️⃣5️⃣ Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams by Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister.

1️⃣6️⃣ When Will It Be Done? Lean-Agile Forecasting To Answer Your Customers' Most Important Question by @danvacanti

1️⃣7️⃣ Lessons Learned in Software Testing: A Context-Driven Approach by @drcemkaner, @jamesmarcusbach & @bpettichord.

1️⃣8️⃣ Staff Engineer: Leadership Beyond the Management Track by @Lethain.

1️⃣9️⃣ Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code by @martinfowler.

2️⃣0️⃣ Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation by @jezhumble & @davefarley77.

2️⃣1️⃣ Effective Java by @joshbloch.

This was when I learned the difference between Being Efficient vs. Being Effective as a Programmer. It is not only about solving the problem, it is about evolving it, maintaining it in the most idiomatic way.

2️⃣2️⃣ The RSpec Book: Behaviour Driven Development with RSpec, Cucumber, and Friends by @dchelimsky, @dastels, @aslak_hellesoy, @srbaker, @tastapod & @brynary.

The 22 Technical Books That Impacted My Career in Tech The Most

Mega-thread: 

My Top 10 Most Popular Posts on LinkedIn this year.

This is my very best advice to Level Up Your Career as an Engineering Manager or Staff+ Engineer.

They had ~3M views together and gave me roughly 10k followers.

Here are they 🧵 

1️⃣ Don't overfeed the interviewer! 

My very best advice on Behavioral Interviews & The STAR Method to Engineering Managers & Staff+ Engineers interviewing to the Big Techs.

It even got an awesome share from @Lethain and a comment from @alexxubyte.

Link: https://lnkd.in/eKQMbkQH

2️⃣ Insights on How Google Hires Engineering Managers: My favorite insights and perspective from an awesome interview with @drensin.

Link: https://lnkd.in/edhaRQpH

3️⃣ The 6 Staff+ Engineer Archetypes at Facebook.

A compilation of insights from an unbelievable deep dive @GergelyOrosz did on the Facebook Engineering Culture.

Link: https://lnkd.in/ec9yd-Fu

4️⃣ How to Onboard Yourself in 3 Weeks.

One of the most actionable ideas I came across on how to speed up your own onboarding process as an Engineering Manager by @scarletinked.

Link: https://lnkd.in/eR2XJ-WP

5️⃣ Differences among Senior, Staff & Principal Levels.

I just can't recommend enough @whereistanya's book The Staff Engineer's Path. The tech book that I had the most amount of highlights and comments on my Kindle in a very long time.

Link: https://lnkd.in/eSqwmCfr

6️⃣ Jack of Many Trades, Master of Some! 

A mix of many ideas and thoughts I have around Career Growth, from Cal Newport's Career Capital Idea to my view on The T-Shaped Career sparked by yet another amazing newsletter from @GergelyOrosz.

Link: https://lnkd.in/eXhV_Sbz

7️⃣ How do I get promoted? 

My rant around Career Ownership, Promotions, Impact & Influence.

Link: https://lnkd.in/eiv9ghba

8️⃣ What do VPs of Engineering do? 

My highlights from a superb interview my VP of Engineering - Lindsey Bleimes - gave to @nubank's blog.

Link: https://lnkd.in/e4uATsVG

9️⃣ When Bad Decisions are Better than No Decisions: 

Probably the most impactful lesson I learned as an Engineering Manager: Decreasing the cost of Decision Making.

Link: https://lnkd.in/e9qhzbbc

🔟 Degrees of Autonomy & Ownership instead of Seniority Level For Job Titles: 

A mind-blowing insight I got reading an old blogpost by @rkoutnik:

What if we started using Implementer, Solver & Finder instead of Junior, Senior and Staff?

Link: https://lnkd.in/ekcuH8fn

If you liked this thread and want more tips on Career, Big Tech Interviews, Promotions, Onboarding, Mentoring... as an Engineering Manager or Staff+ Engineer, follow me here at @thiagoghisi & on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/thiagoghisi/

My Top 10 Most Popular Posts on LinkedIn in 2022

I went from 3k to 15k followers on LinkedIn in 6 months and here is my main lesson learned:

POSTING DAILY IS BS! 💩

Focus on posting high-density content weekly instead. 🚀

My Top 10 Posts had ~3M views together and gave me roughly 80% of my new followers.

Here are they 👇

1️⃣ Don't overfeed the interviewer!

My very best advice on Behavioral Interviews & The STAR Method to Engineering Managers & Staff+ Engineers interviewing to the Big Techs.

It even got an awesome share from @Lethain and a comment from @alexxubyte.

Link: https://lnkd.in/eKQMbkQH

6️⃣ Jack of Many Trades, Master of Some!

A mix of many ideas and thoughts I have around Career Growth, from Cal Newport's Career Capital Idea to my view on The T-Shaped Career sparked by yet another amazing newsletter from @GergelyOrosz.

Link: https://lnkd.in/eXhV_Sbz

7️⃣ How do I get promoted?

My rant around Career Ownership, Promotions, Impact & Influence.

Link: https://lnkd.in/eiv9ghba

8️⃣ What do VPs of Engineering do?

My highlights from a superb interview my VP of Engineering - Lindsey Bleimes - gave to @nubank's blog.

Link: https://lnkd.in/e4uATsVG

9️⃣ When Bad Decisions are Better than No Decisions:

Probably the most impactful lesson I learned as an Engineering Manager: Decreasing the cost of Decision Making.

Link: https://lnkd.in/e9qhzbbc

🔟 Degrees of Autonomy & Ownership instead of Seniority Level For Job Titles:

A mind-blowing insight I got reading an old blogpost by @rkoutnik:

What if we started using Implementer, Solver & Finder instead of Junior, Senior and Staff?

Link: https://lnkd.in/ekcuH8fn