Career Journey 6: Your Invitation to the Boardroom
Plus, Google's response to the largest DDoS attack ever, ad-free Facebook, and why money may not be the way to hire great engineers
Ever wonder what it takes to make it to the boardroom? This week's Dev Interrupted is your invitation to the table.
Join us as
Strap in for the grand finale of our series — it’s your backstage pass to the boardroom!
“I would just kind of challenge us as a community, ask yourself as a VP of engineering, am I getting invited to the board meeting?”
Episode Highlights:
(4:00) Reflecting on the Engineering Leadership Series
(10:00) Aligning Engineering with Business Impact
(17:00) Find balance - but stay technical
(21:30) Are you being invited to board meetings?
(24:30) Maintaining the well-being & growth of team members
(28:00) Speaking up: How to make tough decisions
The Download
The Download is engineering leadership content we’re reading, watching, and attending that we think you might find valuable.
1. Skip level 101
, friend of the podcast and author behind the newsletter, wrote a fantastic article on skip level 1:1s. If you’ve ever wondered what they are or how to implement them at your company, follow the link and break out a notepad ✍️
2. Largest DDoS attack ever
Google successfully mitigated a DDoS - denial-of-service - attack on its services and Cloud customers, with the most intense attack exceeding 398 million requests per second. The largest-ever attack of its kind, Google is working with industry peers to strengthen collective security measures against this novel attack vector.
Read: How it works: The novel HTTP/2 ‘Rapid Reset’ DDoS attack
3. Ad-free Facebook?
To comply with European regulators, Facebook and Instagram users in the EU, EEA, and Switzerland will soon have a choice between the current ad-supported model and a new subscription service that allows an ad-free experience. This change offers users more control over their data and how it's used for advertising purposes.
Read: Facebook and Instagram to Offer Subscription for No Ads in Europe
4. Is money the key to hiring great engineers?
LeadDev’s Editor-in-Chief
argues that in the competitive quest to attract top engineers, companies too often focus on salary instead of highlighting the distinct challenges and growth opportunities they offer.This week’s sponsor is The 2023 Engineering Benchmarks Report
LinearB’s new and expanded Software Engineering Benchmarks report is out! This report benchmarks critical engineering metrics from 2,000+ development teams spanning 3.6 million pull requests.
Here’s some of what the data reveals:
Enterprises have an average deploy time 2x higher than startups and scaleups.
Startups and scale-ups deploy code 18% faster than enterprises
Teams with higher merge frequencies have shorter cycle times.
Startups typically work longer hours.
Plus, much more!
5. Nvidia’s newest LLM helps design chips
Nvidia has developed ChipNeMo, a specialized large language model, to assist chip designers by streamlining tasks such as answering design questions, summarizing bug reports, and scripting for EDA tools. This innovation was showcased by Nvidia's chief scientist, Bill Dally, during his keynote at the International Conference on Computer-Aided Design.
Read: Nvidia Trains LLM on Chip Design
Upcoming Events
[Happening tomorrow!] DORA & LinearB present: Insights into the 2023 Accelerate State of DevOps Report
November 8, 10:00 a.m. PST
Highlights: A free webinar where Google’s DORA team and LinearB join forces to review Google’s forthcoming 2023 Accelerate report.
December 4-5 | Berlin, Germany
Highlights: Conference themes include: 1) Skills for leading in a downturn; 2) Doing more with less; 3) Preparation techniques for change; and 4) Crafting agile, ambitious, and achievable workflows.