Issue #343 (Why Engineers Hate Their Managers) 09/08/25
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I recently came across a curiously-named column on a study published on IEEE Xplore called Software Development Is a Team Sport. This sort of theme might apply to a number of different industries, not just software development.
In this case, as the study explains, one of the reasons it was necessary to look into this is the fact that "the field of software engineering has historically emphasized individuals when studying outcomes like productivity and velocity."
The study was produced by Google employees and covers material gathered from workers at Google. It looks at how collaboration was measured, how team functioning was analyzed, and how they determined that teamwork does indeed drive outcomes.
If you're in a management role, you might benefit from these findings, but certainly take it with a grain of salt since it's focused mainly on work at a large company like Google.
Now on to this week's hand-picked productivity links!
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ExtendText — A Chrome extension that is a text expander, allowing you to create shortcuts for your most-used, messages, replies, text snippets, code snippets, and more, featuring private and shareable snippets for teams.
White Noise Generator — A web-based tool that lets you use a sound library to create and customize your own ambient soundscape for better focus and relaxation.
Auth-Email — An OAuth proxy that handles all aspects of OAuth authentication for your email accounts, allowing you to use standard password authentication with any email client, app, device, service, or script.
Meco: Free Your Newsletters From the Inbox — Move your newsletters to a newsletter aggregator built for reading and declutter your inbox in seconds. Offers support for Gmail, Outlook, or your personal Meco email. sponsor
ParsePoint — An AI-powered document and invoice scanner that allows you to extract vendor details, amounts, dates, and line items from any invoice format in seconds.
Kite — A screen recorder tool that makes your demo videos look like Apple commercials, with features like auto-zoom, animated text, AI voiceovers and lots more.
Redline — A Mac app that adds a to-do list in your menu bar, with a single purpose – to complete tasks, with no non-essential features like folders, tags, etc.
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Why Engineers Hate Their Managers (And What to Do About It) — From someone who has worked both as an engineer and an engineering manager, so this is a good read for anyone on either side of this problem.
The Dangers of Blind Consistency — A nice warning to examine ourselves so that our consistency (which is a good thing) doesn't lead to negative traits like rigidness, being too formulaic, stubbornness, etc.
Refind: Brain Food, Delivered Daily — Every day the team at Refind analyzes thousands of articles and sends you only the best, tailored to your interests. Loved by 540,000+ curious minds. sponsor
ChatGPT May Be Eroding Critical Thinking Skills, According to a New MIT Study — Yet another in a recent spurt of 'AI is making us dumb' type of studies, this one from researchers at MIT’s Media Lab, which used 54 subjects between the ages of 18 and 39 years old.
As a Developer, My Most Important Tools are a Pen and a Notebook — This developer believes he's not very good at thinking when sitting a computer, and thus views his physical notebook as a powerful part of his coding toolbox.
The Sketchy Calendar Project — Not an article but a series of posts covering the subject of planning using a calendar app vs. using a paper calendar, with the goal of exploring how to bring these two concepts together.
Make Something Heavy — An interesting view on the way we value what we create online with the recommendation that we should focus on creating what the author describes as 'heavy' things rather than 'light' things.
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