This weekly roundup highlights what we believe to be the most thoughtful and/or interesting discussion of the week. We're also be highlighting one particularly cool comment in each installment. 🙌

The DEV Community is particularly special because of the kind and thoughtful discussions happening between community members. As such, we want to encourage folks to participate in discussions and reward those who are initiating or taking part in conversations across the community. After all, a community is made possible by the people interacting inside it.

Discussion of the Week

This week, I'd like to award @shahednasser for starting up the excellent discussion "Articles vs Videos - Which is Your Learning Preference?"

Articles vs Videos - Which is Your Learning Preference?

Shahed Nasser for Medusa ・ Sep 6 '22

#discuss #programming #productivity #webdev

Shahed has been a roll creating thoughtful discussions in the Medusa Discussions series and this entry is no different. It's really interesting scanning through the comments and hearing different folks reasons for why they like text versus videos. Speaking of scanning, @allobrox makes a good point that text is much easier to quickly glance through than a video. Meanwhile, @liftoffstudios brings up another +1 for the written format, pointing out that with text, you have the option to copy code unlike video. On the video side, lotsa folks mentioned that they enjoy videos for getting an overview of a topic, especially if it's something that is new to them. @jamesmawalker specifically pointed out they enjoy the casual asides many people present in videos to offer more depth on a topic, mentioning that these nuggets of info often end up on the editing chopping block when posted in full articles.

Well, whatever your method of choice may be, I hope that you all continue learning and sharing those learnings with us, be it via text, video, or both!

📚📹📚📹📚📹

Comment of the Week

Gotta give it up for @theaccordance who wrote a super thoughtful and thorough response to @amy_e_ellis' interesting prompt "What is your favorite part about being an engineering leader?"

Joe Mainwaring • Sep 4 '22

Hi Amy, I'm a a Director of Infrastructure for a 200-person B2B SaaS company. I've been with this company for 8 years, starting as a mid-level engineer and working my way up over time. I'm being actively groomed at this point for a future CTO role.

What I love about engineering leadership roles:

• A more equitable stake in terms of decision making & ownership in the organization. As Director of Infrastructure, I manage 3 teams (IT, Information Security, Site Reliability Engineering), all of our vendor relationships and our operational expenses (7-figure annual budget)
• Cruising. On average, I work 10-20 hours of focus-time a week. I do have a few 60+ hour-weeks a year for high-stake milestones like SOC2 audits. I know cruising isn't exclusive to leadership roles, but you tend to see more cruising at the higher levels than the lower ones.
• More Flexibility. Related to the cruising, I'm in more control of when I work. This has been extremely beneficial the last two years as I (continue to) undergo treatment for Stage IV Cancer.
• Building a good team. Good talent isn't just having the skills for the role, it's also about managing expectations and good communication. When you have the right talent in place, you spend less time micro-managing and more time empowering your team.
• I get to work on what I want, kinda. This is more-so related to the cruising perk, but since I have extra capacity compared to my individual-contributor days, I can decide how to invest that time. Often times, I'll pick up something that can quickly be converted to realize value, but may not be a priority for my direct reports. Recently, that was implementing BetterUptime to provide an internal status page for all of our running applications.
• Authority. I consider myself a benevolent leader, but sometimes you have to pull rank. I rarely have to leverage this, but it does come in handy with mitigating InfoSec risks.

Joe's answer covered so much ground! It was really enlightening to hear what it's like to be in the shoes of a Director of Infrastructure for a 200-person B2B SaaS company. I was pleasantly surprised to hear the bit about "cruising", but it also made sense when Joe brought up the flip-side of occasional, 60+ hour weeks... high stakes indeed! The other tidbits of info: having more flexibility, building & managing a talented team, and getting more ownership, all make sense; leaders get to have more control, but with it comes quite a bit of responsibility. All in all, I feel like this response is a really good window into the perks that come with a leadership role while also revealing some of the challenges! Appreciate your thorough response, Joe, and your excellent question, Amy. 🙏

What are your picks?

There's loads of great discussions and comments floating about in this community. These are just a few we chose to highlight. 🙂

I urge you all to share your favorite comment and/or discussion of the past week below in the comments. And if you're up for it, give the author an @mention — it'll probably make 'em feel good. 💚