Joseph Gefroh

The Joseph Gefroh Substack offers insights into product and engineering leadership, focusing on improving team efficiency, engineering practices, decision-making, and the articulation of risks and assumptions. It emphasizes practical strategies for managing change, leadership challenges, hiring processes, and software design principles to enhance organizational performance and product development.

Leadership and Management Software Engineering Product Management Organizational Change Team Efficiency Hiring and Team Building Decision Making Risk Management

The hottest Substack posts of Joseph Gefroh

And their main takeaways

How to Drive Meaningful Change - Handling objections to your proposal

2 HN points • 04 Mar 24
💼 Business Leadership Strategy Change Management Communication
  1. Be prepared to handle objections and various responses when proposing a change - it's unlikely to always be met with full acceptance and applause.
  2. Understand the categorization of responses to objections: disagreement on outcome, disagreement on mechanism, and agreement and alignment, each requiring a different approach to address.
  3. Dealing with objections involves strategies like asking for specific reasons, painting a clear picture, comparing with other problems addressed, and being aware of personal relationship issues or power dynamics.

On organizational structures — the QRF team model to crush interruptions

19 implied HN points • 15 Feb 22
💼 Business Management Operations Agility
  1. Implementing a QRF team model can help prevent interruptions in engineering teams, allowing them to focus on high-priority tasks.
  2. The QRF model works effectively by splitting an engineering unit into two teams - one focused on the roadmap and the other on handling interruptions.
  3. QRF solves problems found in other agile approaches by prioritizing interruptions and preventing operational issues from being undervalued.

How to Drive Meaningful Change - Delivering your proposal

0 implied HN points • 09 Mar 24
💼 Business Leadership Strategy Communication Influence Decision-making
  1. Effectively delivering a proposal is crucial for its approval by decision-makers and stakeholders.
  2. Summarizing your proposal concisely is key - leaders are busy and need clear, quick information to make decisions.
  3. Using the right medium, such as presentations or written documents, is important to communicate your proposal effectively.

How to Drive Meaningful Change - Establish credibility

0 implied HN points • 02 Mar 24
💼 Business Leadership Organizational Change Credibility Relationship building Management
  1. Establishing credibility is crucial for driving meaningful change in an organization. Credibility is built on proven competence, integrity, and relationships.
  2. Having a track record of delivering results is essential for gaining credibility. Start small, show competence, and build trust over time.
  3. Building relationships by supporting others is key to establishing credibility. Help others achieve their goals and earn their trust before asking for favors.
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On hiring - A-players and the folly of the ideal candidate

0 implied HN points • 26 Feb 24
💼 Business Management Operations Hiring Strategy Leadership
  1. Startup leaders often seek perfect, 'A-player' candidates but end up damaging their companies by delaying hiring unnecessarily.
  2. A-players aren't flawless - they have weaknesses and can't excel at everything. It's better to hire adaptable 'B-players' with potential.
  3. Fix your hiring strategy by focusing on teamwork, being realistic about needs, and considering a mix of generalists and specialists.

Product Management Skills - Articulating assumptions and acting with intention

0 implied HN points • 22 Feb 24
💼 Business Product Management Decision-making Problem Solving Risk management Validation
  1. Product Managers need to be intentional with their decisions to drive beneficial outcomes for the company. Lack of intentionality can lead to arbitrary decisions that may not have the desired effect.
  2. Being intentional involves articulating the thought process behind proposals, validating assumptions, and being open to feedback. This increases the chances of success in product management.
  3. To effectively manage a product, one should thoroughly discover and define the problem space, propose viable approaches, form concise hypotheses, articulate key assumptions, validate those assumptions, make informed decisions, and monitor outcomes for continuous improvement.

Product Management Skills - Articulating impact risk

0 implied HN points • 18 Feb 24
💼 Business Product Management Risk management Revenue Models
  1. As a product manager, it's crucial to articulate and understand the impact risks associated with your work. This helps in prioritizing and addressing potential negative effects.
  2. Understanding how your company makes money is vital as a product manager. Connecting your work to the company's bottom line increases your impact and value.
  3. Knowing what is important to your company and where your team's efforts fit in is essential. Aligning your work with company priorities and goals helps mitigate impact risks and drive meaningful outcomes.

Product Management Skills - Articulating value risk

0 implied HN points • 16 Feb 24
💼 Business Product Management Risk mitigation
  1. Value risk in product management is the risk that your solution may not be valuable to end users or customers, leading to wasted time and resources.
  2. Mitigating value risks requires deeply understanding your product and users, identifying problem areas, and quantifying the value to users and customers.
  3. To mitigate value risks, product managers should focus on understanding product features, observing user behavior, and identifying and addressing pain points in user experience.

Product Management Skills - Articulating adoption risks

0 implied HN points • 16 Feb 24
💼 Business Product Management Risk management UX Design Customer Satisfaction
  1. Articulating adoption risks is crucial in product management to understand and address potential negative effects of a new solution.
  2. For a product manager, balancing the levers of creating value while ensuring adoption by users is key to successful product development.
  3. Adoption risks can be mitigated by strategies like improving awareness, simplifying usage, setting up effective defaults, and considering whether adoption is even desired for certain features.

Product Management Skills - Articulating development cost risks

0 implied HN points • 16 Feb 24
💼 Business Product Management Risk management Cost Analysis Decision-making
  1. As a product manager, it's crucial to articulate, define, and compare risks to make informed decisions.
  2. Development cost risk is a key consideration for product managers, impacting the cost-effectiveness of solutions.
  3. Saying 'no' to a project due to development cost concerns may actually hinder value delivery, as development costs are ongoing even when no work is done.

Software Engineering Techniques— Avoid leaking sensitive information with a tripwire

0 implied HN points • 11 Feb 24
🕹 Technology Software Engineering Security Frameworks Coding
  1. Avoid leaking sensitive information in APIs by being cautious with serialization processes
  2. Promiscuous serialization can lead to unintentional exposure of confidential data, creating security vulnerabilities
  3. Consider using a tripwire mechanism as a security measure to prevent accidental data leaks in software development

YAGNI and DRY — the KISS of Death for Your Software Project

0 implied HN points • 11 Feb 24
🕹 Technology Software Development Programming Engineering Coding
  1. Popular programming mantras like YAGNI, DRY, and KISS can guide thinking towards effective development but can also be misapplied and used as justification for wrong approaches.
  2. KISS, or Keep it Simple, Stupid, promotes simplicity in software development to avoid over-engineering, but following it too strictly can lead to subpar outcomes.
  3. YAGNI, or You Aren't Gonna Need It, prevents over-engineering by focusing on present needs, but misapplication can lead to sloppy work and low-quality outcomes.

Making decisions - When should you listen to the tech community in adopting a new technology?

0 implied HN points • 11 Feb 24
🕹 Technology Tech community Development Open Source
  1. Be cautious when listening to the tech community for advice on adopting new technologies, as not all ideas are suitable for every situation.
  2. Context is critical in decision-making - what works for one team or company might not work for another, so be careful with blindly following community consensus.
  3. Most developers, including many who produce content, may not be experts, so it's important to thoroughly evaluate advice before implementation and consider the source's background.

War Stories - Defusing an executive kerfuffle

0 implied HN points • 11 Feb 24
💼 Business Leadership Crisis Management Management
  1. Leaders sometimes face no-win scenarios and may need to personally take the loss for the greater good of the organization.
  2. In times of crisis, a sudden flurry of messages or alarms can indicate an unexpected problem that needs immediate attention.
  3. Effective communication and conflict resolution are crucial skills for leaders to handle situations where executive feathers are ruffled.

On operations - Leveraging tempo to build software better

0 implied HN points • 10 Feb 24
🕹 Technology Software Engineering Leadership Team Dynamics
  1. Software engineering benefits from cyclical execution in agile methodologies like Scrum, which enable teams to respond to change effectively.
  2. Effective leadership involves setting and managing tempo in cyclical execution, allowing teams to self-synchronize and reduce friction.
  3. To establish an effective tempo, consistency, sustainability, clear starts/stops, and avoiding bleed-over work are key factors to ensure team effectiveness and prevent burnout.

On challenges - How to effectively lead an inexperienced team of junior developers

0 implied HN points • 10 Feb 24
💼 Business Leadership Team Management Training
  1. Good leadership requires good planning. Freewheeling attempts to tackle problems as they come can lead to lack of focus and reduced effectiveness of the team.
  2. Figure out what kind of team you have by identifying individual strengths and weaknesses. Understand the different types of juniors - technical, process, and behavioral.
  3. Develop your team by providing focused training for technical juniors, emphasizing process understanding for process juniors, and addressing behavior challenges for behavioral juniors.

On hiring - Choosing the right way to assess technical engineering skills in candidates

0 implied HN points • 10 Feb 24
💼 Business Hiring Technical Skills Interviews Recruitment
  1. Good technical interviews should feel engaging and collaborative, allowing candidates to interact and showcase their problem-solving skills.
  2. Bad interviews leave candidates feeling defeated and hurt a company's reputation, leading to longer hiring processes.
  3. It's important for companies to understand the specific skills they are hiring for and use appropriate technical assessment methods to evaluate candidates accurately.

War Stories - How I matured a chaotic startup into a professional development team

0 implied HN points • 10 Feb 24
💼 Business Startup Organization Management Tech Engineering
  1. The company faced challenges due to outdated organizational structures and lack of alignment between product and engineering teams, impacting project success and team morale.
  2. Centralized decision-making by product management caused inefficiencies and hindered innovation, leading to issues like technical debt, difficulty in resource allocation, and pay disparities among developers.
  3. Product managers lacked technical expertise and communication, resulting in fragmented project outcomes, delayed executions, and confusion across teams.

Making decisions - When does your Startup Needs Engineering Managers?

0 implied HN points • 10 Feb 24
💼 Business Leadership Startups Management Engineering Hiring
  1. Deciding when a startup needs engineering managers can be challenging, especially for early-stage startups with limited resources.
  2. Hiring the right engineering manager is crucial, as allocating budget to managers means less for direct contributors to the codebase.
  3. Understanding the evolution of startups, the necessity of managers, and making informed decisions on hiring engineering managers is key.

How to Design Software — Monitoring Systems

0 implied HN points • 06 Feb 22
🕹 Technology Software Design Logic
  1. Monitoring systems are designed to determine whether something is working or not, and the concept of what is considered "working" can vary based on parameters defined by the system operators.
  2. When designing a monitoring system, it's crucial to understand what is being monitored and to keep the definition of "working" arbitrary to prevent limitations.
  3. A monitoring system consists of components like the Monitor, which contains the logic for monitoring and responding to the status of the system being observed.

How to Design Software — Report Generators

0 implied HN points • 09 Aug 21
🕹 Technology Software Design
  1. Developers often face challenges with creating reports in a way that handles various requests efficiently.
  2. Every report consists of data records, data values, labels, and format, which are essential components to consider.
  3. The steps to generate a report involve setting up parameters, fetching records, mapping fields, converting records into report entries, and sending back the report to the user.

On development - How to design an effective intake process

0 implied HN points • 06 Feb 21
💼 Business Management Operations Startups Processes Organization
  1. Implementing an effective intake process is crucial for managing growth and improving teamwork. It helps individual developers work efficiently, allows for effective planning across the organization, and ensures clear prioritization.
  2. An intake process shines a light on hidden work, making it visible to everyone and aiding in proper planning and resource allocation. It promotes transparency and avoids inefficiencies caused by requests slipping through the cracks.
  3. Having a structured intake process provides valuable signals that can guide decision-making. By collecting data on requests and their handling, the team can identify trends, address issues, and streamline priorities for better outcomes.

How to Design Software — Dynamic Heatmaps (Chloropeths)

0 implied HN points • 26 Jul 20
🕹 Technology Software Design Web Development Coding
  1. Building a dynamic heatmap for personal projects can be cost-effective and rewarding instead of purchasing licenses from charting companies.
  2. Heatmaps, also known as chloropeths, involve color-coding sections of a map based on a specific scale.
  3. Creating a customized heatmap requires a map SVG, coding to manipulate the map with JavaScript, and organizing data for efficient color application.

How to Design Software — Rules Engines

0 implied HN points • 09 Jul 20
🕹 Technology Software Design Engineering Systems Coding
  1. Rules engines can help prevent constant interruptions in engineering work by allowing other departments to make changes without engineer involvement
  2. Rules engines are systems that execute actions based on conditions that can be configured during runtime, making them dynamic and adaptable
  3. Using rules engines can reduce the fragility of concrete coding implementations, enabling easier modifications as business requirements evolve

How to Design Software — Tags and Groups

0 implied HN points • 22 Dec 16
🕹 Technology Software Design Database Management
  1. When designing software, consider implementing a tagging system for ordering, filtering, grouping, and organizing records based on properties.
  2. Using comma-separated strings in a single database column for tags is simple but leads to difficulties in querying, formatting errors, and length limitations.
  3. Storing tags in separate columns might seem organized, but it can complicate querying and checking for the existence of tags across multiple columns.

How to Design Software — Plugin Systems

0 implied HN points • 31 Jan 21
🕹 Technology Software Design
  1. Plugins allow you to extend the functionality of a program by writing subprograms that can modify or add to its behavior.
  2. To create a plugin system, the main program needs to be designed to support plugins, enabling the addition of various functionalities.
  3. Key components of a basic plugin system include the main program that needs enhancement and the hook that triggers the execution of additional code.

How to Design Software — Feature Flags

0 implied HN points • 14 Jul 20
🕹 Technology Software Design Performance
  1. Separating deploys from releases can help reduce risk and streamline the development process by allowing code to be sent to production without being immediately visible to users.
  2. Feature flags are a useful tool for enabling or disabling features in software based on specific conditions, and they should not be used for account-specific authorization checks.
  3. When transitioning to a new feature flag system, focusing on separating reads and writes can provide a smoother migration process and reduce the risk of errors or discrepancies between different systems.

How to Design Software — Image Uploaders

0 implied HN points • 19 Oct 19
🕹 Technology Software Design Image Processing Scalability Security
  1. When designing a system for image uploading, it's important to consider technical concerns such as displaying, authorizing, validating, processing, storing, and associating the images.
  2. Tradeoffs to think about include scaling to handle large uploads efficiently, ensuring security to prevent vulnerabilities, managing authorization based on business logic, and maintaining consistency in the image uploading workflow.
  3. A well-designed image uploading system should support creating and using various image variants, offloading processing to separate services, ensuring consistent growth across subsystems, and establishing clear architectural boundaries for scalability.

Product Management Skills - Analytics and Instrumentation

0 implied HN points • 17 Feb 24
💼 Business Product Management Analytics User Behavior Data Analysis
  1. Product analytics and instrumentation are crucial for Product Managers to make effective decisions and understand user behavior.
  2. Product Managers should have a strong grasp of product analytics, identifying what to instrument, and performing basic analysis themselves.
  3. Knowing who is using the product, what actions they are taking, and the context of their actions is essential for effective product analysis.

How to Drive Meaningful Change - Crafting your proposal

0 implied HN points • 03 Mar 24
💼 Business Leadership Strategy Change Management Organizational Culture Communication
  1. When driving meaningful change, it's crucial to formulate your idea and gain approval from various stakeholders within an organization.
  2. Thorough research is essential before proposing any idea to ensure credibility and avoid unknown unknowns that might lead to rejection.
  3. Crafting a compelling narrative is just as important as presenting facts; having a structured story helps decision-makers understand the problem, solution, and value of the proposal.

War Stories - How I turned around a paralyzed Product organization into a rapid delivery engine

0 implied HN points • 11 Feb 24
💼 Business Management Product Decision-making Startup
  1. The Product Management organization struggled with defining and prioritizing work, leading to underutilization of engineers and ill-defined requirements.
  2. The Product Managers faced challenges due to analysis paralysis, fear of making mistakes, and a desire for full consensus before decisions.
  3. To address the issues, a bold approach was taken to focus on building the muscle of delivering change, removing fear barriers, and banning A/B tests to prevent decision-making delays.

Making decisions - When should you trade off between speed vs. quality?

0 implied HN points • 11 Feb 24
💼 Business Strategy Startups Quality Management
  1. Startups prioritize speed for short-term gains but may suffer in the long run if quality is sacrificed.
  2. There are two main kinds of shortcuts: reducing quality and reducing scope. It is advised to prioritize reducing scope over sacrificing quality.
  3. Quality shortcuts can result in increased costs for startups, impacting speed and effectiveness. It might be better to invest in sustainable practices upfront.

Product Management Skills - Know how to synthesize

0 implied HN points • 11 Feb 24
💼 Business Product Management Communication Problem Solving Organization Skill development
  1. Product managers must know how to synthesize information for effective communication and alignment.
  2. Adding structure to your narrative, such as Problem-Solution-Value or Situation-Action-Result, can enhance the clarity of your communication.
  3. Synthesizing various sources of information is important for product managers to construct a cohesive storyline and convey a clear message.

On communication - How to communicate effectively as a leader

0 implied HN points • 10 Feb 24
💼 Business Leadership Communication Management Organization Feedback
  1. Communication is key for effective leadership. Many leaders fail due to poor communication.
  2. Repeat your messages consistently to avoid misinterpretations. Use multiple mediums and be precise to ensure clarity.
  3. Don't shy away from delivering bad news. Avoid the sandwich technique for feedback. Break down communication barriers to foster open and honest communication.

On hiring - A rapid hiring process for busy startup engineering leaders

0 implied HN points • 10 Feb 24
💼 Business Management Operations Hiring Leadership Entrepreneurship
  1. Efficient hiring involves building a pipeline and moving candidates through it with minimal effort. Creating a streamlined process like a Kanban-style project can help manage the hiring stages effectively.
  2. From a candidate's perspective, simplifying the hiring process by highlighting only 3 key stages can make the process feel lightweight and easy to follow. A clear and concise hiring workflow can be a competitive advantage.
  3. Utilizing different sourcing channels, such as LinkedIn, can be a valuable way to find candidate leads with low effort but high value. Building and leveraging a strong professional network can significantly impact the hiring process.