View this email online

Hello folks,

Welcome to the second edition of this newsletter. Here's a roundup of this verrrry eventful week and some other intersting things I cam eacross.

From the Blog

• I published my review and essential highlights from "Atomic Habits" by James Clear. I had heard a lot about this book and got the wrong impression that it was a deep dive into the psychological mechanics of habit formation. It is that, to some extent. What it is a lot more is a solid practioner's guide to making and breaking habits. Its simple 4-point framework and plethora of techniques will be really useful to anyone who has struggled to pick up new habits. The message at the heart of it all - "Love the process instead of the outcome".
• The so-called "two-pizza team" has occupied a central place in technology organizations for some time now. But I argued in my article this week that we had misinterpreted the original premise of making this kind of team by confusing independence with autonomy. The result - lots and lots of small teams which get nowehere as fast as we would like them to. This article attracted a lot of attention and discussion on Hacker News and Twitter, with some big names echoing the sentiment (Michael Feathers, Shreyas Doshi, Chris Richardson). The article was on HN front page for about 24 hours and the traffic took down my website twice. More on that next week.

New on the website

• A select-and-share option now allows you to select you favourite part of a blog post and share it directly on social media. Go and give it a shot!
• Social logins now supported for signing in/up to post comments.

From the Great Interweb

• If you are feeling a little cooped up and frustrated, what with having to stay locked inside your house all the time, the lovely people of Iceland will let you scream into their beautiful wilderness for catharsis. I went there last year and would recommend it for everyone but for, you know, the 'C' word :(
• Everyone is going digital full-tilt in this pandemic, including governments. Here's a peek into the API strategy of UK's Department for Work and Pensions.
• Alex Danco writes about SPAC, a kind of reverse IPO where already public money raised by a "promoter" is invested into private company, thereby making it public. Chamath Palihapitiya is among those leading this counter-intuitive new style of tech investments.

Thanks it for this week folks.

Stay safe!

-Kislay Verma