The 5-Minute Startup CTO #45

Spotify criticism revisited, New Facebook stack, Carbon footprint

Here are your 3 picks for this week:

🔄 Process makes perfect

First, a follow up to the criticism of the Spotify model that we covered a couple of issues ago. This reply from Marty Cagan goes into who really failed (the Spotify model, or its critics?) and why.

It really boils down to the concept of autonomous, empowered engineering teams.

⌨️ If it ain’t code, don’t fix it

Straight from Facebook, a write-up on how they rebuilt their tech stack for the new Facebook.com.

The level of detail that Facebook goes to is a reflection of their scale - but this is pretty cool and interesting stuff. I’d love to see a similar write-up from a product design angle!

💡 Idea of the week

The Covid-19 crisis has been dominating the news agenda over the last few months, but other global issues are not going away.

Top of that list, the climate crisis is ongoing (despite the temporary relief of slower economic activity), so well done to the X-Team for looking at their impact and what they can do to reduce and alleviate it.

As it turns out, it’s sometimes pretty easy to do the right thing (see my personal effort from earlier this year).

I hope you found this useful, have a great week and stay safe!

Fabrice

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Hand-picked by Fabrice, a UK-based consulting CTO. Let me know if you need help with your startup!