Tier 2: Read Within Your First Year

piano afroswing, celtic cloud rap, portuguese chillstep · 4:06

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Lyrics

[Verse 1]
Team Topologies maps the terrain
Stream-aligned squads own their domain
Platform crews enable the flow
Complicated subsystems grow slow
Conway's Law shapes what we make
Cognitive load for sanity's sake

[Chorus]
Seven books to fuel your mind
Team structures intertwined
Inspired visions, candor clear
Microservices engineer
Hard decisions, output high
SRE keeps systems dry

[Verse 2]
Cagan shows the product way
Inspired teams discover each day
Empowered engineers decide
Technology and business collide
Outcome thinking beats the feature trap
Customer problems fill the gap

[Chorus]
Seven books to fuel your mind
Team structures intertwined
Inspired visions, candor clear
Microservices engineer
Hard decisions, output high
SRE keeps systems dry

[Verse 3]
Horowitz tells the brutal truth
When peacetime turns to wartime proof
Struggle shapes the leader's spine
Hard things have no clean design
Firing friends and facing doubt
Sometimes there's no graceful route

[Chorus]
Seven books to fuel your mind
Team structures intertwined
Inspired visions, candor clear
Microservices engineer
Hard decisions, output high
SRE keeps systems dry

[Verse 4]
Grove's formula for leverage gained
One-on-ones properly maintained
Output measured, not the hours
Information flows through towers
Meetings planned with clear intent
Managerial moment wisely spent

[Bridge]
Google's SRE manual reveals
Error budgets, proper deals
Service levels carefully planned
Toil reduction, understand
Newman's microservices split
Domain boundaries tightly knit

[Verse 5]
Radical Candor shows the blend
Care personally, comprehend
Challenge directly, speak the truth
Ruinous empathy needs proof
Obnoxious aggression burns the bridge
Manipulative insincerity's ridge

[Final Chorus]
Seven books to fuel your mind
Team structures intertwined
Inspired visions, candor clear
Microservices engineer
Hard decisions, output high
SRE keeps systems dry
Your first year curriculum
Technical wisdom, here they come

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