November 2026
Beginner to intermediate
242 pages
5h 1m
English
Content preview from A Day in the Life of a Senior Leader
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Chapter 22. Sometimes Your Job Is to Get in the Way
The head of product, the head of customer service, and the CTO of Slack were sitting in the front row at an important conference. This was peak Slack; we were all the buzz, the fastest-growing enterprise software company in history. The conference speakers were singing out praises, and at that precise moment, Slack was down. Again.
I wish I had kept the message the CTO sent me. It approximately read, “Stop all releases immediately. If we can’t keep the service up, we shouldn’t be checking in any code.”
Game on.
A Necessary Line in the Sand
Elmore Leonard wrote the book Get Shorty in 1990 (Delacorte Press). Chances are, you know the movie starring John Travolta better than the book. In the movie, Travolta plays Chili Palmer, a small-time loan shark from Miami. He’s part of a New York–based crime family, and he ends up traveling to Hollywood, where he inserts himself into the moviemaking process.
Chili Palmer loves movies. He has deep knowledge of the history of movies and of Hollywood. The moment he shows up, he’s educating insiders about the history of Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil. It’s never explained where Chili’s love of movies came from, but it is clear from the beginning that he wants to make movies.
It turns out the skills of a loan shark apply nicely to film production:
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Find money.
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Convince skeptical people that you have a movie.
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Charm humans to help you make a movie.
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Clearly draw a line in the sand when necessary. ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.