Influences & Reading Notes – Story Melange

These essays explore ideas from books that have shaped how I think about systems, learning, and communication.

Rather than one-page reviews, they distill insights that connect directly to my work in software engineering.

Influence by R. Cialdini

The world requires influential engineers with a passion for stories

Successful cross-functional teams need the luxury of confidence and trust

Three old but trusted ways to reveal your team’s common story

Good presenters embrace these psycho tips in their life

The science of influence and storytelling

Try these 9 tips to get more and stronger follower growth

Try these priceless mental tricks to gain the upper hand in pointless conflicts

Clean Architecture by R. C. Martin

Successful teams strike the right Balance between Immediate Needs with Long-Term Architecture

Object oriented programming for AI Projects

How Poor Architectural Understanding is Impacting the German Software Industry

Top-Down Thinking is Holding Back Software Innovation

Clean coders use lambda expressions

Premature optimization and the importance of algorithms

Made to stick by C & D. Heath

Breaking the Curse of Knowledge: Why Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication

How to avoid burying the lead

How domain driven design makes software development concrete and abstract

Engineering presentations that stick

Decision paralysis at a McDonalds

What is wrong about the pattern tell them what you are going to tell, tell and then tell what you told

The Stickiness Improvement Plan

Get huge benefits for minimal costs after reading

The one thing missing in your perfect presentation

Three basic plots - my take

From Challenges to Champions: Unsticking Negative Workplace Stories

Unlock the Power of Metaphors at Work to Captivate Your Listeners!

Waterfall management is a strict recipe, while agility is improvisational cooking.

Effective Story Spotting

Thinking, Fast and Slow by D. Kahnemann

Your mind and machine learning, the base rate effect

Here is what I learned from thinking fast and slow.

Taylorism in complex environments

Use risk policies and avoid common planning fallacies in software development

Investors are living from the greatest of all treasures, which is Hope

The story of Covid and Plato’s cave allegory

Sticking in a shitty job, deprives you of rich experiences

Everybody wants more money and thinks inflation is unfair

Good managers are immune to survivorship bias

The perfect way that projects will never be planned

Trust me; I am an expert

Look at your industry’s state and then decide if you want to become an expert

The SAFe confidence vote reveals the state of emotional security in your project

You should go back to the office, to help your boss understand you

Use mental anchors to determine the start position of high-stakes discussions

Try to establish your next planning predictions on well-defined reference points

The good storyteller is a travel guide through the listener’s memories.

You are most likely overinsured

There are no losses; just costs for profits

Regression to the mean reshapes our memories

Why engineers do not understand stories

Experienced engineers stay away from the flow zone

Avoid spending mental energy as if would be limitless

Providing fake reliability with statistics

Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain - and most fools do

21 laws of leadership by J. C. Maxwell

World Sensation, Why remarkably nobody has built your leadership

Effective leaders listen for stories that touch the heart and mind

4 powerful secrets medium user need to know about leadership