Tech World With Milan·1y15 Best Leadership Books
This post provides a curated list of the 15 best leadership books to help leaders enhance their skills. The books cover a range of topics including effective communication, emotional intelligence, habit formation, and team management. Each book offers practical insights and strategies for improving leadership abilities and fostering positive work environments.
Tech World With Milan·1yHow to deal with difficult conversations?
Navigating difficult conversations with empathy and strategic communication is crucial for effective leadership. This post delves into the frameworks of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) and the Thomas Kilmann Conflict Resolution Model. NVC, developed by psychologist Marshall Rosenberg, focuses on self-empathy, empathy towards others, and honest self-expression through observation, feelings, needs, and requests. The Thomas Kilmann Model provides five conflict-handling modes that range from competing to accommodating, guiding leaders to manage conflicts productively. Implementing these techniques can transform conflicts into opportunities for growth and stronger relationships.
Community Picks·1yIntroduction to the role of Staff Engineer
Staff Engineer is a senior-level technical leadership position focused on high-impact engineering projects and long-term technical strategy. They possess deep expertise in their domain and lead complex engineering initiatives, mentor other engineers, set technical standards, and ensure software architecture quality and scalability. Staff Engineers act as a bridge between engineering teams and management, translating business objectives into technical solutions, and often working across multiple teams to drive alignment and technical coherence within the organization.
Community Picks·1yStaff Engineer vs Engineering Manager
Staff Engineers and Engineering Managers have distinct roles within a tech team. While Engineering Managers are accountable for both people and technical artifacts, Staff Engineers focus on the technical depth without people management responsibilities. Hiring a Staff Engineer can be beneficial when the technical load is excessive or spans multiple teams, but it’s usually not necessary for teams with manageable tech complexity or strong technical management. The key is to define clear accountability and leverage the respective strengths of each role.
Stay SaaSy·1yProblem Driven Development
Senior Engineers and Engineering Managers often struggle to create effective technical roadmaps due to lack of training and prioritization challenges. Problem Driven Development offers a straightforward approach: prioritize solving the biggest issues you face. It focuses on aligning the technical roadmap with real problems rather than arbitrary solutions. Regularly reviewing and addressing these issues ensures more efficient development and better problem resolution within the team.
Tech World With Milan·1yWhy do some engineering teams consistently outperform others?
High-performing teams excel not just through technical skills but through effective communication, psychological safety, and strong leadership. These teams thrive on intentional communication, trust, and continuous improvement. Leaders play a crucial role by fostering an environment where team members feel safe to share ideas and handle conflicts productively. Building personal connections and maintaining team health through regular check-ins are also key components of team success.
Community Picks·1yChoose your engineering archetype
Drawing parallels between Dungeons & Dragons and software engineering, the piece explores the importance of balanced team dynamics in software development. It recounts experiences from Facebook and Stripe, addressing their initial engineering monocultures and the eventual adoption of diverse archetypes—such as Coders, Architects, and Tech Leads—to better utilize engineers' strengths and foster inclusivity. This led to improved team performance and individual satisfaction.
Stack Overflow Blog·1yThe real 10x developer makes their whole team better
The so-called 10x developer, who is seen as significantly more productive or intelligent than peers, is often mythologized. Instead, success in engineering relies more on community learning and collaboration. Organizations benefit from fostering communities of practice, where shared learning and collaboration break down silos and enhance overall team performance. Investing in these communities leads to better retention, satisfaction, and innovation among developers.
Manager.dev·1yUsing fake deadlines without driving your engineers crazy
Setting challenging deadlines can lead to better results in engineering projects by managing the Iron Triangle of scope, resources, and time. Effective deadlines create a sense of urgency and prevent scope creep. It's important to communicate clearly with the team, involve them in decision making, and maintain a balance between pushing them to meet deadlines and being flexible with unforeseen changes. A healthy environment allows teams to thrive under deadlines, fostering innovation and creativity.
Lobsters·1ySoftware Design is Knowledge Building
A company relies on an integration service but decides to build an in-house system to cut costs. Despite successful initial development, the system becomes hard to maintain when transferred to a new team. This is attributed to the lack of a shared mental model among the new developers, making it difficult to understand and modify the software. The post highlights the importance of knowledge building and proper documentation in software design to ensure long-term maintainability.
Community Picks·1yThe ultimate checklist to becoming a development team leader
Idan Koch shares a comprehensive checklist for developers aspiring to become team leaders, based on over two decades of experience. Key areas include mastering the technical domain, handling production incidents, providing team support, effective onboarding, managing large tasks, and gaining experience in leading meetings. Koch emphasizes the importance of delivering solid work, being proactive in production issues, helping new team members, taking on big tasks, and eventually leading others and important meetings.
gitconnected·1yEffective Technical Leads
Effective technical leads help their teams by trusting engineers to handle tasks, while providing guidance and fostering the growth of individual team members. This involves understanding different engineer personalities—hesitant and confident—and tailoring support accordingly. Collaborative forums and regular communication are crucial for building a strong, knowledge-sharing team culture.
Manager.dev·1yBrutally honest letter to my younger self
A seasoned engineering manager shares candid advice to his younger self, addressing guilt, over-involvement, and the importance of clear communication and delegation. The post culminates in promoting a new email course designed to help other managers navigate similar challenges and grow in their roles.
Medium·1ySoftware Engineers Are Not Fungible
Software engineers are not interchangeable, each bringing different skills, levels of expertise, and ways of working that are crucial for effective team performance. Understanding and leveraging these differences is key to building productive teams and achieving successful project outcomes. Managers should focus on creating balanced, complementary teams and tailoring tasks to engineers' strengths rather than treating them as generic resources.
Tech Lead Digest·1yThe Adaptive Chief Technology Officer
The CTO role varies significantly between small and large companies. In 2025, incorporating multimodal AI is crucial for product strategy. Problem Driven Development (PDD) prioritizes technical issues based on impact. Effective feedback and building strong product teams are key for success. Setting realistic deadlines boosts organization productivity. Explore Meticulous AI for automated UI testing.
Tech Lead Digest·1yA Field Guide to Team Dynamics and Conflict
The field guide provides comprehensive tools and frameworks for managing team dynamics and organizational conflict. It includes practical methods for identifying crisis situations and steps for intervention, highlighting three main conflict patterns. Additionally, it features the Red Bead Experiment by Dr. W. Edwards Deming, demonstrating how system flaws are often misattributed to worker performance.
Community Picks·1yThe Engineering Manager
Staying informed about the details within an organization is crucial for effective management. Companies are moving towards flatter organizational structures, requiring managers to be more hands-on. Historical and contemporary examples, like Andy Grove and Elon Musk, highlight the importance of being deeply involved. Effective delegation means holding accountability while staying informed about key projects and decisions. Techniques such as regular deep dives, mixing up 1:1 meetings with pairing, and writing weekly brag documents can help managers stay in the details without micromanaging.
Manager.dev·1y6 reasons why the senior leadership doesn't take you seriously
Being taken seriously by senior leadership requires avoiding certain common mistakes. Key areas of improvement include developing finesse in communication, exuding confidence without insecurity, delivering bad news constructively, providing clear instructions to your team, using precise language, and offering feedback to seniors appropriately. Each point is illustrated with an example and advice on how to improve.
Community Picks·1yProduct management is broken. Engineers can fix it
At PostHog, product management has been redefined to empower engineers. Engineers now make product decisions, supported by PMs who provide context but don't control the roadmap. Small, autonomous teams are encouraged, and transparency is prioritized to expedite decision-making. This approach has led to the successful launch of multiple products and higher team motivation.
Manager.dev·1yThe 3 top mistakes of managers under 30
Young managers often face challenges such as being overly conscious of their age, trying too hard to please their team, and making quick decisions to appear decisive. Building trust, learning to confidently demand high performance, and consulting with more experienced team members can help overcome these obstacles. Supporting causes like GiveInternet can also be a meaningful way to use one's influence for good.
Hacker News·1yGrifters, believers, grinders, and coasters
Engineer conflicts often stem from cultural clashes between different types of engineers: grifters, believers, coasters, and grinders. Grifters are strategic and align with company leadership, believers focus on quality and values, coasters maintain a balanced workload, and grinders work intensely on tasks. Each type brings unique strengths and weaknesses, and a diverse mix can benefit a company. Understanding and empathizing with these differences is crucial for a harmonious and effective team.
Community Picks·1yWhy Multi-Team Projects Fail: Shared Code and Sync Challenges
Successful software projects often start with a single cohesive team, but as they grow, managing multiple teams becomes essential. Effective strategies for work division, strong communication channels, clear ownership, and forward planning are crucial for minimizing friction and ensuring project success. Shared code can introduce hidden costs like coordination overhead and technical debt, making standardization and early issue detection key for smooth operations.
The New Stack·1yScrum Sucks Because You’re Doing It Wrong
Scrum is often misunderstood and misapplied, leading to frustration among engineers. Effective scrum implementation requires understanding its fundamentals, such as having a fully cross-functional team, conducting meaningful standups and retrospectives, and correctly handling metrics like story points and velocity. Common pitfalls include partial adoption of agile practices, incorrectly set teams, and not acting on retrospective feedback. Addressing these issues can greatly improve the success of scrum in a team.
Community Picks·1yIf engineers gave accurate estimates 😅
A humorous take on the challenges of accurately estimating software development timelines, highlighting how different variables like intern involvement, hiring a highly skilled engineer, and daily check-ins can counterintuitively affect project duration.