Best of Leadership — June 2025

  1. 1
    Article
    Avatar of uxplanetUX Planet·50w

    Stop trying to be Steve Jobs and start learning from the losers

    Many companies blindly copy organizational models and practices from successful tech giants like Spotify, Google, and Netflix, but this approach often fails because these practices are context-dependent. The Spotify model, for example, has been abandoned even by Spotify itself. Instead of learning from winners who represent survivorship bias, teams should study failures to understand what actually breaks. Success stories are incomplete and don't prove causation - just because successful companies do something doesn't mean it made them successful. Organizations should think from first principles and adapt practices to their specific context rather than treating tech giant approaches as gospel.

  2. 2
    Article
    Avatar of workchroniclesWork Chronicles·47w

    (comic) Accountability

    A workplace comic exploring themes of accountability in professional environments, likely highlighting common scenarios where responsibility and blame are discussed or deflected in team settings.

  3. 3
    Article
    Avatar of staysaasyStay SaaSy·51w

    Your Manager Is Not Your Best Friend

    Managers should avoid commiserating with their direct reports as it creates organizational toxicity, builds factions, and prevents other teams from improving. Instead of providing unconditional sympathy like a best friend would, effective managers need to ask clarifying questions, seek truth, provide perspective, and focus on constructive solutions. The key is to validate feelings without validating facts, remove disparaging language, and redirect conversations toward productive outcomes rather than allowing negative venting sessions.

  4. 4
    Article
    Avatar of workchroniclesWork Chronicles·47w

    (comic) Build vs Buy

    A comic exploring the classic dilemma faced by development teams when deciding whether to build custom solutions internally or purchase existing third-party tools and services. The comic likely illustrates the common considerations, trade-offs, and decision-making process that engineers and managers encounter in this fundamental software development choice.

  5. 5
    Article
    Avatar of daily_updatesdaily.dev Changelog·50w

    Now your boss can pay for daily.dev Plus!

    Daily.dev launches Plus for Teams, allowing companies to purchase and manage daily.dev Plus subscriptions for their development teams. The service includes centralized billing, user management, priority support, and all premium features like smart prompts, custom feeds, and ad-free browsing. The announcement includes a template letter to help developers convince their managers and step-by-step setup instructions for organizations.

  6. 6
    Article
    Avatar of techleaddigestTech Lead Digest·49w

    Smart People Don't Chase Goals; They Create Limits

    Traditional goal-setting often creates misalignment and focuses on outcomes rather than process. Smart people instead work within constraints - self-imposed boundaries that guide decisions without locking in specific predictions. Constraints like 'never work with clients who drain me' or 'only build products I can explain to a teenager' provide adaptive frameworks that respond to feedback and maintain authenticity. This approach proves more effective in ambiguous, creative domains where rigid goals become brittle and counterproductive.

  7. 7
    Article
    Avatar of infoqInfoQ·49w

    How Software Engineers Can Grow Their Career

    Bruno Rey outlines three key factors for software engineer career growth: ambition, capacity, and opportunity. He emphasizes taking proactive steps to broaden influence by learning from peers, stepping outside comfort zones, and taking on tasks beyond current responsibilities. Rey recommends maintaining a brag document to ensure work visibility, setting realistic long-term career goals with intermediate milestones, and planning for setbacks. The approach focuses on expanding one's area of influence through deliberate action and strategic career planning.

  8. 8
    Article
    Avatar of organizingautomationOrganizing Automation·51w

    Leading Without the Title

    Leadership begins with personal leadership - understanding yourself, your strengths, and weaknesses before leading others. Developers aspiring to leadership roles shouldn't wait for the title but should start demonstrating leadership through facilitating meetings, mentoring juniors, and sharing expertise. True leadership involves guiding teams toward goals rather than working harder individually, and authority should be backed by logical explanations rather than relying solely on job titles.

  9. 9
    Article
    Avatar of architectureweeklyArchitecture Weekly·50w

    Do we still need the QA role?

    The debate about whether QA roles are still needed stems from misconceptions about what quality assurance actually involves. While AI and automation can handle repetitive testing tasks, skilled QA engineers provide value through early involvement in design discussions, systematic thinking about edge cases, and preventing problems before they're built. The issue isn't that QA is obsolete, but that the industry has often hired unqualified "clicker" testers instead of treating testing as a specialized engineering discipline. Effective QA requires technical skills, system understanding, and integration into development teams from day one, not separation as an afterthought.

  10. 10
    Article
    Avatar of lobstersLobsters·47w

    Agile Was Never Your Problem Pt 1/2

    Agile methodologies often fail not because of the principles themselves, but due to process theater and management interference. True agile focuses on team ownership, continuous communication, and lightweight processes rather than rigid ceremonies. Common failure modes include waterfall thinking disguised as agile vocabulary, lack of team autonomy, and internal rot from knowledge hoarding and resistance to collaboration. Successful teams often abandon formal scrum practices in favor of custom lightweight processes that prioritize actual productivity over ceremonial compliance.

  11. 11
    Video
    Avatar of t3dotggTheo - t3․gg·51w

    Why good engineers keep burning out

    Engineers have different tolerance levels for change in their work environment, which affects their job satisfaction and burnout risk. Those working on boring, stable codebases often seek new technologies and tools to meet their need for variety, while those in high-change environments like content creation prefer stability in their tooling. Understanding your personal 'change energy' threshold helps explain why good engineers burn out when pushed beyond their comfort zone, and why different industries attract different types of people based on their change tolerance.

  12. 12
    Article
    Avatar of charityCharity·50w

    On How Long it Takes to Know if a Job is Right for You or Not

    Trust your gut instincts about new jobs - first impressions within the first week are remarkably accurate predictors of long-term job satisfaction. For managers especially, company alignment is crucial since management work requires representing the organization and its values. Red flags include leadership teams grown entirely from within, creating groupthink. Rather than waiting months to see if things improve, recognize early warning signs and plan accordingly while learning from the experience to avoid similar situations in future roles.

  13. 13
    Article
    Avatar of infoqInfoQ·51w

    How to Develop Your Skills to Become a Principal Engineer

    Becoming a principal engineer requires more than deep technical expertise. Success depends on developing influence, communication, and strategic thinking skills. Principal engineers focus on enabling teams by setting technical direction, driving good engineering practices, and shaping culture. The role demands becoming a "broken comb" with expertise across multiple domains and collaborative skills. Skills from outside activities like sports, volunteering, or gaming can provide valuable leadership perspective and should not be undervalued in career development.

  14. 14
    Article
    Avatar of devinterruptedDev Interrupted·48w

    No more coding vibes in the efficiency era

    The era of running engineering teams on vibes and endless hiring is over. Post-ZIRP economic conditions demand measurable productivity and efficiency. While AI tools can accelerate development, they lack business context and understanding of priorities. The real productivity challenge is context scarcity - engineers need clear understanding of business goals, architecture decisions, and strategic priorities. Senior engineers should focus on high-leverage work rather than low-value tasks. Engineering leaders must provide proof of value through meaningful metrics that balance results with team retention, moving beyond simple output measurements to demonstrate real business impact.

  15. 15
    Article
    Avatar of threedotslabsThree Dots Labs·47w

    How to Create PRs That Get Merged The Same Day

    Small pull requests that can be merged within a day are achievable through proper planning, feature splitting, and team culture changes. Big PRs create deadly loops where slow reviews lead to even bigger PRs to avoid multiple waits. Key strategies include using feature flags to merge incomplete code, splitting work vertically by feature slices and horizontally by architecture layers, prioritizing reviews as team responsibility, and involving product stakeholders early to reduce scope. Mob programming can help with complex refactoring that's hard to split. The goal is eliminating surprises in PRs through upfront planning and creating shared team responsibility for code delivery rather than individual ownership.

  16. 16
    Article
    Avatar of tcTechCrunch·51w

    Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai dismisses AI job fears, emphasizes expansion plans

    Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai addresses concerns about AI replacing jobs, arguing that AI serves as an accelerator making engineers more productive rather than eliminating positions. He emphasizes the company's growth plans through 2026, citing expanding ventures like Waymo, quantum computing, and YouTube's growth as evidence of new opportunities. While acknowledging legitimate concerns about job displacement, Pichai maintains optimism about AI progress while noting uncertainty about achieving artificial general intelligence.

  17. 17
    Article
    Avatar of webdevWebDev·51w

    🚨 "Overqualified" or just uncomfortable for others?

    A developer shares their experience of internal job transfer where they faced hostility and were labeled as 'overqualified' and unable to code within the first two days. The situation involved outdated technology, lack of documentation, restricted internet access, and judgment for using modern tools like ChatGPT, highlighting toxic workplace dynamics that can hinder professional growth.

  18. 18
    Article
    Avatar of techleaddigestTech Lead Digest·50w

    The problem with shadow development

    Shadow development occurs when engineers bypass official company tools like Jira in favor of unauthorized alternatives such as Google Sheets, Notion, or Discord for project tracking. This happens because developers find official tools inefficient and prioritize process over progress. While this creates security risks and communication gaps, successful managers embrace flexibility by allowing teams to choose tools that match their workflow, leading to improved productivity and morale. The key is establishing open communication about tool preferences before unauthorized solutions are implemented.

  19. 19
    Article
    Avatar of staysaasyStay SaaSy·47w

    We Tried That

    Organizations often reject new initiatives based on previous failures, but this approach overlooks critical factors that may have changed. Past failures can result from ego, negativity bias, or ignorance rather than fundamental impossibility. Key variables like team composition, technology improvements, organizational structure, and market conditions evolve over time. Success often requires multiple conditions to align simultaneously, like pins in a lock. When using past failures to inform decisions, leaders should extract specific, granular learnings rather than broad generalizations. The key is distinguishing between fundamental impossibility and situational failure while recognizing that some business objectives remain necessary regardless of past setbacks.

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