Best of Leadership — July 2025

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   Article

   Tech World With Milan·43w

   5 books that changed my engineering career forever

   A CTO shares five transformative books that shaped his engineering career: The Pragmatic Programmer for professional development principles, Designing Data-Intensive Applications for systems architecture understanding, A Philosophy of Software Design for managing code complexity, Thinking Fast and Slow for decision-making improvement, and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People for leadership foundations. Each book contributed beyond technical knowledge by challenging assumptions, introducing mental models, and changing approaches to coding, team leadership, and career growth.

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   Article

   swizec.com·44w

   What makes a senior engineer

   Senior engineers are expected to go beyond just implementing requirements - they must push back on product decisions, own OKRs and roadmaps, work directly with stakeholders to solve business problems, and champion long-term technical vision. The role involves setting strategic direction, managing multi-month or multi-year projects, and ensuring all team efforts align with the overall technical vision. Engineers who only execute tasks without questioning or strategic thinking typically don't advance beyond mid-level positions.

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   Article

   Work Chronicles·45w

   (comic) Management Priorities

   A workplace comic exploring the disconnect between management priorities and day-to-day work realities, highlighting common challenges in organizational decision-making and team dynamics.

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   Article

   Work Chronicles·46w

   (comic) Delayed Transmission

   A workplace comic exploring the challenges of delayed communication in professional environments, likely highlighting common frustrations with timing and message delivery in modern work settings.

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   Article

   Manager.dev·43w

   Team got cut. Scope didn’t.

   Engineering teams face increased workload after layoffs while maintaining the same scope and roadmap commitments. The challenge involves supporting more systems with fewer people, leading to context switching and unsustainable knowledge distribution. Two key strategies help manage this situation: showing the ongoing maintenance costs of systems to stakeholders by adding a third dimension to roadmap discussions, and mapping the new reality where knowledge sharing becomes limited and senior engineers face increased mental exhaustion from concentrated responsibilities.

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   Article

   Manager.dev·46w

   Stop forcing AI tools on your engineers

   Engineering managers should avoid forcing AI tools on their teams and instead focus on outcomes rather than tool adoption. The pressure to become "AI-first" often leads to counterproductive mandates that hurt productivity. Better approaches include giving engineers time to explore AI tools organically, sharing what actually works within your organization, and allowing teams to adopt tools at their own pace. Companies like Monday.com successfully implemented AI exploration by dedicating 5 weeks for hands-on training and peer-led demonstrations. While AI tools can provide significant benefits, especially for new codebases, forcing adoption through metrics like token usage or tool mandates typically backfires.

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   Article

   daniel.haxx.se·45w

   How I do it

   Daniel Stenberg, creator and maintainer of curl, shares his approach to leading one of the world's most widely used open source projects. He works 50-55 hours per week split between morning and evening sessions, driven by a sense of responsibility to billions of users and a commitment to making curl best-in-class in every aspect. His motivation comes from user feedback, the project's independence from corporate control, and a strong personal connection to the work. He emphasizes leading by example, maintaining low bureaucracy, and fostering a welcoming community while upholding high standards for code quality and documentation.

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   Article

   Tech Lead Digest·46w

   How to Deal With a Toxic Top-Performer

   High-performing toxic employees create organizational dependency through exclusive knowledge rather than irreplaceable talent. The solution involves extracting and codifying their expertise using the 5×3™ framework: identifying five core pillars of their knowledge with three concrete examples each. This structural approach transforms individual heroics into team capabilities, reducing dependency while preserving institutional knowledge. For narcissistic personalities resistant to coaching, present a draft framework and let their ego drive the knowledge transfer process through critique and teaching opportunities.

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   Article

   StaffEng·46w

   Adam Bender - Principal Software Engineer at Google

   Adam Bender, a Principal Engineer at Google, shares insights about the staff engineer role, emphasizing the shift from individual technical execution to strategic business thinking and cross-team coordination. He describes how staff engineers solve open-ended problems, reduce system complexity, and mentor junior developers. Bender highlights the importance of communication skills, systems thinking, and the ability to connect disparate teams and solutions across large organizations. He discusses his promotion journey, the concept of 'staff projects,' and provides advice for aspiring and new staff engineers about embracing discomfort during skill development.

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    Article

    Stay SaaSy·46w

    Naming Software Teams

    Team names serve as contracts that define ownership and prevent mission creep in software organizations. A well-chosen name should be specific enough to block scope expansion while enabling efficient routing of questions and responsibilities. Broad names like 'Platform Team' attract unwanted work, while ambiguous names create confusion. Specific names tied to actual ownership (like 'Widget A Team') provide clarity and prevent territorial conflicts between teams.

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    Article

    Lobsters·44w

    Two Simple Rules to Fix Code Reviews

    Two fundamental rules can dramatically improve code review effectiveness: minimize response time to prevent context loss and momentum disruption for authors, and always include explicit 'because' clauses in comments to clearly communicate the reasoning behind feedback. Quick response doesn't mean quick approval, but rather prompt engagement with the change. Senior engineers play a crucial role in establishing positive code review culture through their behavior, as others will follow their example.

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    Article

    David Heinemeier Hansson·43w

    Executives should be the least busy people

    Traditional executives understood the importance of maintaining availability over packed schedules. By keeping calendars less busy, leaders preserve capacity for unexpected opportunities, customer needs, and critical situations that require immediate attention. This approach prioritizes strategic availability over operational efficiency, allowing executives to focus on high-impact moments rather than constant activity.

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    Video

    Programmers are also human·46w

    *The guy* working from office.

    A humorous day-in-the-life narrative following an unproductive office developer who commits security mistakes, outsources work inappropriately, spends excessive time eating, and demonstrates poor coding practices while colleagues express frustration with their lack of contribution and questionable decisions.

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    Article

    c0de517e's weblore·44w

    The Tyranny of Code.

    Large codebases inevitably calcify and stifle innovation as they grow, creating a tyranny where adding new features becomes increasingly difficult. The author argues that successful projects face an unavoidable dilemma: early flexibility gives way to rigid, hard-to-change code as teams grow and user demands increase. Solutions include enforcing strict size limits on code modules, avoiding false abstractions that don't truly isolate complexity, and recognizing that most modern development tools actually enable larger, more complex codebases rather than solving the fundamental problem. The key insight is that fighting code calcification is primarily a cultural challenge requiring discipline to stop writing code rather than a technical tooling problem.

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    Article

    Ars Technica·44w

    Nearly 3,000 people are leaving NASA, and this director is one of them

    NASA is experiencing a significant exodus with nearly 3,000 employees leaving, including Makenzie Lystrup, director of the Goddard Space Flight Center. This departure comes amid the Trump administration's plans for a 25% budget cut to the space agency. Goddard, NASA's largest science center with over 8,000 employees and a $4.7 billion budget, manages major space telescopes including James Webb and Hubble. The exodus has prompted hundreds of current and former NASA employees to sign an open letter expressing concerns about policies that could compromise the agency's mission and safety.

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    Article

    Charity·46w

    Thoughts on Motivation and My 40-Year Career

    A tech industry veteran reflects on their 40-year career journey from a fundamentalist upbringing in rural Idaho to becoming a successful founder and CTO. The author shares how work became a source of liberation and personal growth, discusses the evolution from individual contributor to engineering manager to company founder, and argues that business can be a vehicle for positive change. They emphasize the importance of building institutions with integrity, maintaining ideals while competing in the marketplace, and how the second half of a career should focus on purpose and legacy.

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    Article

    Community Picks·47w

    Writing Code Was Never The Bottleneck

    LLMs have made code generation faster and cheaper, but the real bottlenecks in software development remain unchanged: code reviews, knowledge transfer, testing, debugging, and team coordination. While AI tools can quickly produce working code, understanding, verifying, and maintaining that code requires the same human effort as before. The challenge has shifted from writing code to ensuring quality and shared understanding as teams process larger volumes of generated code, making careful review and thoughtful design more critical than ever.

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