Best of Leadership — September 2025

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Article
David Heinemeier Hansson·35w
The great falls of Boeing, Intel, and Apple
A critical analysis of how major tech companies like Boeing, Intel, and Apple have declined after appointing CEOs without engineering or product backgrounds. The author argues that it takes approximately ten years for company culture to deteriorate under non-technical leadership, citing specific examples of failed products and strategic missteps at each company. The piece advocates for technical leaders who understand the products they oversee rather than purely business-focused executives.
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Article
bonnycode·36w
Work Hard, Have Fun, Go Home
Hustle culture prioritizes the appearance of hard work over actual results, creating toxic workplace dynamics that harm both individuals and organizations. The author shares personal experiences showing how strategic thinking and sustainable work practices lead to better outcomes than grinding through long hours. Key warning signs include employees who never take real vacations, single points of failure in critical systems, and leadership that emphasizes effort over results when facing challenges. The most effective teams focus on innovation and value creation rather than time spent at desks.
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Article
Linear·35w
Why we committed to a zero-bugs policy
Linear maintains a zero-bug policy requiring all bugs to be fixed within 7 days (low priority) or 48 hours (high priority). The company cleared their 175-bug backlog in three weeks and established practices including daily bug triage, load balancing through dashboards, and eliminating the option to defer bugs to backlog. This approach has led to fixing over 2,000 bugs annually, improved customer relationships through rapid response times, and created a quality-focused engineering culture that prevents bugs proactively.
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Article
Hacker News·35w
How to Lead in a Room Full of Experts
Technical leadership isn't about being the smartest person in the room, but rather serving as an effective translator between different teams and perspectives. A lead developer's primary role involves bridging communication gaps between backend developers, frontend teams, and product managers while keeping everyone focused on solving the actual problem rather than getting lost in technical debates. The key skills include asking the right questions, admitting when you don't know something, and creating space for experts to contribute their best work rather than trying to out-expert them.
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Article
David Heinemeier Hansson·36w
Apple has no one left who can say no
Apple's leadership crisis is evident in failed projects like the $10 billion Project Titan car initiative and the buggy CarPlay Ultra release. The company lacks decisive leadership to maintain quality standards, with products shipping despite significant performance issues like 12fps lag and system crashes. This reflects a broader organizational problem where quarterly earnings take precedence over product excellence, contrasting with founder-led companies that typically maintain higher quality standards.
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Article
InfoQ·37w
Thinking Like an Architect
Gregor Hohpe redefines the architect role as an "IQ booster" who makes teams smarter rather than making all decisions. He introduces the "Architect Elevator" concept for connecting different organizational levels, emphasizes using metaphors to communicate technical concepts to business stakeholders, and presents architects as option traders who help organizations defer decisions until more information is available. The talk covers practical strategies for handling resistance, using models effectively, and thinking multidimensionally about problems like vendor lock-in.
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Article
Engineering Enablement·36w
How 18 companies measure AI’s impact in engineering
A comprehensive report examining how 18 major tech companies including GitHub, Google, and Dropbox measure AI's impact on software engineering. The study reveals specific metrics used to evaluate AI tool effectiveness, usage patterns, and productivity gains, providing practical guidance for organizations looking to assess their AI investments in engineering workflows.
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Article
Stay SaaSy·36w
The Trauma You Need To Learn
Learning from difficult experiences like firing employees and shipping bugs is essential for growth in management and engineering. Shielding people from the emotional impact of their failures prevents them from developing better judgment and practices. Managers who experience the full weight of firing someone become more careful about hiring and performance management. Engineers who directly engage with customers affected by their bugs develop stronger commitment to quality. Organizations should expose people to appropriate levels of discomfort from their failures rather than creating buffer systems that remove accountability and learning opportunities.
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Article
Medium·36w
Beyond the Code: Lessons That Make You Senior
A senior engineer reflects on the non-technical skills that define seniority in software development. Key lessons include prioritizing reasoning over rigid rules, verifying assumptions instead of guessing, questioning unexpected positive results, building mechanisms rather than relying on good intentions, learning to say no to protect team complexity, taking ownership of decisions, mentoring through safe failure rather than protection, favoring simplicity over cleverness, preparing for inevitable system failures, and adapting to technological changes like AI tools. The author emphasizes that seniority is about judgment, humility, and growing others rather than just technical mastery.
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Article
Tech Lead Digest·35w
How can I influence others without manipulating them?
Explores five distinct approaches to ethical influence: Rationalising (using facts and logic), Asserting (speaking with conviction), Negotiating (finding common ground), Inspiring (using vision and stories), and Bridging (building relationships and social proof). Each method has strengths and risks when overused, and effective leaders learn to recognize which approach resonates with different people rather than defaulting to their preferred style.
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Article
GamesIndustry.biz·35w
The painful lessons learned from layoffs
Two game studios share their experiences with layoffs and strategies for avoiding them in the future. Spilt Milk Studios navigated publisher rejections by launching a Kickstarter and eventually rehired laid-off employees, while Aurora Punks scaled down from 50 to 20 people after rapid pandemic growth. Both studios emphasize the importance of diversified revenue streams, including work-for-hire projects and consulting, rather than relying solely on single game releases. The key lessons include maintaining multiple income sources, building sustainable team sizes, and focusing on consumer-driven revenue rather than depending entirely on publisher funding.
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Article
Changelog·34w
Hiring only senior engineers is killing companies (Changelog News #163)
Companies are making a strategic mistake by exclusively hiring senior engineers, which creates unsustainable team dynamics and limits organizational growth. The practice overlooks the value that junior engineers bring to teams and creates knowledge gaps that can harm long-term company health.
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Article
Charity·35w
Are you an experienced software buyer? I could use some help.
Charity Majors is seeking advice from experienced software buyers for the second edition of 'Observability Engineering'. She needs guidance on enterprise software procurement processes, including vendor evaluation, proof of concepts, stakeholder management, and decision-making frameworks. The new edition will include a section on observability governance covering team structure, tool selection, cost management, and business cases.
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Article
Manager.dev·37w
3D No-Code, nights and weekends - a director of engineering’s side project
A Director of Engineering shares his journey building a 3D no-code platform as a side project, working 15 hours per week while maintaining his full-time role. After going full-time when his company closed, he discovered the product was too complex for non-technical users but worked well for engineers. This led to a pivot toward test-driven AI code generation for regulated industries, targeting developers and engineering managers instead of the original no-code market.
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Article
Hacker News·35w
How to stop functional programming
A satirical piece that demonstrates the absurdity of banning functional programming practices in the workplace. Through code examples, it shows how attempting to avoid pure functions and functional concepts leads to unnecessarily complex and awkward solutions, highlighting the inherent value of functional programming principles even when explicitly prohibited.
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Article
Manager.dev·35w
What's next for manager.dev and for me
An engineering director shares his 8-month career break experience, exploring entrepreneurship through indie products and startup ventures. After trying to build a parenting app, creating a newsletter monetization strategy, and co-founding a BigQuery analytics startup, he discovered his preference for stability over risk and team collaboration over solo work. He's now returning to full-time engineering management while continuing his newsletter for engineering managers and taking on an evangelist role at a YC startup.
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Article
Tech Lead Digest·37w
How can I deal with a team member who is always complaining?
Explores how leaders can transform chronic complaining team members from energy drains into contributors. Covers the psychological reasons behind complaining behavior, including learned helplessness, reinforcement patterns, and unmet needs for belonging. Provides practical inquiry-based techniques to redirect complaints into ownership and constructive action, with specific questions and meeting practices that shift team dynamics from cynicism to accountability.
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Article
Manager.dev·36w
$7B startup Head of Engineering and dad of 5 builds a profitable side project
A Head of Engineering at $7B startup Snyk shares how he built a profitable side project called Candl while managing five kids and a demanding job. He transformed his coaching practice into an AI-powered career planning tool by conducting extensive validation research, getting users before building, and using Ruby on Rails with AI assistance. The story emphasizes ruthless time management, setting scoped weekly goals, and being transparent about side projects with employers rather than hiding them.
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Article
Tech Lead Digest·34w
You're definitely going to be a manager now
AI will reshape management roles by reducing the need for pure middle managers while increasing the demand for management skills across all levels. Individual contributors will need to adopt management thinking as teams become leaner, and managing AI systems requires similar principles to managing humans: clear purpose, right selection, and good processes. Leadership becomes both easier with AI assistance and harder due to organizational uncertainty, requiring leaders to balance stability with adaptability.
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Video
ThePrimeTime·36w
this man is a gigachad
A developer highlights Nirav Patel, CEO and founder of Framework Computer, who actively contributes to open source projects in his spare time. Despite his executive role, Patel submits pull requests and helps improve various projects without leveraging his position for special treatment. The story emphasizes how rare it is to see tech leaders maintain hands-on technical involvement and genuine enthusiasm for coding, contrasting this with typical expectations of CEOs who have moved away from technical work.
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Article
Manager.dev·38w
Building a $5K ARR Side Project While Managing 9 Engineers
Taylor Barr shares how he built Delly, a team responsibility visualization tool, reaching $5K ARR and 30+ paying customers while managing 9 engineers full-time. The 18-month journey involved learning new technologies like Svelte, finding initial customers through personal networks, and discovering unexpected business skills. The side project enhanced his engineering leadership abilities and led to a product management role transition.
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Article
Christian Heilmann·34w
Time to separate the art from the artist
Explores the challenge of separating creators from their work in tech, examining how fame and power can corrupt individuals who produce valuable products or content. Discusses the responsibility of communities to address when creators abuse their platforms to spread harmful ideologies, and advocates for focusing on the merit of work while rejecting attempts to hijack technical platforms for political messaging.
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Article
Hacker News·35w
Getting More Strategic
Strategy requires balancing four key elements: time for deep thinking, context understanding, direction setting through proximate objectives, and execution expertise. Effective strategy isn't just about defining end states but creating incremental steps toward goals. Engineering leaders must develop coherent product, technical, team, and personal strategies that adapt to changing market conditions, especially in the post-ZIRP era where resource constraints demand harder choices and disciplined execution.
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Article
Visual Studio Blog·38w
Boost Your Copilot Collaboration with Reusable Prompt Files
Visual Studio 2022 introduces reusable prompt files that allow developers to save, share, and quickly access custom prompts for GitHub Copilot. These .prompt.md files are stored in the repository's .github/prompts/ directory, enabling teams to collaborate on effective AI prompts and maintain consistency across projects. The feature includes context menu integration, file referencing syntax, and encourages building shared prompt libraries for improved developer productivity.
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