#Engineering-Management
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Why developers quit their jobs so soon
The article argues that developers leave when they feel unappreciated, lonely, bored, stuck, or apathetic, and that managers should address pay, recognition, team connection, challenge, growth, and mission.
Using fake deadlines without driving your engineers crazy
The post argues that challenging deadlines help teams ship faster by countering Parkinson’s Law, as long as scope, expectations, and communication are handled well.
Managing High-Performing Software Teams
High-performing software teams need autonomy to make decisions quickly, while managers provide empathy, understanding, and guidance. Waiting for decisions and centralizing expertise slow delivery and reduce impact.
Losing a dev means losing a treasure
The article argues that programmers accumulate knowledge, autonomy, and project context over time, so losing one can disrupt delivery. Retention depends on tools, autonomy, and real involvement in decisions.
Traits of a Good Tech Lead
The article defines a Tech Lead as the person responsible for a team’s technical direction, focused on architecture, quality, and mentorship, and argues that the role should increase team autonomy rather than become a bottleneck.
Problem Driven Development
The post argues that technical roadmaps should start from concrete problems in pages, SLOs, cost, failures, and wasted time. It also applies the same logic to tech debt and roadmap prioritization.
How to Lead Your Team when the House Is on Fire
The article adapts wartime leadership to engineering management: narrow priorities, remove blockers, preserve morale, hire for autonomy, handle performance issues clearly, and keep supporting individual growth and your own capacity.
Balancing Code and Teams: How Microsoft Does Effective Engineering Management
Nick Cosentino describes engineering management as a people-first role built on situational leadership, transparency, trust, career alignment, safe delivery practices, and thoughtful use of AI.
How to Give Constructive Feedback with Confidence as an Engineering Leader
The article defines feedback as timely, kind, and clear information meant to change behavior, then shows how managers can give more useful feedback through in-the-moment and behavioral conversations.
Becoming an Engineering Manager Can Make You Better At Life And Relationships
The author argues that engineering management can be valuable for reasons beyond career advancement, because it develops self-control, awareness, feedback, boundaries, and other skills useful in life and relationships.
Great leaders are in the details
Argues that stepping back from execution abdicates a leader's core job; engaged, detail-level presence built on curiosity beats delegation from a distance.
Don't become an Engineering Manager
Anton Zaides reverses his own standing advice after a friend's EM offer, arguing 2026 favors staying an IC on pay, ladder competition, and time to keep pace with the field.
Staff Engineer vs Engineering Manager
Argues Staff Engineers earn their value by operating across teams, not by covering for a manager's technical gaps, and breaks ownership into knowledge, mandate, and responsibility.
Every Layer of Review Makes You 10x Slower
Avery Pennarun argues AI coding speed doesn't fix engineering velocity because review layers, not typing speed, are the bottleneck, and draws on Deming's quality theory to argue for eliminating review stages, not stacking more of them.
The Innovator's Dilemma in Engineering Organizations
Innovation teams create a perverse social structure — the design challenge is rewarding essential production work while still enabling experimentation.
IC vs Management: A Longer Career Than You Think
The IC-vs-management decision feels permanent when you think in 10-year terms — but in a 30-40 year career, it's far less binary than it appears.
Feedback Loops and Counterintuitive Constraints
Modeling with real data reveals surprises — Larson discovered hiring was constrained by manager hiring, not engineer hiring, fundamentally changing where he invested his time.
When the Model Breaks: Messy Situations Require Human Judgment
Models are useful but they miss things — when overlapping scenarios fall outside the system's coverage, managers must fall back on human judgment.
Just Systems in Engineering Management
A just system ensures people who follow established processes are rewarded equitably, removing the need to game or self-promote.
Multiplying Value Through Systems Thinking
Successful engineers multiply value rather than just adding it — think in terms of system effects, not just the immediate task, and the returns compound.
An Elegant Puzzle - Systems of Engineering Management
Engineering management as elegant puzzles — a recipe book of systems and structures you return to when you need them, essential for isolated managers learning from books.
You Don't Have to Read Every Page
Management books work better as references than narratives — put them down, come back when a new challenge makes a specific chapter suddenly relevant.
Andy Grove's Arithmetic for Team Sizing
Simple arithmetic beats research-backed perfection: half a day per direct report means no more than ten — sometimes basic observation is all you need.
Dealing with Single Incidents Exceptions
Don't treat a single incident as representative reality — look at the distribution like a flame graph, and design processes that handle exceptions fairly.
Engineering Management in the Age of Agents
The article argues that even if coding agents reach mid-level engineering ability, engineering managers will still be needed to connect business and technical needs, define solutions, and handle people issues.
Lessons learned from becoming CTO of a small startup
The post describes the shift from engineering to CTO work in a small company, focusing on trust, delegation, communication, stress, decision-making, and accepting mistakes as part of management.
The Ultimate Guide to Onboarding Software Engineers
The article argues that engineering onboarding needs structure, emotional support, and expectation management across team, organization, and culture, then lays out a 30-60-90-150 day framework.
Creating a Culture of Quality
The article argues that product quality is shaped by organizational culture, not just process. It highlights four drivers of quality as a cultural value: leadership emphasis, message credibility, peer involvement, and employee ownership.