• Letting Go to Grow: A Lesson in Leadership

    Letting Go to Grow: A Lesson in Leadership

    1–2 minutes

    Today’s post is a short one. The younger Engineering Manager in me took pride in being the center of everything. My leadership style was all about leading from the front. Combined with a strong bias for action, it felt good, and it worked well enough to get me to Senior EM. I remember once, right… Read more

  • The Unexpected Outcome of a Faceless Instagram Experiment

    The Unexpected Outcome of a Faceless Instagram Experiment

    4–6 minutes

    A few months ago, I started what was supposed to be a simple experiment. The original goal was not to build a social media channel. It was to leverage AI and see where this journey would take me. Read more about the faceless Instagram experiment here. I was writing a book. The question I wanted… Read more

  • Bias, Burnout & Engineering Culture in the Age of AI

    Bias, Burnout & Engineering Culture in the Age of AI

    7–11 minutes

    I wanted to become a team lead for a very specific reason: I wanted to get into a privileged position. I wanted a role where I would no longer have to constantly explain the need for what I was doing, and where I actually had the leverage to influence culture. Power dynamics are very real.… Read more

  • What Engineering Leaders Should Measure

    What Engineering Leaders Should Measure

    4–6 minutes

    “You need to finish ten tickets this sprint.” In all my years as an engineering manager, I have never uttered those words. Counting tickets is a fundamentally flawed way to measure developer productivity. If you want to build a high-performing engineering organization, performance evaluation has to start with the business value we deliver, and it… Read more

  • How to Rebuild Your Career Loop

    How to Rebuild Your Career Loop

    3–5 minutes

    Read similar posts related to my career transition and career loop here. One of the most brutal lessons in a senior career is accepting that merit and advancement are related, but they are absolutely not the same thing. Merit is your capability, your judgment, your impact. Advancement is a game of organizational bingo: does the… Read more

  • The Senior Career Trap: Why High Performance Stops Working

    The Senior Career Trap: Why High Performance Stops Working

    3–4 minutes

    Read similar posts related to Career Loop here. There’s a distinct turning point in most senior careers where the fundamental question you ask yourself shifts. You stop asking: “Am I capable?” And you start asking: “Is this environment actually capable of recognizing and supporting what I’m ready to bring?” This distinction changes everything. Early on… Read more

Trending