The Engineering Leadership & Wellbeing Newsletter 🌱 #10
Gone are the days when big universities fed you a hefty diet of engineering leadership theory and then kicked you out the door to “test in production.” That doesn’t cut it anymore. Today, EMs and tech leaders seek small, intimate groups where they’re not afraid to be vulnerable, allowing them to practice communication skills, empathy, and conflict/people management.
Our Effective Engineering Manager Course uses role-playing to simulate real-world scenarios. You'll gain hands-on experience in making decisions, conducting reviews, and leading a team, all in a controlled, risk-free environment. Make sure to sign up for our June intake soon, as spots are filling up quickly!
Making Software Understandable
The rationale seems clear: without understandability, maintaining software, ensuring its security, and enhancing its performance become significantly more challenging tasks. Nicole advocates for making software inherently understandable and well-documented, emphasizing that code should cater to its maintainers' knowledge level, contain isolated complexities, and be reviewed with fresh eyes.
Read more: The most important goal in designing software is understandability
Lars Has Been Coding for 40 years…
...and as he shares a wealth of knowledge, he encourages readers to 'think, research, learn, and ponder' about building software. He discusses topics such as maintenance, diversity, quality, and productivity, and even includes a section on the politics and ethics of building software. Here you can find forty years of musings packed into an insightful essay.
Read more: 40 years of programming
The Biggest Productivity Killer
Task switching can be detrimental. For some, it may boost creativity; however, in software development, switching contexts undermines productivity and concentration. It forces the brain to constantly adjust to various tasks, thus depleting essential mental resources and time. Check out
and ’s post about dealing with context-switching at each step in your career.
Building Influence as an Engineering Leader
Kelly Vaughn, Director of Engineering at Spot AI, talks about influence as an engineering leader. She looks at it from the perspective of both individual contributor and manager, and emphasizes trust, communication, and empowerment to build effective dev teams.
The Absurdity of Corporate Leadership
Ludicity offers a fun read. In this post, he humorously deconstructs the meaning of a 'Continuous Improvement Playback & Strategy' meeting, questioning the necessity of forcing attendance for a lengthy discussion, the unrealistic expectation for energy and enthusiasm, and the jargon-filled communication style that alienates rather than clarifies.
Read more: Leadership Is a Hell of a Drug
The Top 900 Open Source AI Tools - Analyzed!
Chip Huyen reviews 900 popular open-source AI tools, covering aspects such as the AI stack, data, model development, applications, infrastructure, open-source AI developers, and the expanding ecosystem of open source in China.
Read more: What I learned from looking at 900 most popular open-source AI tools
Tripling Uber's Developer Productivity
Back in 2016, as Uber was expanding, its developers encountered significant productivity challenges, achieving only 1 PR per developer per sprint, alongside production issues. Over the next five years, they experimented with tools like Cerberus, SubmitQueue, and DevPod, effectively tripling productivity. Recognizing that many companies face similar challenges, early Uber engineers Debo and Mihai decided to share their experiences.
We Need to Talk About Devin
An applied AI lab called Cognition recently made waves by releasing a video showcasing Devin—a generative AI tool they tout as the world’s first 'fully autonomous AI software engineer.' What are your thoughts? Will it be an assistant to coding, or will it replace your developers?
Read more: What is Devin and can it really replace developers?
Here’s an interesting video on the topic by Programming with Mosh.
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If you're looking for a specific subject to read about or maybe would like to collaborate on a project, reach out to me at tomek@howareyou.work.