# engineering-leadership Published articles for engineering-leadership. This is one page of public article previews, not the complete archive. Follow Next page to continue. Summaries are not the original full articles. ## Presentation: Lead Without a Ladder: How I Climbed Into Engineering Leadership DevFeed: [Presentation: Lead Without a Ladder: How I Climbed Into Engineering Leadership]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Pauline Jepp Published: 2026-09-15T09:10:00Z Content type: opinion Language: en Sources: [InfoQ]() Topics: [engineering-leadership](), [systems]() Tags: [alignment](), [careers](), [chief-engineer](), [culture-methods](), [engineering](), [engineering-leadership](), [infoq](), [leadership](), [mentorship](), [presentation](), [qcon-san-francisco-2025](), [qcon-software-development-conference](), [safety](), [team](), [transcripts](), [trust]() ### AI overview Pauline Jepp discusses how systems thinking, rock climbing, and flocking behaviors inform engineering leadership. She covers balancing team autonomy with alignment, supporting mentorship and other invisible work, and transitioning from hands-on engineering to leadership while maintaining organizational trust and psychological safety. ### Source excerpt Pauline Jepp explains how systems thinking, rock climbing, and flocking behaviors apply to engineering leadership. She shares strategies for balancing team autonomy with alignment, supporting invisible work like mentorship, and navigating transitions from hands-on engineer to engineering leader while maintaining organizational trust and psychological safety. By Pauline Jepp ## The economics of agent scale: tokens, ROI, and building platforms for AI-first teams (Part 2) DevFeed: [The economics of agent scale: tokens, ROI, and building platforms for AI-first teams (Part 2)]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Eira May Published: 2026-09-03T07:40:00Z Content type: article Language: en Sources: [Stack Overflow Blog]() Topics: [AI Bots](), [ai observability]() Tags: [agent](), [agentic](), [agentic-ai](), [agents](), [ai](), [ai-agents](), [business](), [cost](), [developers](), [engineering](), [engineering-leadership](), [google](), [infrastructure](), [leaders-of-code](), [model](), [observability](), [php](), [platform](), [platform-engineering](), [podcast](), [scale](), [science](), [tooling](), [work]() ### AI overview A podcast discussion on operating AI agents at scale, focusing on token efficiency, cost governance, context management, and platform tooling and observability. ### Source excerpt Andi Gutmans, head of Agentic Data Cloud at Google, returns for the second half of his Leaders of Code conversation to talk through the cost and infrastructure side of agentic development. ICYMI, part one covered judgment, code review, and data activation. ## From PHP to team lead of agents: rethinking judgment, review, and data with Google's Andi Gutmans (Part 1) DevFeed: [From PHP to team lead of agents: rethinking judgment, review, and data with Google's Andi Gutmans (Part 1)]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Eira May Published: 2026-08-20T07:40:00Z Content type: article Language: en Sources: [Stack Overflow Blog]() Topics: [PHP](), [Artificial Intelligence](), [Google](), [leaders-of-code](), [Platform Engineering](), [data](), [Code review]() Tags: [agentic-ai](), [agents](), [ai](), [ai-agents](), [business](), [engineering](), [engineering-leadership](), [google](), [leaders-of-code](), [php](), [platform](), [podcast](), [review](), [software-development]() ### AI overview Andi Gutmans discusses the evolution from PHP's democratization of web development to agentic software development, arguing that individual contributors are becoming team leads of agents. The conversation examines code review, interviewing, human and agent judgment, organizational data readiness, and Google's borderless lakehouse and agent-driven ontology-building concepts. ### Source excerpt Andi Gutmans, head of Agentic Data Cloud at Google and co-creator of PHP, joins Leaders of Code to talk about why agentic development feels less like a break from the past and more like the next chapter of the same story. This is part one of a two-part conversation. ## Explorers, exploiters, and the myth of the 100x engineer DevFeed: [Explorers, exploiters, and the myth of the 100x engineer]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Eira May Published: 2026-08-05T07:40:00Z Content type: article Language: en Sources: [Stack Overflow Blog]() Topics: [Artificial Intelligence](), [AI Strategy](), [Reinforcement learning](), [leaders-of-code]() Tags: [ai](), [ai-adoption](), [ai-tools](), [business](), [engineering](), [engineering-leadership](), [experiment](), [explore](), [leaders-of-code](), [learning](), [podcast](), [productivity]() ### AI overview The article challenges the myth that a small group of inherently exceptional engineers drives disproportionate AI gains. It argues that engineering leaders should treat exploration and exploitation as a continuum and help more engineers develop through curiosity, adaptability, experimentation, and learning, rather than focusing only on identifying and promoting existing "100x" performers. ### Source excerpt The "find the special ones and promote their traits" approach isn't the best or only way to drive AI adoption and productivity on an engineering team. ## Engineering quality compounds DevFeed: [Engineering quality compounds]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Mike Shaver, Avery Pennarun Published: 2026-07-21T13:00:00Z Content type: news Language: en Sources: [Blog on Tailscale]() Topics: [engineering-leadership](), [Architecture & Design](), [Firefox](), [systems](), [JIT](), [Linux](), [JavaScript](), [Security](), [Shopify]() Tags: [developer](), [engineering](), [engineering-leadership](), [firefox](), [javascript](), [jit](), [linux](), [news](), [platform](), [security](), [shopify](), [systems]() ### AI overview Mike Shaver joins Tailscale as VP of Engineering, bringing experience in platform engineering, Firefox, Facebook's mobile transition, security products, systems programming, and edge infrastructure. The article frames his role around scaling engineering quality while keeping Tailscale's product reliable, useful, and understandable. ### Source excerpt Mike Shaver joins Tailscale to scale engineering quality. ## How do you turn AI coding chaos into a repeatable playbook? DevFeed: [How do you turn AI coding chaos into a repeatable playbook?]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Eira May Published: 2026-07-02T07:40:00Z Content type: article Language: en Sources: [Stack Overflow Blog]() Topics: [AI-assisted coding](), [ci](), [incident]() Tags: [agents](), [ai](), [ai-coding](), [best-practices](), [business](), [design-patterns](), [engineering-leadership](), [incident-response](), [leaders-of-code](), [podcast](), [testing]() ### AI overview A podcast discussion of Snowflake's five-stage approach to making AI-assisted engineering repeatable across an organization. It covers coding-agent design patterns, adoption practices, validation automation, and a proposed maturity model for on-call and incident response. ### Source excerpt Vivek Raghunathan, SVP of engineering at Snowflake, joins Leaders of Code at Snowflake Summit to break down the five-stage framework his org used to go from "let chaos reign" to a repeatable, org-wide system for AI-assisted engineering. ## The Strange Theatre of Technical Hiring DevFeed: [The Strange Theatre of Technical Hiring]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Daniel Glejzner Published: 2026-06-18T18:15:04Z Content type: opinion Language: en Sources: [Daniel Glejzner]() Topics: [engineering-leadership](), [Software Engineering](), [Code Challenge](), [Development]() Tags: [challenges](), [coding](), [developers](), [engineering](), [engineering-leadership](), [hiring](), [interview](), [software](), [software-engineering](), [technical](), [technical-interview]() ### AI overview The article argues that technical hiring often evaluates experienced engineers through narrow, timed coding exercises that may reward speed, recall, confidence under pressure, and familiarity with interview rituals more than the judgment and contextual skills required in software engineering work. ### Source excerpt A senior engineer joins a technical interview... Hi Angular Space community :) It's been a while since I pushed myself to write something. AI is changing the way we consume literally everything online, and I'm still trying to figure out what the best and most compelling way ## Revised rules of engineering leadership. DevFeed: [Revised rules of engineering leadership.]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Published: 2026-06-15T13:00:00Z Content type: article Language: en Sources: [Will Larson - Irrational Exuberance]() Topics: [engineering-leadership](), [migration](), [Development](), [CI/CD](), [Code]() Tags: [ci-cd](), [code](), [development](), [engineering](), [engineering-leadership](), [leadership](), [migration](), [tests]() ### AI overview An engineering leader revises their approach based on experience in hypergrowth environments and recent AI-tooling changes. The article argues that individuals can own much larger migrations, while the quality and speed of working code depend heavily on development harnesses such as tests, CI/CD, validation environments, and change previews. It also discusses designing processes so agents can handle common cases with appropriate controls and context. ### Source excerpt From early 2014 through late 2020, I was working in hypergrowth environments, which are challenging, but also educational. The most valuable feature of hypergrowth is that your mistakes reveal themselves next month rather than next year, because things go wrong very loudly when you're moving fast. I've been thinking a lot about hypergrowth recently, because Imprint's business is growing quickly and we did a large batch of hiring last year, but also because the AI-tooling shift has changed the pace at which it's possible to work. This post documents the new rules I've revised my approach to engineering leadership around, and then talks through the specific projects I've worked on over the past year that caused me to believe in these rules. Revised rules Migrations can be done by an individual rather than a team. Even complex, large changes can be 95% owned by the driving individual or team, and done in 10% of the time. As the initial cost of migrations goes down, the reward/penalty of each migration's quality goes up: even small sharp edges will break your colleagues' mental models about the software you co-maintain. The impact of individual judgment on your company has never been higher. While 1st-pass code is nearly free, the cost of working code depends on your development harness, and is not free. We're in an era when many companies say that everyone should be writing code, however our experience is that writing code that works well, while avoiding messy edgecases, remains difficult. Just how difficult remains a factor of your development harness, e.g. your tests, CI/CD, validation environments, preview-ability of changes, and so on. While I personally don't imagine it's valuable for most folks at a company to be contributing code, I suspect that most disagreement about that topic is actually a miscommunication: even at a company where "everyone codes", the marketing team isn't reducing allocations in your servers, instead it's about whether there is a safe bound ## Kent Beck and Michael Grinich Discuss AI Adoption and the Future of Software Engineering DevFeed: [Kent Beck and Michael Grinich Discuss AI Adoption and the Future of Software Engineering]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Kent Beck Published: 2026-05-20T14:15:38Z Content type: opinion Language: en Sources: [Software Design: Tidy First?]() Topics: [Artificial Intelligence](), [future of software](), [Software Engineering](), [engineering-culture](), [dev-tools]() Tags: [ai](), [developer-tools](), [discussion](), [engineering-leadership](), [future-of-software](), [leadership](), [software-engineering]() ### AI overview Kent Beck and Michael Grinich discuss how AI adoption is affecting the broader technology ecosystem, software costs, competition, and engineering leadership. They also discuss enterprise developer tools and the motivation to build software. ### Source excerpt Michael Grinich & Kent Beck on AI adoption, the future of software engineering, and what enterprise developer tools reveal about where tech is headed. ## AI and the Build-versus-Buy Decision in Platform Engineering DevFeed: [AI and the Build-versus-Buy Decision in Platform Engineering]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Rick Fast Published: 2026-05-05T11:01:02Z Content type: opinion Language: en Sources: [Expedia]() Topics: [Platform Engineering](), [agentic-coding](), [Artificial Intelligence](), [Software as a service]() Tags: [agentic-coding](), [ai](), [artificial-intelligence](), [developer-tools](), [engineering-leadership](), [platform](), [platform-engineering](), [saas](), [scale](), [software-engineering]() ### AI overview This commentary examines how agentic coding tools and AI-native workflows have changed the economics of building software for platform engineering teams. It argues that lower initial build costs do not eliminate the ongoing costs of ownership, including maintenance, compliance, operational tooling, UX work, and long-tail requirements. The article supports selectively replacing low-value, undifferentiated SaaS products while maintaining discipline about build-versus-buy decisions. ### Source excerpt Expedia Group Technology -- PlatformHow AI changed the build vs. buy equation, and why discipline matters more than everPhoto by Ali Kazal on Unsplash Agentic coding tools and AI-native workflows have changed what's possible for platform engineering teams. I lead Platform Engineering at Expedia Group™, one of the world's largest travel technology companies. We power brands like Expedia®, Hotels.com®, Vrbo®, Orbitz®, and Travelocity®. My organization builds the technology that all of these brands and their partners run on: APIs, data and AI services, developer tools, CI/CD infrastructure, and the shared capabilities that let thousands of engineers ship reliably at scale. For many greenfield problems, it now feels like we can build almost anything from scratch with a fraction of the effort it used to take. But that creates a harder question: just because we can build it, should we? The temptation is real When you lead a platform organization and your engineers suddenly have access to powerful agentic coding assistants, the possibilities open up fast. It's tempting to look at SaaS products your company is paying for and think, "We could build that in a weekend." And honestly? In many cases, you probably could stand something up quickly. The initial build cost has dropped through the floor. But building something and owning something are very different decisions. That's where the new calculus gets interesting. The hidden cost of owning software Vendors aren't just shipping features. They're maintaining the software, fixing bugs and edge cases you haven't thought about yet, and improving the UX across thousands of customers with different requirements. Mature platforms have decades of accumulated work behind them: production hardening, compliance, operational tooling, and long-tail requirements you'd only discover slowly through real-world use. You can't clone that maturity quickly, even if the initial build feels cheap thanks to AI. The build side of the equation has cha ## Signs That an Engineer May Be Planning to Leave DevFeed: [Signs That an Engineer May Be Planning to Leave]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Ryan Murphy Published: 2026-04-17T10:02:43Z Content type: opinion Language: en Sources: [The Software Engineering Times]() Topics: [engineering-leadership](), [engineering-culture](), [Code review]() Tags: [engineering-leadership](), [opinions](), [quality](), [team]() ### AI overview The article discusses observable signs that an engineer may be disengaging and considering leaving, including reduced input, less challenge to decisions, lower participation in future planning, and less investment in work quality. ### Source excerpt Most engineers decide to quit long before they tell anyone. Here is what to watch for. ## Tech Lead vs Engineering Manager. Which Path Is Right for You? DevFeed: [Tech Lead vs Engineering Manager. Which Path Is Right for You?]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Ryan Murphy Published: 2026-04-07T15:33:44Z Content type: opinion Language: en Sources: [The Software Engineering Times]() Topics: [Tech Lead](), [engineering-leadership](), [Job]() Tags: [career](), [engineering-leadership](), [leadership](), [tech-lead]() ### AI overview This article compares the Tech Lead and Engineering Manager career paths, explaining that they are separate routes rather than steps on a single ladder. It also notes that both paths generally involve becoming less hands-on over time and that engineers can change direction later. ### Source excerpt Most engineers assume it's a one way ladder. It isn't. ## Top engineering voices to follow in 2025 DevFeed: [Top engineering voices to follow in 2025]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Kate Bernacchi-Sass Published: 2025-07-18T13:00:00Z Content type: article Language: en Sources: [The incident.io Blog]() Topics: [engineering-leadership](), [Platform Engineering](), [GitHub Copilot](), [coding]() Tags: [2025](), [community](), [copilot](), [engineering](), [engineering-leadership](), [follow](), [github](), [incident](), [incident-channel](), [incident-management](), [incident-response](), [outage](), [platform-engineering](), [post-mortem](), [slack-incident](), [voices]() ### AI overview An editorial list highlights engineering voices to follow in 2025, focusing on people who share technical insights, leadership experience, organizational perspectives, practical engineering advice, and community contributions. It profiles Camille, Cassidy, and others, with topics including platform engineering, leadership growth, productivity, mental health, coding, and developer tools such as Copilot. ### Source excerpt We launched our list of Top engineering voices to follow in 2025 to spotlight those engineers who aren't just building behind the scenes, but also writing, posting, and contributing in ways that make the whole community smarter. ## Taking Ownership and Handling Difficult Responsibilities as an Engineering Manager DevFeed: [Taking Ownership and Handling Difficult Responsibilities as an Engineering Manager]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Anna J McDougall Published: 2025-06-25T12:20:24Z Content type: opinion Language: en Sources: [Anna J McDougall]() Topics: [engineering-leadership](), [Development]() Tags: [engineering](), [engineering-leadership](), [engineering-management](), [engineering-manager](), [leadership](), [leadership-team](), [management](), [management-skills](), [software-engineering](), [teams]() ### AI overview This commentary argues that engineering managers must sometimes accept conflict and deliver difficult feedback instead of trying to remain peers with their teams. As leaders move away from hands-on development, they must balance engineers' needs with stakeholders, product, and business expectations. ### Source excerpt An Engineering Manager's Guide to Taking Ownership by Taking Heat Title Image: a vibrant yellow background with a picture of Anna smiling, with two red devil-horns superimposed on top. Title text reads: "It's time to be the BAD GUY. An Engineering Manager's Guide to Taking Ownership by Taking Heat"Introduction At my first project management job, I was given the nickname "Mad Dog".* Any time new sales reps would join the company, the existing reps would try to scare them by telling them "Oh shit, you're on Mad Dog's project". The joke, of course, is that I'm a big ol' ray of sunshine: After a few days of being scared to encounter Mad Dog, those reps would meet me and realise they weren't going to have a problem with some hard-ass micromanager. The same is still true today, but I've also come to realise that there are some benefits to being Mad Dog. Sometimes, the best way to help your team is to lean into being the bad guy. In this post, I'll cover some situations where it's good to be bad, and why being the bad guy is a core management skill. * The nickname came about due to my name's similarity to a famous football player (Adam "Mad Dog" MacDougall). Say "Anna McDougall" and "Adam MacDougall" ten times and you'll hear it. Leadership means stepping out of the team As you move up the engineering leadership chain, from EM to Director to VP to CTO, you become less and less a part of the development teams. This sense of social isolation often drives leaders to try their best to be buddy-buddy with developers, to attempt to completely eradicate any sense of hierarchy, and to improve psychological safety. In general, this is a great idea. As a leader, you do need people to know that you're just human. You should have people trust you with their real thoughts. You must enable a culture where failure and feedback are freely given and learned from. But... You are also the one who has to take the heat from above, and sometimes you have to be the bad guy to the team when it come ## How a manager mindset shapes LLM-assisted coding DevFeed: [How a manager mindset shapes LLM-assisted coding]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Calvin French-Owen Published: 2025-02-11T12:00:00Z Content type: opinion Language: en Sources: [Calvin French-Owen]() Topics: [Vibe coding](), [Large Language Model](), [cursor](), [engineering-leadership](), [coding]() Tags: [ai-coding-assistants](), [cursor](), [engineering-leadership](), [opinion](), [vibe-coding]() ### AI overview The author examines why engineers differ in their views of LLM-generated code. Drawing on experiments with vibe coding and AI coding assistants, the article argues that success depends partly on how engineers augment themselves with LLMs and how much of the work involves defining goals, guardrails, and desired outcomes rather than implementing technical details. ### Source excerpt There's a lot of debate around how much 'good code' LLMs can write for you. Some engineers claim coding with LLMs is amazing, while others think they are trash. Ultimately, it depends on how much of a manager you are. ## Code.Lead.Succeed is changing DevFeed: [Code.Lead.Succeed is changing]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Dariusz Sadowski Published: 2024-06-30T12:35:50Z Content type: opinion Language: en Sources: [Thinking in Tech]() Topics: [engineering-leadership](), [Software Engineering](), [engineering-culture]() Tags: [engineering-leadership](), [engineering-manager](), [software-engineering](), [updates]() ### AI overview The author explains changes to the Code.Lead.Succeed newsletter and broader publishing strategy for 2024. Long-form content will move to the author's website, while the newsletter will continue with monthly software engineering philosophy articles and personal updates. The author also explains plans to focus more on an engineering leadership coaching business and why they are reducing activity on Substack. ### Source excerpt Code.Lead.Succeed is changing ## International Women in Engineering Day: reflections from our VP of Engineering, Myra Fulton DevFeed: [International Women in Engineering Day: reflections from our VP of Engineering, Myra Fulton]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Skyscanner Engineering Published: 2022-06-23T08:08:17Z Content type: article Language: en Sources: [Stories by Skyscanner Engineering on Medium]() Topics: [Software Engineering](), [Development](), [Testing](), [bug](), [Support]() Tags: [bug](), [career](), [documentation](), [engineering](), [engineering-leadership](), [problems](), [software](), [software-development](), [testing](), [vp-of-engineering](), [women-in-tech]() ### AI overview An interview with Skyscanner VP of Engineering Myra Fulton about her path from hospitality studies to software engineering leadership. She discusses lessons from support and mortgage development roles, including the importance of documentation, code quality, testing, and the real-world impact of software defects. ### Source excerpt Skyscanner VP of Engineering, Myra Fulton She is Skyscanner's most senior female engineer, but Myra Fulton's career as she knows it almost didn't happen -- a last-minute decision to change her university course from hospitality to engineering set her on a completely different path to the one she'd intended. This International Women In Engineering Day, we sat down with Myra to hear her about her journey to the top. Myra, what lead you to engineering originally -- was it always the plan? Engineering was very much not the plan -- I wanted to get into hospitality, and had dreams of running a hotel group. But fate -- in the form of an amazing teacher called Mr Haggerty -- intervened. He convinced me to take up computer science and basically changed the course of my career. He then did the same for a fellow engineer here at Skyscanner, Mhairi McClair several years later! So thank you, Mr Haggerty. The way Mr Haggerty taught computer science brought the subject to life -- I loved how you could solve problems in really interesting ways, and doing that with technology was exciting. It suited my analytical brain, so I decided to switch my uni course from Hospitality Management to Computer Studies. What happened next -- what was your journey to Skyscanner? I graduated with a first class honours spent a year's placement with IBM. After graduating, I got on the grad programme with a bank and spent nine years there. My career started in a number of first and second line support focused roles where I learned the importance of good handover documentation and run-books. I then got the privilege to lead the mortgage development team where I started to learn the other side of software development. It was during my time there that said bank had announced they'd undercharged people for mortgages due to a bug in services. While I wasn't involved in that bug, it really taught me the fragility of software and the importance of the quality of code, of testing and of the impact that can be made on