# QCon San Francisco 2025

Published articles for QCon San Francisco 2025.

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](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/presentation-lead-without-a-ladder-how-i-climbed-into-engineering-leadership-26603.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://www.infoq.com/presentations/engineering-leadership/>)

Author: Pauline Jepp

Published: 2026-09-15T09:10:00Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [InfoQ](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/infoq.md>)

Topics: [engineering-leadership](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/engineering-leadership.md>), [systems](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/systems.md>)

Tags: [alignment](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/alignment.md>), [careers](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/careers.md>), [chief-engineer](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/chief-engineer.md>), [culture-methods](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/culture-methods.md>), [engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/engineering.md>), [engineering-leadership](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/engineering-leadership.md>), [infoq](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/infoq.md>), [leadership](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/leadership.md>), [mentorship](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/mentorship.md>), [presentation](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/presentation.md>), [qcon-san-francisco-2025](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/qcon-san-francisco-2025.md>), [qcon-software-development-conference](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/qcon-software-development-conference.md>), [safety](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/safety.md>), [team](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/team.md>), [transcripts](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/transcripts.md>), [trust](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/trust.md>)

### 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

## Presentation: Accelerating Performance by Incrementally Integrating Rust Into Existing Codebase

DevFeed: [Presentation: Accelerating Performance by Incrementally Integrating Rust Into Existing Codebase](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/presentation-accelerating-performance-by-incrementally-integrating-rust-into-existing-codebase-8464.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://www.infoq.com/presentations/rust-refactoring/>)

Author: Lily Mara

Published: 2026-09-10T09:34:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [InfoQ](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/infoq.md>)

Topics: [rust refactoring](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/rust-refactoring.md>), [Refactoring](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/refactoring.md>), [Integration testing](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/integration-testing.md>)

Tags: [architecture](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/architecture.md>), [cost](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/cost.md>), [culture-methods](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/culture-methods.md>), [design](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/design.md>), [development](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/development.md>), [engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/engineering.md>), [infoq](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/infoq.md>), [infrastructure](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/infrastructure.md>), [performance](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/performance.md>), [presentation](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/presentation.md>), [python](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/python.md>), [qcon-san-francisco-2025](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/qcon-san-francisco-2025.md>), [qcon-software-development-conference](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/qcon-software-development-conference.md>), [refactoring](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/refactoring.md>), [rust](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/rust.md>), [rust-refactoring](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/rust-refactoring.md>), [system-programming](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/system-programming.md>), [testing](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/testing.md>), [transcripts](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/transcripts.md>)

### AI overview

A presentation on incrementally refactoring Python bottlenecks into Rust with PyO3 to improve function-level performance, retain integration testing, and reduce infrastructure costs.

### Source excerpt

Lily Mara explains how to avoid high-risk software rewrites through incremental FFI refactoring. She shares how engineering teams can replace Python bottlenecks with Rust via PyO3, demonstrating how to achieve dramatic function-level speedups, seamless integration testing, and meaningful infrastructure cost savings without microservice overhead. By Lily Mara