Leading engineers
Engineering leadership
Ownership, judgement and leading teams through change, including reviews of the books that shaped how I lead.
What I believe
A lead’s job is to make good decisions possible without being in every one of them: clear ownership, honest feedback, and judgement that grows in the team, not just in the lead.
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More articles
All articles →- One person owns the outcome. The team owns the solution.James Stanier argues every project needs one named owner. I agree, with one adjustment for enterprise teams: individual accountability without individualising the work. What named ownership will and won't fix, and how I'm going to test it.4 min read
- Deep Work, read as a lead engineerCal Newport's Deep Work argues that focus is getting rarer just as it becomes more valuable. Three ideas I'm taking from it, and the tension it doesn't resolve for anyone who leads a team.3 min read
- Being right is not the jobCong Wang's essay on why he stopped arguing, a 2,500-year-old line from Lao Tzu, and what changes when you're the one who has to make technical decisions stick.2 min read
From my reading
All notes →- AI made developers faster. Is their judgment keeping up?The hollow orchestrator: approving more work each month without getting better at judging it.Brian Houck, Scott Carey
- The Manager's Path in the age of AIAI improves visibility, not understanding; talk to people more, not less.Camille Fournier
- Elephants, goldfish and design docs as the real artifactDesign the doc in one long AI session, then test it on a fresh one.Dave Rensin
- How AI has changed my engineering leadership roleLeads should stay hands-on with small, high-leverage safety fixes.Bjorn Roche
- LeadDev Engineering Leadership Report 2026: the player-coach is backLeaders are more hands-on, mostly because AI makes contributing easier.LeadDev
- Rock stars and superstars: growing people differentlyRock stars want depth and stability; superstars want the next challenge.Kim Scott