Topic
Leadership
Reporting, analysis and perspective on Leadership.
AI Weakens Conway’s Law, So Tech Leads Have to Draw System Boundaries on Purpose
Conway’s law tied system design to who talked to whom. A response to Jack Franklin on why tech leads must now write down the boundaries coordination used to enforce.
Read itJunior Engineers Learn From the AI Verification Loop Only When Their Tests Get Tested
Juniors who write the tests AI agents must pass learn only if those tests are checked. A response to Lucy Adams on using mutation testing to make verification work teach.
Read itAI Pull Request Size Limits Are How Teams Win Back Code Review Time
AI time savings are vanishing into code review. A response to Michael Hill on why AI-written changes need the same size limits as human ones.
Read itInternal DORA Survey: Without Google’s Benchmark, Each Company Must Govern Its Own
Google has paused the DORA survey, so companies will run it themselves. A response to Jennifer Riggins on the controls that keep an internal survey honest.
Read itAI Rework Happens Before Deployment, Where DORA Metrics Cannot See It
A survey puts AI rework at 139+ hours per engineer a year, yet DORA’s rework rate counts only unplanned deploys after incidents. Here’s how to measure the rest.
Read itAI Performance Evaluation Is Getting Harder, a Survey of 1,701 Managers Finds
Over half of 1,701 senior leaders in a Nielsen survey for Monday.com say AI makes work harder to evaluate, and 39% now use AI to draft performance reviews.
Read itBus Factor: The Hero Engineer Risk an Engineering Manager Can Measure
Most popular GitHub projects studied had a bus factor of two or less. Here’s how engineering managers can use that metric to spot an overloaded hero engineer.
Read itGoogle Cloud Outage: A Power Event in One London Zone Disrupted UK Banks and Courts
A power event in Google Cloud’s europe-west2-b zone hit 38 listed products for nearly eight hours on Oct. 20, 2026, as Revolut and UK courts reported problems.
Read itStack Overflow and AI: Why Validated Answers Are Now the Scarce Asset
Chatbots took the simple questions, so validated answers are the scarce asset. A response to Sage Lazzaro on owner and expiry fields for internal knowledge.
Read itEngineering Managers and AI: Who Owns the Dependencies When Hierarchy Flattens?
Removing engineering managers does not remove the work they did. Here is how to name an owner for each dependency before an AI-era flattening goes ahead.
Read itEngineering Manager Ratings: Why Calibration Needs an Evidence File
Manager ratings are less consistent than engineer ratings. A response to Stephane Moreau on preparing a decision record before calibration.
Read itSample-Based AI Proofs of Concept: Why a Clean Demo Does Not Cover Every Record
A pilot that passes on a sample says little about every record. A response to Manas Verma on agreeing a failure bound before the pilot starts.
Read itAI Code and Production Outages: Why Debugging Hours Belong to the Change
Faster code is not faster releases. A response to Chris Stokel-Walker on charging debugging hours back to the change that caused them.
Read itEngineering Strategy in the AI Era: Why Every Assumption Needs an Expiry Condition
A sound plan can go stale when AI moves the constraints. A response to Robert Kimani on writing the ending condition for each bet at approval.
Read itThe AI Code Review Bottleneck: Why Faster Code Is Not Faster Delivery
AI speeds up writing code but not reviewing it. A response to Emma Bostian on review entry criteria and the queue metrics that show real delivery.
Read itIncident-Free Years Are Not Proof of Safe Engineering
A clean incident record can reflect weak detection. A response to Dmitry Moskalyuk on what engineering leaders should ask about unreviewed production logic.
Read itJunior Engineers and AI: Why Speed With the Tool Says Little About Understanding
Speed with AI tools can rise while understanding falls. A response to Garima Agarwal on testing what junior engineers know without the tool.
Read itError Budgets and AI: Why Healthy Dashboards Can Hide a Comprehension Gap
A service can meet its SLO while its team cannot explain a failed change. A response to Paul LaPosta on comprehension holds.
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