AI gives you speed, not quality
AI writes code fast but doesn't care about quality. Learn to prompt well, never accept code you don't understand, and remember: you own every line you commit. Speed without direction is just chaos.
Topics
leadership
45 posts
Leading teams, making decisions, and growing as a technical leader.
What success means to me
Success is waking up knowing that what you do makes the people around you, and yourself, happier. No complex formula. Just consistency over perfection, and building habits that align with what matters.
Man's Search for Meaning
In Man's Search for Meaning, Frankl not only shares his harrowing experiences from the Holocaust but also presents a profound philosophy on the human condition. This book is a testament to the resilience of the human spi…
People skills
So, you're a software developer, and you've mastered coding languages, algorithms, and all the tech stuff. That's awesome! But here's the deal: technical skills alone won't get you as far as you might think. If you can't…
The Phoenix Project
This is a story about an impossible project in which the people around are constantly playing politics, busy fixing critical bugs and wasting constant efforts on quick patches instead of helping the business thrive.
What kills agility?
Why Agile, if you already do Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, or Waterfall? How we manage an organization defines its quality. Excellent management is crucial to avoid the Waterfall trap if we aim to build an Agile environment. But …
Radical Candor
Radical Candor is a management philosophy developed by Kim Scott, a former Google leader. It's a crash course on how to be a great manager, focusing on being empathetic and results-oriented. The core idea is to create a …
Deployments on Fridays
I have heard multiple times, from various people, the idea of panic towards deploying on Fridays. How good is that idea of banning the day before weekend from delivering new value to our clients or customers?
The Lean Startup
Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched.
Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing
Embarking on the path to high team performance involves understanding Tuckman's Model — a roadmap through the stages of forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. In this blog post, we explore practical stra…
Crucial Conversations
Crucial Conversations gives you the tools you need to step up to life's most difficult and important conversations, say what's on your mind, and achieve the positive resolutions you want.
Unhealthy working environment
An unhealthy working environment can have various symptoms that negatively impact both the physical and mental well-being of employees.
The Peter Principle
The Peter principle states that a person who is competent at their job will earn a promotion to a position that requires different skills. If the promoted person lacks the skills required for the new role, they will be i…
It's Your Ship
It's Your Ship is a leadership book written by D. Michael Abrashoff, a former commander of the USS Benfold, a guided missile destroyer. The book focuses on Abrashoff's experiences and the leadership principles he applied…
How do you get everyone on board?
I was invited to the WeAreDevelopers World Congress to give a tech talk about my experience with Extreme Programming and the profound benefits of embracing change in your work and life.
The Blocksize War
Jonathan Bier chronicles the Bitcoin blocksize war (2015-2017), exploring the key players, strategies, and ideological battles that shaped who controls Bitcoin's protocol.
Effective Remote Work
An effective remote work environment is about treating everyone as remote, with everyone in mind having the same level, equality, and information.
Great leadership
As business scales, the leaders' primary focus must shift from customers to employees. Therefore, I would like to share what I consider critical points that any leader should address and focus on regularly.
Adapt or die
Told through the story of one bold company (People First IT), Adapt or Die takes readers through the unparalleled business system known as The Algorithm of Success that has the potential to inspire, ignite, and affect ch…
The infinite game
From the bestselling author of Start With Why and Leaders Eat Last, a bold framework for leadership in today's ever-changing world.
The Essential Drucker
The Essential Drucker contains twenty-six selections on management in the organization, management and the individual, and management and society. It covers the basic principles and concerns of management and its problem…
Dare to lead
Leadership is not about titles, status and power over people. Leaders are people who hold themselves accountable for recognising the potential in people and ideas, and developing that potential. This is a book for everyo…
The beauty of leadership
Leadership is not a synonym for management, it has nothing to do with titles or personal attributes. So, what is it? How can we become leaders? And most importantly, why?
The Great CEO Within
Learn how to efficiently scale your business from startup to corporation by implementing a system of accountability, effective problem-solving, and transparent feedback.
The Starfish and the Spider
If you cut off a spider's head, it dies; if you cut off a starfish's leg it grows a new one, and that leg can grow into an entirely new starfish. Traditional top-down organizations are like spiders, but now starfish orga…
The power of authority and obedience
Milgram was interested in researching how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person, and how easily people could be influenced into committing atrocities. For example, Germans in…
Modern CTO
In Modern CTO, Joel Beasley provides readers with an in-depth road map on how to successfully navigate the unexplored and jagged transition between these two roles. Drawing from personal experience, Joel gives a refreshi…
Leaders Eat Last
A company's biggest strength doesn't lie in its products or services. It always lies in its people, and in their ability to cooperate closely and rally behind the organization, especially during a crisis.
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
This book is a leadership fable about a tech company that is struggling to get more customers. The C level is not working as a team, and they have a hard time coming to any agreements which result in negative morale. Unt…
Start with Why
Start with Why asks (and answers) the questions: why are some people and organizations more innovative, more influential, and more profitable than others? Why do some command greater loyalty from customers and employees …
Leadership is Language
In this book, the former submarine commander Captain L. David Marquet dives deep into one of the most investigated marine disasters, the sinking of the El Faro, and surfaces with new ideas on leadership and language.
Red Work vs Blue Work
Blue Work and Red Work are concepts that David Marquet describes in his book 'Leadership is Language. Both require different mindsets and both have different languages.
Turn the Ship Around!
The book is about his leadership theories to how he implemented a fresh leadership model. Including the limitations of a hierarchical top-down model, why/how he failed to empower his team earlier in his career, and how t…
Lord of the Flies
Labeled a parable, an allegory, a myth, a morality tale, a parody, a political treatise, even a vision of the apocalypse. It has established itself as a true classic. The book focuses on a group of British boys stranded …
Responsibilities of a Tech Lead
The Trident Career Model by Patrick Kua has three tracks. Each track represents where people spend most of their time or energy.
Become an Effective Software Engineering Manager
A great compilation of all topics that are important for management: 1:1s, performance reviews, hiring and laying off, workplace politics, remote work, and others.
Conformity experiments
To what extent do social forces alter people's opinions? Which aspect of the group influence is most important — the size of the majority, or the unanimity of opinion?
The Art of Leadership
Leadership practices are small things done repetitively over time. Managers tell you where you are, leaders tell you where you're going.
97 Things Every Engineering Manager should know
As a manager your work is to create clarity, clarity, and more clarity.
Embrace the change
The tale is a beautiful metaphor of the different attitudes that people adopt as part of their identity in life when they have to confront any change.
Never split the difference
From policing the rough streets of Kansas City, Missouri, to becoming the FBI's lead international kidnapping negotiator to teaching negotiation at leading universities, Chris Voss has tested the techniques in 'Never Spl…
High Output Management
Andy Grove's management classic from Intel, covering managerial leverage, meetings, decision-making, motivation, and how to maximize team output in technology organizations.
The Manager Path
Camille Fournier maps the career path from engineer to CTO, covering 1:1s, mentoring, team management, and the evolving responsibilities at each level of technical leadership.
How to improve your tech-talk (or any other presentation)
We have found ourselves attending a meeting that felt like we were wasting our time with a monologue that is either hard to follow or doesn't seem so interesting as it could. Let's fix this.
The Art of War
The Art of War is an ancient Chinese military treatise attributed to Sun Tzu, a high-ranking military general, strategist and tactician, and kindred to the Realpolitik of his time, termed in China as Legalism.