Engineering Manager

⏱ 3 min read Companies with strong engineering writing cultures (Stripe, Amazon, Anthropic, Stripe again) consistently outperform peers on technical decision-making, onboarding, and asynchronous […] Read article

⏱ 3 min read The Senior → Staff transition is one of the hardest in engineering. Many strong senior engineers stay at Senior for Read article

⏱ 2 min read Developer experience (DX) work — internal tooling, build speed, CI reliability, dev-environment quality — is one of the most underinvested Read article

⏱ 2 min read Design reviews are where critical engineering decisions get made — or where good ideas get killed by bikeshedding. The format Read article

⏱ 3 min read Cross-functional conflict is a feature, not a bug. PM wants more scope, design wants higher fidelity, sales wants the deal-blocker Read article

⏱ 3 min read Architecture Review Boards (ARBs) — sometimes called Tech Review Committees, Design Review Forums, or “the architects” — are the bodies Read article

⏱ 2 min read One of the under-discussed skills of engineering management is calendar discipline. Without it, your week becomes a slurry of meetings, Read article

⏱ 3 min read OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) remain the most common quarterly planning framework at growing tech companies. Done well, they align Read article

⏱ 3 min read Sometimes you join a team that is already in trouble. Morale is low, velocity is poor, the prior manager left Read article

⏱ 3 min read Working with founders is its own discipline. Founders are typically high-conviction, high-velocity, and deeply attached to their own ideas. EMs Read article

⏱ 2 min read A production readiness review (PRR) is a structured assessment before launching a new service or major feature. The discipline catches Read article

⏱ 3 min read Attrition is the most expensive failure mode in engineering management. Replacing a senior engineer costs 6–12 months of equivalent salary Read article

⏱ 3 min read One of the most common confusions in engineering management is the difference between mentoring and managing. They overlap but are Read article

⏱ 3 min read The biggest source of early-onboarding misalignment is implicit expectations. Both sides assume what “good” looks like, do not articulate it, Read article

⏱ 3 min read “Managing up” is one of the most under-taught skills in engineering management. Most EMs spend energy managing down (their team) Read article