Engineering Leadership

Weekly newsletter for becoming a great engineering leader. Click to read Engineering Leadership, by Gregor Ojstersek, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.

The Curiosity Chronicle has quickly become one of the most popular newsletters for growth-minded individuals in the world. Each week, subscribers receive a deep dive that covers topics ranging from growth and decision-making to business, finance, startups, and technology. In addition, subscribers receive The Friday Five, a weekly newsletter with five ideas curated to spark curiosity headed into the weekend.

How to retain your engineering MVPs

The most extensive list of engineering career ladders, including the progression frameworks of Medium, Basecamp, Spotify, CircleCI, and 30+ others!

In tech, switching jobs almost always comes with either a financial or a title upside. However, it doesn’t always come with both. Switching for higher compensation can result in a “lower” title, like going from Senior Software Engineer to SWE 2 or VP Engineering to Senior Engineering Manager. This

Once you become an engineering executive, an invisible timer starts ticking in the background. Tick tick tick. At some point that timer will go off, at which point someone will rush up to you demanding an engineering strategy. It won’t be clear what they mean, but they will want it, really, really badly. If we just had an engineering strategy, their eyes will implore you, things would be okay. For a long time, those imploring eyes haunted me, because I simply didn’t know what to give them: what is an engineering strategy?

Ben Nadel discusses one of the lessons learned from 10 years of CodePen: solve only problem at a time - a message worth amplifying.

First awareness. Then productivity.

One of the most popular methods of delivering difficult employee feedback is, well, shit. Here’s why and what you should do instead… I recently ran into a friend who mentioned how she uses the Shit Sandwich

A piece of advice I wish I could give my manager is don't be spooky. My manager regularly messages me things like Hey, can you talk? or Got a minute now? Occ...

Here are 9 specific steps founders can use to ship features faster, keep their product team aligned and build what their users really want.

Have you ever wondered why the market for software engineers is so hot despite the increasing number of people learning how to code and increasing the

As engineering organizations grow and add more complexity with team members at different levels of experience, they also need to create clarity: the list of job levels, and what each role does. Done well, a career ladder can limit bias and provide a framework for hiring, paying, and promoting. Note: The articles below are often an introduction to the company's level guide, and the actual career ladder is a PDF or spreadsheet linked to from the article.

The software industry loves young people, but old-timers serve an important purpose, too.

Let’s be honest. When you read this post’s title, you thought it was obvious. Yet, most people don’t follow this simple piece of advice. You know that too, a...

How do you quickly influence a large, complex company that’s set in its ways?

I think this subject is a vast minefield. It's incredible how often I heard this conversation in private across my whole career and how…

Thank you, Microsoft, for the good times and the bad, in sickness and in health. Our marriage of 25 years together has been an interesting one since that day I first arrived in Redmond on October 17, 1994.

A curated and opinionated list of resources for Chief Technology Officers, with the emphasis on startups - GitHub - kuchin/awesome-cto: A curated and opinionated list of resources for Chief Technol...

As a Director of Engineering, I have monthly 1:1s with all of my direct reports. A 1:1 (one-on-one) is a recurring meeting with no set agenda between a manager and one of their reports. The internet …

My Inspirations Now as a Director of Engineering at Docker, I’ve been doing some type of engineering leadership for the last decade. I have learned from the best over the years, and many resources have shaped who I am and philosophies for how I lead....

I’ve been programming since 1999. This year I’ve officially coded for 20+ years. I’ve started with Basic but soon jumped into Pascal and C…

Here is my list of heuristics and rules of thumb for software development that I have found useful over the years:   Development 1. Start small, then extend. Whether creating a new system, or …

A collection of inspiring resources related to engineering management and tech leadership - GitHub - charlax/engineering-management: A collection of inspiring resources related to engineering manag...