A reconstructed conversation with an engineering manager who hesitates to hire a candidate sharper than himself, on the fear and ego behind hiring calls, and why hiring people stronger than you is the smarter move.
Borrowing “exponential back-off” from networking to handle communication overload as an engineering lead: how to triage the constant stream of Slack pings, reviews, and requests with informal priority classes and respond with intention.
How AI is reshaping engineering management: tracking impact instead of story points, budgeting for capacity instead of headcount, hiring abstraction thinkers, cutting dead process, and a 90-day pivot plan to stay relevant.
Practical, non-boring takeaways from NIST SP 800-190 for container security: image scanning and vulnerability management, controlled image provenance, least-privilege runtime restrictions, network segmentation, runtime threat detection, and host-OS hardening.
Three honest questions every individual contributor should answer before moving into engineering management: are you ready to work with people over computers, to let go of control, and to be driven by interruptions instead of a plan?
What a day as an engineering manager actually looks like, where the time goes, the challenges of 2024, and the time-management framework from Aviv Ben-Yosef’s “The Tech Executive Operating System” that helped.
How to make high-level estimates in software projects with more confidence: the factors that shape them (requirements clarity, domain knowledge, team skill, company rhythm, cost of failure) and the ones I overlooked at first.
A grounded explanation of the engineering manager role and its responsibilities, organized into categories like keeping the individual and the team healthy, covering psychological safety, alignment, feedback, onboarding, and direction.