Leadership GardenAll posts
151 essays since 2017, newest first.
Prefer a year-by-year list? See the archive.
Your Team Is Not a School
Your team is not a school. You are not a teacher. The studio model is what actually grows engineers, and most of us are running classrooms.
Why Your 360 Feedback Isn’t Working
Most 360 feedback fails not because leaders don’t try to change, but because changed behavior doesn’t automatically update other people’s mental models.
AI Is an Amplifier. What Are You Amplifying?
AI doesn’t care about quality. It accelerates whatever direction your team was already heading. Here’s what engineering leaders need to change.
Verification Debt Is Your Next Headache
Verification debt is accumulating quietly in AI-assisted codebases. What engineering leaders need to watch for.
There Is No Standard EM Role
There is no standard Engineering Manager role. The job is defined by your team’s biggest bottleneck - and it shifts constantly. Here’s what that actually looks like.
The Finger Is Not the Moon
The finger is not the moon. A guide for engineering leaders on recognizing when your ceremonies, OKRs, and 1:1s have become performance instead of practice.
What Actually Breaks at 30 People
When your engineering team grows past 15-20, what breaks first isn’t documentation. It’s that you were the routing layer and nobody knew it.
Why Estimates Fail (And Why You Still Need Them)
Why refusing to estimate doesn’t solve your team’s coordination problems - and what to do instead. For engineering leaders who are tired of broken planning.
The Constraint You Won’t Find on a Jira Board
Your Jira board shows process bottlenecks. It won’t show you the approval chains, implicit rules, and leadership behaviors killing your team’s throughput.
You’re Coaching Too Much
Most engineering managers coach too much, not too little, and they often do it for themselves, not their reports. Here’s when managing is the more generous act.