Yesterday I had lunch with a newly promoted lead and realized I have opinions on mentoring engineers. Here they are.

Can you even have architecture before there's a team?

Do you ever feel like your brain is full and there's so much going on you can barely keep up? Me too.

A reader asks how do you find time for technical cleanup work. If OKRs and bugs take priority, when will you make improvements?

I guess if AI is what it takes to finally get people to care about architecture and team structure then mission accomplished?

Younger engineers keep asking how I prioritize in a chaotic environment. Here's my approach.

A hard-won lesson for ya: Always deploy when you've got lots of traffic.

A project is something you do, a product is something you own.

Whenever I talk about sprints, someone mentions Shape Up. So you have 9 week sprints – what's the difference?

For the past few months I've been introducing sprints into a chaotic startup that's been growing so fast everyone's got whiplash. Since August, 5 engineers turned into 12. I think it's starting to work.

A few engineering principles I aim to instill in every team I join. Lead or not.

Let go of your legos and let others do the work.

Going from Big Vision to Series of Executable Steps is a key skill for senior+ engineers. PMs can help but they don't know everything.

How do you choose what to work on first? As an empowered engineer that's a key skill.

Working with AI is here and it's skill. Just like google-fu became important in the mid 2000's. A few things I've learned.

Why do some projects ship and others seem to drag on forever? You need 3 people to get this right.

You can't prevent bugs. You'll burn out. Instead focus on making them quick to fix.

A long design phase without shipping kills many software projects. Here's a story from production I haven't shared before.

Been thinking about what needs to be in place for engineers to ship with confidence

effective engineering teams should work *with* their product owner/manager, not *for* them

A shift in your code review process can boost your team's productivity. Empower authors to make the call.

Don't get stuck being a critical member of the team.

Team dysfunction where everyone's a soloist? Try this fix: Force the team to work on ONE story at a time.

Agile is something you are, not something you do.

Talk about today, not yesterday

Unearth the surprising connection between the CIA's Simple Sabotage Manual and your productivity, and learn how to transform tiny actions into big wins. Dive into Swizec's engaging exploration of how small actions can make a huge impact on your progress.

Want an engaged engineering team? Let juniors speak first.

You can't escape Conway's Law. Might as well use it for good.

A strong partnership with product is key to an enjoyable engineering life

The secret to effective standups that don't suck

Learn why squash merging is your friend - from hating it to loving it! Squash merging helps you keep moving and focus on the work instead of recording the work.

Merging finished work straight to main and deploying to production right away, scales to teams of thousands. This approach is counterintuitive to many engineers who may be used to working on their own

A founder friend asked me about growing pains on his team. How do you avoid stepping on each other's toes?

how do you catch a critical deadline that cannot be missed? We're talking external stakeholders, millions on the line, and it all hinges on *your* team getting it done on time. No overtime

New members on our team invariably say 2 things: 1. Wow I've never seen a team move this fast 2. This approach feels weird. I'm uncomfortable Teams like this are not common.

If your approach works so well, why isn't every team doing this?

My entire career I've never seen a sprint finished on time. The new manager said "Oh I think we can fix that" ... 18 months later he proved me wrong

Engineers *hate it* when you say it doesn't matter how good they are because a team will outcode them any day. But it's true, you can't build something big on your own.

If it takes 6 engineers 10 days to complete 6 projects in parallel, why does it take 8 days when you work together 🤨