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8 min read

🍿 Punishing Codebases, Team Economics, Stupid Power Moves, Commander's Intent, Developer Burnout: TMW #476

Is the best way to onboard a developer improving onboarding...?
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Thank you to Skiller Whale for sponsoring this week's issue - a coaching solution that feels like pairing, pinpoints gaps, and accelerates 'learning from experience' for engineers of any level

Hello, hello, hello, welcome to the week!

The Best Onboarding Has a Feedback Loop

In one of the best community discussions last week, a member asked how best to onboard a new senior engineer into a small team, and the community’s responses converged on a clear theme:

Structure matters, but so does giving newcomers room to improve the system they’ve joined.

Contributors pointed to the value of a well-defined 90-day plan, the upside of fresh perspectives, and the importance of building a culture where questions are not only accepted, but actively encouraged. As one member put it, a new hire once spent a week getting access, tools, and builds working, only to be asked to make that process measurably better for the next person. The result was dramatic: subsequent hires were up and running in 30 minutes rather than a week.

Thought experiment: What’s one “fresh eyes” assignment in your org that would help a new senior engineer build trust quickly while making a visible contribution to the team? Let us know, we'd love to hear from you

Our recent survey with Damilah looked at how leaders in 2026 perceive how the role will change by 2028, what will be expected of us and our teams, and how to prepare for those changes. We'll be sitting down with the Damilah team in London on May 7th to dig into some of the findings - it's free to attend, so do come if you'd like to see what we discovered:

CTO Craft Bytes: Engineering 2028: A Leadership Masterclass | CTO Craft
Explore how leaders and teams can build psychological safety in remote work environments through practical strategies, real-world stories, and insights from experienced experts.
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That's it, let's look at some links....

Andy @ CTO Craft

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AI Upskilling Impact Report - from Skiller Whale

This report explores the impact of Skiller Whale coaching on the adoption and effective use of Generative AI within teams. It highlights meaningful improvements across key areas, including employee sentiment, tool utilisation, and overall productivity. Participants demonstrate greater confidence, consistency, and efficiency when working with AI, underlining the value of targeted, expert-led coaching in driving lasting behavioural change.

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CTO Craft Mixers Coming Up

See the whole Mixer calendar here - not in your city yet? Drop us a line!

Reads of the Week

Your Engineers Aren’t Lazy, Your Codebase Is Punishing Them
A two-minute interactive audit to score whether technical debt is dragging your engineering team. Five signals that separate people problems from code problems.
Ally Piechowski“Ally Piechowski”
The Future Is Already Here – the Tokens Are Just Not Evenly Distributed
What Jensen Huang, an AI agent named after the Terminator, and a company with zero employees tell us about what’s coming
The One ThingNiklas Jansen

Leadership, Strategy & Business

The Economics of Software Teams: Why Most Engineering Organizations Are Flying Blind
A breakdown of what software development teams actually cost, what they need to generate to be financially viable, and why most organizations have no visibility into either number.
Viktor CessanViktor Cessan
Reflection is a Crucial Leadership Skill – Puppies, Flowers, Rainbows and Kittens
kevin
9 Stupid Power Moves Managers Make, and the Damage They Leave Behind - Yaniv Preiss
Manager pull stupid power moves out of insecurity and lack of awareness, and achieve the opposite
Yaniv PreissYaniv Preiss
Mea Culpa
I don’t always get it right. I complain about glossy war stories and universal product operating models, but some of my own suggestions are too easy or out of context. Here’s one that I am retiring from future talks, posts, and podcasts… For about a decade, I’ve been dropping a
Rich Mironov's Product BytesRichard Mironov

Culture, People & Teams

Commander’s Intent — Stop Telling People How to Do Their Job
Stop Telling Professionals How to Do Their Job — Commander’s Intent at Work: From agile Teams to AI Agent Skills — Age-of-Product.com
Age-of-Product.comStefan Wolpers
The Mountain and the Clouds
Take a typical work situation. Something was expected of my team. But it was not met. The other party calls for a meeting. Meeting starts. I look at the slide on the screen - there is status with …
Writing is clarifying
Encoding Team Standards
martinfowler.comRahul Garg
The Rise of Transparency
Finding signal in the firehose.
Allen Pike

Technology, Operations & Delivery

Reviewer Economy: The Hidden Tax of AI-Generated Code | CTO Craft
92% of engineering leaders use AI in delivery pipelines. Only 8% report better software quality. Engineering 2028 explores why the gap exists and what closes it.
CTO CraftOskar Ficek
Nothing Is Sacred: Rethinking How Engineering Teams Work
How agile thinking helps teams adapt in the age of AI
High-Impact EngineeringRoman Nikolaev
Why your QA team can’t keep up with AI development
Development teams using AI copilots now ship 2-3x more features per sprint.
QA meets AIAli El-Shayeb
RDEL #137: What kinds of new debt are teams accumulating with AI?
Research proposes that software health depends on three layers — code, understanding, and intent — and AI is shifting the balance between them.
Research-Driven Engineering LeadershipResearch-Driven Engineering Leadership

Stress, Wellbeing & Growth

Should You Talk To Your Manager About Burnout?
Dev Leader Weekly 133
Dev Leader WeeklyDev Leader
Explaining, understanding, and data compression
Why super technical engineers and managers suck at explaining their thoughts
manager.devAnton Zaides
Thinking Deeper • Ness Labs Newsletter
The Ness Letters are a weekly newsletter by Ness Labs, exploring how we can think better, work smarter, and live happier.
Ness Labs
Developer Burnout Is Real: A Practical Guide to Sustainable Coding Careers
Developer burnout is a systemic crisis that demands team fixes, manager accountability, and everyday habits to sustain coding careers.
Daily LogoNimrod Kramer

That’s it!

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Have an amazing week!

Andy

Published by:

Andy Skipper