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🍜 Happy Teams, Navigating Change, Lean Strategy, Budding vs Splitting, Competence Rot, Bottlenecks, Demanding Tech: TMW #503

How are your engineers feeling?
🧑‍🏫
This week's TMW is sponsored by Skiller Whale - built by tech leaders, for tech teams, to mimic the feeling of learning engineering topics from experience.

Hello, hello, hello, welcome to the week!

Engineering identity and pride - what's at stake?

This week, the most popular conversation in the community started when a member asked how to help developers who feel that AI removes the part of the work that they enjoy most. Some members said that sceptical engineers change their opinion when they see good results for themselves. In their view, the job changes but does not end, because engineers now design the systems that make good code. Other members disagreed strongly and said that many developers feel a real loss of identity and a real fear for their jobs. They said that leaders who dismiss these feelings will lose the trust of their teams.

In practice, members advised leaders to listen first and to let people express their concerns before they offer facts or solutions. Leaders must also be clear that AI is now part of the job, but let people help decide how it changes their work. Teams need time to experiment, regular pair work, and regular sessions where people share successes, failures and requests for help. The member who asked the question saw a tension between the acknowledgement of loss and a positive vision for the future. The group said that both can be true, and that leaders must state this tension openly. If AI writes all the code in your team from tomorrow, which parts of the work will still give your engineers a sense of pride?

That's it, let's look at some links! See you next week

Andy @ CTO Craft

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Reads of the Week

If your team is happy, are you doing a good job?
Brilliant jerks, ZIRP-era managers, and how psychological safety lost the plot. Part 3 of my conversation with Dr. Cat Hicks.
charity.wtfCharity Majors
Cross-Team Collaboration
Veteran CTO who built successful companies through empathic leadership and mastery of software delivery - from sustainable code to stakeholder trust. Now exploring the future of empathic and sustainable tech.

Leadership, Strategy & Business

Get Really Good at Navigating Change — Leadership Garden
Advice for engineering leaders on reorgs, AI churn, and change: respond to fewer things and prove you adapted by shipping.
Leadership GardenCsaba Okrona
The Lean Strategy Canvas -- A focusing tool for the AI era
Focus, alignment and shared understanding are critical for AI product success. The Lean Startegy Canvas provides that in a quick, easy way.
Jeff GothelfJeff Gothelf
Decision Making Under Uncertainty: 9 Questions for Leaders
How can leaders make better decisions under uncertainty? Explore 9 powerful questions to challenge assumptions, widen perspective and decide what to do next.
Andi Roberts - Executive Coach | Leadership Trainer | FacilitatorAndi Roberts
Why I Stopped Approving My Team’s Time Off
I don’t need to know when you leave. I need to know the work is done.
Engineering Leader's Playbook ⚡️Karol Wójciszko

This one's not about annual leave! - Andy

Culture, People & Teams

Budding vs. splitting: A better model for growing an engineering org
Don’t build teams around bets
The General PartnershipDaniel Pupius
The Viewpoint That Wouldn’t Move
When the data changes but the opinion doesn’t.
Wild EnoughMariesa
Spoon-Feeding Competence Rot
Don’t Let Your Least Competent People Dictate How Everyone Works
Maarten’s NewsletterMaarten Dalmijn
Firing Underperforming Employees (at Startups)
How to make something extremely difficult, hopefully less difficult for everyone involved.
First RoundFirst Round Staff

Technology, Operations & Delivery

Quick to Build, Slow to Know
The rise of AI and what happens when one part of a system becomes abundant faster than the rest can absorb it.
The HagakurePaulo André
Agentic Development and Engineering Strategy
A first exploration, a draft with thoughts
Engineering StrategyAleix Morgadas
The bottleneck resolves itself
And that is the problem
High-Impact EngineeringRoman Nikolaev
Everything is brownfield now.
Wonder how long something counts as greenfield for?
JoTJeff

Stress, Wellbeing & Growth

When technology sets the pace and the stress
How to reclaim control over what demands our attention
The Future of AttentionGloria Mark
When you disagree with a decision
Let your team know that their concerns are real, they’ve been considered, and what you have to do next as a group
michaelheap.com
You Know You Should Step Back. Why Do You Keep Stepping In?
FITS, Part 2 of 4: Interrupt the Pattern
The Chronicles of a High-EQ LeaderDjordje Mladenovic
Emotional Diversification — Devin Martin Lifestyle Integrity
Why do success and anxiety seem to go hand in hand? What do these three, real people have in common (besides panic attacks): The CEO of a global brand walks into my office for a consultation and tells me he has suddenly started having panic attacks every time he has to speak in front of a group.
Devin Martin Lifestyle IntegrityDevin Martin

That’s it!

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Have an amazing week!

Andy

Published by:

Andy Skipper