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🪗 Writing Culture, Anti-Managers, Conflict Resolution, Self-Improving Software, Blameless Culture, No to 996: TMW #505

More on AI and productivity...
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This week's TMW is sponsored by DesignVerse - giving AI the architecture, standards, knowledge, and guardrails it needs to build the way your engineering organization already does - consistently, securely, and at scale.

Hello, hello, hello, welcome to the week!

More on AI and productivity...

This week, a CTO Craft community member described a company that spends about one million dollars each month on AI tools for more than 2,000 employees. The company sees no significant change in its overall metrics, but a small number of teams show very large improvements. Many teams that get poor results also use ten times more tokens than the successful teams. The responses agreed that AI amplifies what already exists: strong teams become stronger, and weak teams create more work for other people. One member said that heavy AI use did not predict results, because heavy users spent much more for only a small improvement.

Many members said that the problem is the system, not the tool. When one team works faster, the total result does not change if decisions, handoffs and approvals still cause the delay. One member showed that a team that finishes one project before it starts the next delivers three times more value with the same people. There wasn't a consensus on whether the solution is training, culture or a change to the structure of the organisation, but most agreed that somebody must have the time, mandate and authority to change the whole process, not only the work of engineers.

If your organisation doubled the speed of its engineers tomorrow, where would the work wait next, and who has the authority to remove that delay?

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

Andy @ CTO Craft

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Reads of the Week

On the Death of Amazon’s Writing Culture
How AI has turned what was once a superpower into a liability.
A Life EngineeredSteve Huynh
Why “don’t bring me problems” causes problems (and how to face them together)
I recently watched a video of a tech CEO explaining why he doesn’t do one-to-ones with his direct reports. His reasoning was that he doesn’t want employees bringing him subjects he’s not inte…
Cara BerminghamName

Leadership, Strategy & Business

The Anti-Manager - Yaniv Preiss
The anti-manager - bad leadership used for control
Yaniv PreissYaniv Preiss
The CTO’s Hardest Job Isn’t Technical
Why this new chapter of technology leadership will demand more than building faster.
The HagakurePaulo André
TBM 446: Halos, Vibes, Causality, and Identity
Life gets easier when you stop getting pulled into debates over people’s implicit causal claims and start recognizing that many of these conversations are really about values, identity, and worldview.
The Beautiful MessJohn Cutler
Conflict Resolution For Engineering Managers: A Practical Guide
How to recognize the real problem, handle disagreements, and know when to step in.
Thriving In EngineeringAlex Ponomarev

Culture, People & Teams

It’s not my fault
Where blameless culture goes too far.
High-Impact EngineeringRoman Nikolaev
I'm not doing 996.
I'm building the future. I'm NOT missing my kids' childhood.
Elena's Growth ScoopElena Verna
Only hire when it hurts
On the assumption that more people will solve your non-people problems.
The Engineering ManagerJames Stanier
Your engineers deserve a REAL chance
A better approach to the rising expectations
Manager.devAnton Zaides

Technology, Operations & Delivery

Boris Tane
Production tells us exactly how to make our software better, we've just never had the tools to run this on auto-pilot.
Boris TaneBoris Tane
Supervisory Engineering Work - Annie Vella
Automation is not new in software development. We’ve been automating parts of our process for decades - build pipelines, testing, deployments. With AI, we’re now able to automate work that previously required humans with specialised skills to do by hand - specifically, the writing of the code. In other words, AI is enabling us to automate a larger portion of the job that software engineers used to do themselves.
Annie VellaAnnie Vella
Green Because It Waited: Who Owns Quality When AI Writes the Tests?
Green proves agreement. These 5 decisions turn it into evidence.
The Socratic LeadershipPetros Bountis
Software is slow because of bad design, not slow languages
Many people are saying that AI will make software faster by rewriting it in faster languages, but this isn’t generally true. Most programs cannot be…

Stress, Wellbeing & Growth

TBM 447: Why We Sabotage Our Careers
And why trying harder to fix ourselves isn't always the answer.
The Beautiful MessJohn Cutler
Fear-Based Decisions • Ness Labs
The Ness Letters are a weekly newsletter by Ness Labs, exploring how we can think better, work smarter, and live happier.
Ness Labs
Irrational Decisions
Making decisions that make no sense is one of my specialties.
Untrapping Product TeamsDavid Pereira
What Shall I Teach My Son?
Steve Krouse

That’s it!

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Have an amazing week!

Andy

Published by:

Andy Skipper