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- Issue #686
Issue #686
Essential Reading For Engineering Leaders
Friday 30th January issue is presented by Software Secured
Not all pentests are created equal. Many teams only realize the gaps after receiving a massive report that is impossible to integrate into their workflows.
Download the Pentest Prep Toolkit to:
Spot the difference between surface-level findings and high-impact insights
Compare testing approaches before committing your budget
Know exactly what clients and auditors expect from a pentest report
Decide how and where to test
— Ed Batista
tl;dr: “As a leader there’s an easy way to conclude any conflict on your team: simply decide who’s right. And there are times when you must arbitrate disputes. But leaders sometimes adopt this approach reflexively, in part because it offers certain rewards: It’s efficient. It feels good to be viewed as an authority. And team members may prefer that you take responsibility, rather than do the work themselves.”
Leadership Management
— Jampa Uchoa
tl;dr: “I’ve worked across four companies as a manager, one as a founder, and another as a manager of managers. I will skip the standard advice and lessons on Engineering Management and focus on the non-obvious ones.”
Leadership Management
— Sherif Koussa
tl;dr: The data is clear: AI coding assistants have crossed the chasm from experimental to enterprise-critical. With 90% of Fortune 100 companies now using GitHub Copilot and over 20 million developers adopting AI coding tools as of July 2025, we're witnessing the fastest technology adoption curve in software engineering history. But beneath the productivity gains lies a more complex reality. This guide distills insights from recent security research, incident data, and enterprise deployments to help engineering leaders navigate the security implications of AI-assisted development.
Promoted by Software Secured
Security AI
— Itzy Sabo
tl;dr: “The engineering department’s job is to build and maintain the company’s core revenue engine. Engineering, therefore, obviously plays a central role in the company’s success. Attempts to attribute a fair portion of the company’s business outcomes to the engineering department are seriously challenged by the tension between engineering’s key role, on one side, and the opaqueness of the chain of causation between engineering work and business outcomes, on the other.”
Leadership Management
“Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”
— John Cutler
tl;dr: “I work at a startup where every second feels like a prioritization decision. There simply aren’t enough seconds in the day, and there’s an endless list of “should-haves” and “musts.” One thing I try to remind myself is that it isn’t about making perfect decisions, but about making marginally better, “good enough” decisions that help us move forward and avoid major crevasses.”
CareerAdvice
tl;dr: Did you know that 72% of developers who have tried AI use it every day? But while 96% of developers don’t fully trust its output, only 48% always verify it before committing. Download Sonar’s State of Code Developer Survey report to learn the impact of AI on software engineering workflows and how developers are adapting to the AI code verification bottleneck.
Promoted by Sonar
Survey
— Haki Benita
tl;dr: “When it comes to database optimization, developers often reach for the same old tools: rewrite the query slightly differently, slap an index on a column, denormalize, analyze, vacuum, cluster, repeat. Conventional techniques are effective, but sometimes being creative can really pay off!”
PostgreSQL
— Erik Doernenburg
tl;dr: “Let’s take a closer look at how the AI tooling performs when it comes to internal code quality. We’ll add a feature to an existing application with the help of an agent and look at what’s happening along the way. Of course, this makes it “just” an anecdote. This memo is by no means a study. At the same time, much of what we’ll see falls into patterns and can be extrapolated, at least in my experience.”
AI Agents
— Fedor Borisyuk
tl;dr: “In this blog, we’ll share how we transformed our overarching search experience at LinkedIn, including the challenges and decisions that went into creating a scalable LLM-based stack and how the technology is powering a smarter, faster, and more personalized experience that helps every member find the most relevant opportunities and connections.”
Search LLM
Null Pointer
Breakthrough
Hand-drawn by Manu. Got an idea for a cartoon? Click reply and let us know
Most Popular From Last Issue
How I Estimate Work As A Staff Software Engineer - Sean Goedecke
Notable Links
OpenClaw: Personal AI assistant.
RenderCV: CV / resume generator for academics and engineers.
Server Survival: Tower defense game that teaches cloud architecture.
Skills: Public repo for agent skills.
Snitch: A prettier way to inspect network connections.
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