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- Issue #747
Issue #747
Essential Reading For Engineering Leaders
Tuesday 1st September issue is presented by Unblocked
Unblocked turns code, docs, tickets, conversations and production data into actionable context, so engineers move faster and agents stay on track.
— Dan Rockwell
tl;dr: Some questions focus on situations. What happened? What’s wrong? What do you want? Begin with situations, but don’t park there. Coaching questions turn attention to the person. (1) What did you notice about yourself in that meeting? (2) What was going on for you when she said that? (3) What do you make of your reaction?
Management Coaching Tips
— Christoph Nakazawa
tl;dr: “I’ve been trying to wrap my head around engineering values and principles that matter for 2026 and beyond that will help individuals and organizations move faster. Looking at my engineering workflow it feels like on one hand everything changed, and on the other, not that much."
Management AI
— Brandon Waselnuk
tl;dr: Agents can generate code. Getting it right for your system is the hard part – you end up wasting time and tokens in the back and forth. More MCPs solve access but not understanding. Join us for a FREE webinar on Sep 2 to see how to give agents exactly what they need the first time (includes a live demo).
Promoted by Unblocked
Event AI Agents
— Cliff Maxwell
tl;dr: “In this post, I’ll help you answer six fundamental questions that will instill confidence and focus anytime you are navigating a transition at work. Each question comes with exercises and tools to help you build understanding.”
CareerGrowth Guide
“For things that you do not fully control, you should set internal goals rather than external ones.”
— Lalit Maganti
tl;dr: “To get promoted as a software engineer in Big Tech, you generally need to show “ownership” of a product or area. This means being responsible for it and deciding what should happen over time.”
Staff+ CareerGrowth
tl;dr: In three months, Laurel scaled agent-authored PRs from 55% to 76% of engineering output while cutting change failure rate by over 80%. Lightweight per-PR environments enable them to verify changes at agent scale and ship more code with fewer failures. Their ~60-engineer team now merges 2,300+ PRs a month. Take a look at their stack and what they implemented to get there.
Promoted by Signadot
CaseStudy DevEx AI
— Dan Luu
tl;dr: “I used to wonder why I see so many more bugs than most people. I easily observe hundreds to thousands of bugs per week and nothing seems to work, but most people I talk to don't see anything like this. For a long time, I thought this had something to do with how I use computers but, over time, I've realized that it's mostly that people are hitting the same bugs and don't notice.”
CodeQuality Debugging
— Doug Turnbull
tl;dr: “A surprising amount of the pain I see on AI teams looks very much like what budding search teams in the 2010s went through. Admittedly this gives me a biased perspective, but perhaps a useful one.”
Management AI
— Michael Lynch
tl;dr: “I’ve written design docs as a developer at Google, Microsoft, and within my own companies. The specifics vary, but the underlying principles remain the same. A design doc should articulate the hard problems you’re solving and help your teammates give you feedback. Below, I share my approach to creating effective design docs and explain what belongs in a design doc and what does not.”
KnowledgeManagement Guide
Editorial Note
I'll be at LeadDev's LDX3 this September 15–16, looking forward to the conversations on how engineering leadership is changing.
I find it useful to hear from people doing the work and those that read this newsletter. If you're going too, I'd love to meet in person. Reply and let me know.
Most Popular From Last Issue
Notable Links
Experiential: OS gateway and router for agent workflows.
Foreman: AI agents run the loop, humans judge.
Heretic: Fully automatic censorship removal for LLMs
OpenViking: Context database for agents.
VoiceStudio: OS fully-local ElevenLabs alternative.
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