- Pointer
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- Issue #767
Issue #767
The Briefing For Engineering Leaders
Tuesday 10th November issue is presented by Unblocked
Your agents can read the code, but not why it was written that way.
Unblocked gives them that history from your PRs, tickets, and Slack, so you spend less time correcting them.
“With Claude Code and Unblocked, I fire off a query, minimize the tab for half an hour, and come back to working code." - Matt Thompson, Staff Engineer at Codat.
— Aleix Morgadas
tl;dr: “The kernel of a strategy contains three elements: a diagnosis, a guiding policy, and coherent action. This definition resonates with me, maybe because now I’m not lost on strategy expectations. Now that we know what Strategy is, we need to adapt this to Engineering Strategy.”
Leadership Strategy
— Brian Houck
tl;dr: “Each paper tackles a different question. Some measure the productivity impact of AI coding assistants. Others examine how those gains propagate through the software delivery process, explore what developers actually want from future AI systems, or reconsider the kinds of debt we should be paying attention to in an AI-assisted world. Despite coming from different research groups and using very different methodologies, they all seem to be converging on the same underlying story.”
Management AI
tl;dr: Everyone does their homework first. But when sources conflict, pinging an engineer becomes the shortcut. Unblocked weighs the evidence from your code, pull requests, tickets, production data, and discussions, so your agents and teammates alike find the answers on their own. You step into threads only for real engineering problems, and your agents get to working code without you babysitting.
Promoted by Unblocked
Management Tools+Setup
— Will Larson, Gergely Orosz
tl;dr: Two hour interview with Gergely. Areas more focussed for engineering leaders are: (1) What does a CTO do (35:11). (2) How engineering management has evolved. (42:48) (3) Revised rules of engineering leadership (1:16:25) (4) How to become a CTO? (1:25:57).
Podcast Leadership Management
"Believe you can and you're halfway there.”
— Murat Demirbas
tl;dr: “Writing is also the reason I remember anything. I refer back to my own blog constantly. Because I strained my brain writing those posts, rereading them re-fires the same neurons, and I reconstruct the understanding quickly. In this sense, the blog became my external memory. The thoughts I never wrote down do not stick well, because they were never fully thought.” Murat shares his rules for writing.”
Career Learning Writing
tl;dr: 68% of surveyed engineering leaders report a wider performance gap between engineers since adopting AI. Only 19% say they turn effective AI practices into team or company standards. Span’s Coding Agents in Practice: Q4 2026 brings together perspectives from over 100 engineering leaders on agent adoption, code review, and sharing what works. Compare your team’s approach with peers and identify where to focus next.
Promoted by Span
Management Survey AI
— Adam Tornhill
tl;dr:“By immersing ourselves in code we hone our problem solving and sharpen our cognition. Code becomes a way of thinking rather than a medium for instructing a compiler. Those skills seem to transfer quite well. In fact, the shift might not be as large as we perceive.”
IndustryTrends Career AI
— Paul Homer
tl;dr: “You learn a lot during thirty years. I tried to write about most of it in this blog, at least from a higher level perspective bringing lots of different things that have happened together, but some things are smaller and just don’t fit. Each one of these is rooted in at least one epic failure.”
Career Learning
— Candost Dagdeviren
tl;dr: “I created a single repository where all other repositories are connected as git submodules with their own AGENTS.md files to give context - creating, as I call it, the hive mind.”
Management KnowledgeManagement
Let’s Grab a Coffee
I want to meet more engineering leaders to hear what you’re building, and how management is actually changing on your end. Where I’ll be:
Delhi, India - Nov 15–25
AWS re:Invent, Las Vegas - Nov 29–Dec 4
If you’re in either place, I’d like to grab a coffee. Otherwise, if you’re in Brooklyn or passing through, just hit reply.
Most Popular From Last Issue
How Software Engineering Is Changing: A Tale Of Two Eras - Gergely Orosz, Jessica Salmon, Ivan Klaric
Notable Links
Astryx: OS customizable design system.
Claude Quickstarts: Kickstart app development using Claude API.
LobeHub: Super-agents on your team.
Spec Kit: Toolkit to help you get started with SDD.
Obscura: Headless browser for AI agents and web scraping.
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