When engineering velocity goes up, the first instinct is to staff up around it. More product managers to write PRDs. More designers to create wireframes. More discovery capacity to feed the machine. This traditional logic feels sound: if one part of the pipeline moves faster, the bottleneck shifts upstream, and
The productivity numbers are real. Teams using AI agents are shipping faster. Pull request volume is up. Cycle times are down. Features that used to take weeks are taking days. If your organization isn't taking this seriously, it's probably already falling behind. But there's
Ask most executives what their company's goals are, and you'll hear some version of one of two answers: something about becoming the market leader, or something about maximizing value for shareholders. Both are variations on the same theme: win. Get to the top. Hit the number.
Most 1:1s are status updates with better eye contact. The manager asks what their direct report is working on. Their direct report summarizes the week. Maybe there's a blocker or two that gets flagged. Then both parties walk away feeling like they've done the thing.
I have a simple test I apply whenever I'm considering promoting someone. When I tell others on the leadership team that I'm recommending this person for promotion, what's their reaction? If it's "that makes sense - they're already doing
There's a style of question I've heard in engineering interviews for decades, and it never fails to make me cringe. A real life example of this is "How would you code the game of Boggle?" The intent is good - the interviewer wants to