#244 – June 01, 2025
Not too small and not too big
When a team is too big
13 minutes by Alex Ewerlöf
Alex reflects on their experience in a large development team that struggled with efficiency and collaboration. He discusses how breaking the team into specialized "front-end" and "back-end" task forces created dependencies and communication challenges. Eventually, the team succeeded by adopting a generalist approach where everyone contributed across the technical stack, leading to better ownership, faster delivery, and higher quality.
Turn your scattered documentation into instant answers.
sponsored by Unblocked
Unblocked connects to your team’s code, discussions and docs, so it can explain both how your code works AND why it works that way. Now everyone gets helpful answers, without having to interrupt a teammate.
What real feedback sounds like
9 minutes by Claire Lew
Most feedback never gets said. Claire provides effective scripts for delivering clear feedback in challenging workplace situations. She contrasts vague, sugar-coated approaches with direct, respectful alternatives for seven common scenarios such as underperforming team members, brilliant jerks, burnout cases or busy non-producers. She emphasizes that while these conversations require emotional courage, clarity isn't cruelty but rather essential for effective leadership and team growth.
How to combat bias in the hiring process
7 minutes by Maxim Schepelin
Maxim outlines how to design and implement a bias-free interview process for technical roles. He emphasizes the importance of predefined competencies and structured evaluations to counter unconscious biases like the halo effect. He also recommends defining clear candidate profiles with specific technical and behavioral requirements, crafting evidence-based questions, focusing on observable behaviors rather than interpretations, and documenting evidence independently to make informed hiring decisions.
The role of alignment
6 minutes by Pawel Brodzinski
In this article Pawel argues that simply giving employees more autonomy without proper alignment can be counterproductive. When team members have different priorities without a unifying purpose, increased autonomy merely amplifies forces pulling in different directions. The ideal approach is to first establish alignment through a clear shared purpose, then increase autonomy, creating an environment where empowered actions are both targeted and effective.
Level up your developer experience
7 minutes by Sunit Parekh
Sunit presents five practical strategies for enhancing developer experience in engineering teams: adopting a customer-first mindset, embracing incremental approaches, enabling self-service capabilities, creating a unified "single pane of glass" portal, and measuring what truly matters to developers.
MOAR story points is not the answer
sponsored by Test Double
Story points weren’t built to measure productivity—but that hasn’t stopped teams from trying. Instead, what happens when you focus on impact and ask better questions? Data informs decisions—instead of controlling people. It's time we stop measuring what's easy—and start measuring what matters.
And the most popular article from the last issue was: