#250 – July 13, 2025
Delegation isn't binary but exists on a spectrum
How to delegate while maintaining high standards
10 minutes by Wes Kao
Wes writes about the challenges of effective delegation for technical managers. She argues that delegation isn't binary but exists on a spectrum. She offers five practical strategies for delegating while maintaining quality: understanding delegation as a spectrum, assessing task-specific experience, avoiding the urge to hoard familiar work, providing thorough context when delegating, and distinguishing between doing IC work versus owning it.
Make tools like Cursor and Claude Code generate better code
sponsored by Unblocked
"With Claude Code and Unblocked MCP, I've finally found the holy grail of engineering productivity: context-aware coding. It's not hallucinating—it's pulling insight from everything I've ever worked on." – Staff Engineer @ Nava Benefits
Here is how I approach starting a new job
9 minutes by Elena Verna
Elena provides a comprehensive 90-day playbook for starting new roles. She outlines a four-phase approach: first protect what's already working, then pursue quick wins, develop bigger strategic bets, and finally shape the overall strategy. Throughout this process, she emphasizes the importance of balancing learning with action.
The more senior engineers get, the more results matter
3 minutes by Sean Goedecke
As engineers become more senior, their core responsibilities remain similar, but the way they're evaluated shifts significantly. Juniors are judged on effort and learning, while staff-level engineers are increasingly held accountable for delivering successful outcomes. At this level, technical skill alone isn't enough—strategic judgment, influence, and the ability to navigate ambiguity become essential.
What if we gave 700 people one month to work with AI?
3 minutes by Daniel Lereya
Daniel shares his experience with 'AI Month' initiative across a 700-person organization. The teams changed how they worked with AI through hands-on training, weekly demos, and a zero-bureaucracy approach to trying new tools. The results were impressive: AI-assisted PRs grew from 50% to 90%, 71 working demos were created, and one major project saw estimated work reduced from 7.8 years to just 20.5 man-weeks.
Naming software teams
3 minutes by Stay SaaSy
This article emphasizes the importance of choosing appropriate software team names, explaining that a strong name prevents mission creep and helps others quickly route questions to the right team.
Tests are dead. Meticulous AI is here.
sponsored by Meticulous
Meticulous automatically creates and maintains an exhaustive e2e UI test suite that covers every corner of your application – with no developer intervention required whatsoever. Dropbox, Lattice, Bilt Rewards and hundreds of organisations rely on Meticulous for their frontend testing. It is built from the Chromium level up with a deterministic scheduling engine – making it the only testing tool that eliminates flakes.
And the most popular article from the last issue was: