Advice for new principal tech ICs

Advice for new principal tech ICs
14 minutes by Eugene Yan

Principal engineers succeed by shifting focus from coding to influence and vision. They become part-time everything, product, design, and business while staying hands-on with code. Eugene says the key is scaling through others by mentoring, delegating, and creating space for team members to grow. Principals must balance big-picture thinking with practical execution.

Supercharge AI coding with your team’s context
sponsored by Unblocked

Unblocked connects your code, docs, and conversations so Cursor, Claude and Copilot finally understand your system like your best engineer.

Measuring engineering productivity
11 minutes by Can Duruk

A practical system for measuring engineering productivity that prioritizes visibility without burdening or demotivating engineers. Can describes lightweight, management-driven practices like async standups, changelogs, and structured 1:1s that reveal progress and patterns without resorting to flawed metrics. The core principle is simple: measure thoughtfully to improve awareness and outcomes, not to surveil or control.

Thinking clearly
3 minutes by Daniel Lemire

Simplicity leads to better results than complexity. Clear thinking requires precise language and avoiding jargon, which makes people seem more trustworthy. Focus on your real motivation first, then choose the right approach.

The six words that killed Quibi
17 minutes by Phil McKinney

Your brain naturally compares new information to patterns it already knows. This makes analogies powerful tools for understanding complex ideas, but also dangerous when they mislead you. Jeffrey Katzenberg mastered analogies to create breakthrough technologies like HP Halo by saying it should feel "like being there." But later, his "just like TV, but for your phone" analogy led Quibi to burn over $1 billion in six months. Good analogies force you to invent new solutions, while bad ones just translate old ideas to new contexts.

Honesty is the best policy
1 minute by Andrew Bosworth

Dishonesty may seem efficient in the short term, but it creates long-term problems. Every lie builds debt that erodes trust and forces you to manage contradictions. Honest cultures avoid the ongoing costs of suspicion and checking. Honesty works as a policy because it performs best over time, not because it always feels good in the moment.

The anvil of alignment: The value of monoliths over microservices
sponsored by Test Double

Your monolith might be your secret business weapon. Seriously! A group of experienced senior software developers debated the recent monoliths to microservices trend and got to a common thread: why rushing to microservices could be undermining your business alignment. This anvil of alignment principle challenges everything you thought you knew about architectural decisions.

industry

• Nvidia takes $1 billion stake in Nokia
• Austrian Ministry Kicks Out Microsoft in Favor of Nextcloud
• Amazon confirms massive job losses in corporate division
• Notes on where seat-based pricing is going
• Everything Is Television

security

• My AWS Account Got Hacked
• First Malicious MCP in the Wild: The Postmark Backdoor That's Stealing Your Emails
• NPM flooded with malicious packages downloaded more than 86,000 times

And the most popular article from the last issue was:

• Stop caring so much about your people