Leadership in Tech
Leadership in Tech
#286 – February 15, 2026
what due diligence is, how data rooms work, and why confidentiality matters
How to run a technical due diligence?
17 minutes by Sergio Visinoni
Sergio explains how to run a technical due diligence during a company acquisition. He describes what due diligence is, how data rooms work, and why confidentiality matters. He outlines different types of deals—such as integration, independent growth, brand acquisition, and acqui-hiring—and explains what to focus on in each case, including security, talent, costs, and technology. The goal is to assess risks and support better investment decisions.
Still writing tests manually? Meticulous AI is here
sponsored by Meticulous
Most teams are forced to make the tradeoff between better coverage and more maintenance effort. But top engineering teams like Notion, Dropbox, Wealthsimple and LaunchDarkly have discovered a new testing paradigm. Built by ex-Palantir engineers, Meticulous creates and maintains E2E UI tests that covers every edge case of your web app - without any developer effort, making it the only tool to improve both product quality and dev velocity.
The Cobra effect: When good incentives go bad
3 minutes by Michał Poczwardowski
Michał explains the Cobra Effect, when good incentives lead to bad results. In Hanoi, paying for rat tails led people to breed rats. Similar problems happened at Enron and Wells Fargo, where targets replaced real goals. Michał shows how incentives can backfire when people game the system. Thinking about second- and third-order consequences helps design better incentives that work long term.
Ideas over implementation
1 minute by Andrew Bosworth
Andrew gives an advice to focus on your goals, not your implementation choices. Early technical decisions are made with limited information, so treating them as unchangeable makes adapting costly. Falling in love with a specific architecture or tool forces you to get everything right upfront. Strong teams hold their ideas lightly while keeping their objectives firm, allowing them to course-correct as they learn.
Invest your political capital
16 minutes by Gregor Hohpe
Driving organizational change requires political capital, a reservoir of goodwill and credibility that you must earn before spending. You build this capital slowly through actions like delivering results, being transparent, listening well, and owning mistakes. Major changes deplete your capital quickly, so save it for meaningful battles rather than spreading yourself thin.
Getting the main thing right
8 minutes by Sean Goedecke
Figuring out the most important thing for your job matters more than anything else. Sean says that many engineers waste time on minor details like technology choices while ignoring critical questions about whether the project will actually ship. If you consistently deliver projects, you can get away with smaller faults. This principle applies beyond tech: when saving money, your big purchases matter far more than coupon hunting.
What’s left when in-house gets expensive and offshore gets slow?
sponsored by AssureSoft
Building in-house offers control, but rising overhead, hiring delays, and team strain can erode speed. Offshore teams promise savings, yet time-zone gaps and lost context often slow execution. This report explores why more engineering leaders choose nearshore teams as a middle ground—combining real-time collaboration, ownership, and predictable costs without sacrificing delivery.
And the most popular article from the last issue was: