Leadership in Tech
Leadership in Tech
#300 – April 05, 2026
managers are too busy with their own priorities to proactively push your growth
Nobody is coming to save your career
10 minutes by Steve Huynh
Managers are too busy with their own priorities to proactively push your growth, so waiting to be noticed is a losing strategy. Every meaningful opportunity requires you to start the conversation, seek out uncomfortable work, and set a clear direction. Your company benefits from you staying comfortable, which means breaking out of that comfort is entirely on you.
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Why your engineering team is slow
8 minutes by Ally Piechowski
A slow engineering team is often blamed on the people, but the real culprit is usually the codebase itself. Five warning signs reveal this: inflated estimates, fear of deploying, untouchable files, misleading test coverage, and slow onboarding. Each signal adds hidden overhead to every task. Fixing the worst signal first, with a focused two-week sprint, does more than any reorg or process change.
Communication failure that almost cost me my job
8 minutes by Roman Nikolaev
A late project nearly ended Roman's career because status updates never reached leadership, and the team lacked context to make good decisions. The core lesson: moving into management means shifting from gathering information for yourself to actively moving it in all directions. Pull context from above and around you, push it down to your team and out to stakeholders, and translate it so each audience gets what they actually need.
On the socially acceptable use of AI in business
9 minutes by Dave Kellogg
Dave explores when using AI in business is appropriate, focusing on board work and strategy. AI can help with drafting, summarizing, or organizing information, but humans must own and verify the output. Dave compares AI to a calculator: a useful tool, not a replacement for thinking. Transparency, critical judgment, and active engagement are essential to ensure AI supports, rather than replaces, human reasoning.
“Good taste” is just experience
3 minutes by Matheus Lima
Matheus argues that what people call “taste” is really experience gained through practice. Skills like recognizing good code or effective management come from repeated exposure, not innate talent. Framing them as “taste” can discourage beginners, while emphasizing practice and learning encourages growth. Early-career professionals should focus on doing the work, learning from mistakes, and building pattern recognition over time.
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And the most popular article from the last issue was: