Hierarchy exists

Hierarchy exists
5 minutes by Kore Nordmann

Wanting to be liked by your team feels generous but causes real harm. The power gap between a manager and their reports is always there, and pretending otherwise just sets people up for a shock when hard decisions land. Hierarchy also shapes how information moves: it gets filtered downward and held back upward, often by people trying to protect a friendly dynamic. Build direct relationships at multiple levels to see past both.

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The mistakes you can't take back
10 minutes by Steve Huynh

Steve explains how to recognize one-way door decisions that are difficult or impossible to undo. He argues that people often make these decisions too quickly because of outside pressure. He suggests identifying the real deadline, gathering enough information, and breaking big choices into smaller decisions. Steve also warns that not deciding is itself a decision, so important choices should be made deliberately.

Building an internal company agent
11 minutes by Orestis Ioannou

This is not a universal guide to building agents. It is a practical retrospective from building one inside a real company: five things we got right and five I would approach differently today. Making usage visible in Slack and Linear, connecting existing tools, and closing feedback loops fast drove adoption. And the adoption came from showing the agent solve real problems, not from announcing impressive architecture.

Why I still believe in mentorship
7 minutes by Matthias Endler

Good mentors notice what you can't see yourself, like Matthias's table tennis coach spotting a wrong stance after years of unnoticed practice. Books, courses, and AI tools can answer questions, but they work best when you already know what to ask. A mentor has enough distance to question your assumptions and spot habits you've never examined. That outside perspective is hard to replace, even for experienced engineers.

How to use estuarine mapping to navigate change in complex systems
25 minutes by Andi Roberts

Estuarine mapping, developed by Dave Snowden, helps identify what can realistically change in a complex system and where effort is best spent. It plots people, habits, rules and resources against the energy and time needed to shift them, dividing the landscape into what is effectively fixed, what is too volatile to matter, and what is genuinely within reach.

And the most popular article from the last issue was:

• Good culture is the biggest productivity hack, not AI