How AI has changed my engineering leadership role

How AI has changed my engineering leadership role
4 minutes by Bjorn Roche

AI has made hands-on technical work more accessible for engineering leaders, allowing them to build tools, learn systems quickly, and stay close to their teams. Onboarding is faster, documentation has improved, and concerns like knowledge silos and adding new technology feel less daunting. Most people are still developing instincts for what AI can do, and the best ideas will likely come from those using it daily.

Don’t sacrifice quality for speed (ElevenLabs definitely doesn’t).
sponsored by Meticulous

Agents are writing code faster than ever. They even review their own work. But who’s reviewing them? One does a passable job and ships a buggy fix, the next copies it. Bugs spread faster than anyone can catch them. Leadership at Dropbox, Notion & ElevenLabs refused to trade this quality for speed. With Meticulous, every change is exhaustively verified, with zero developer effort.

SOC 2 vs. ISO 27001: Which one does your company actually need?
less than a minute by Ido Green

SOC 2 and ISO 27001 both help companies demonstrate strong security practices, but they serve different needs. SOC 2 is often best for U.S. technology companies seeking enterprise customers, while ISO 27001 is widely recognized internationally. Companies should choose based on customer requirements. AI-powered compliance tools can reduce manual work by monitoring security controls, fixing issues, and collecting audit evidence automatically.

“You didn’t do it right”
7 minutes by Jason Cohen

OKRs and other popular frameworks often fail, but the response is always "you didn't do it right." This excuse is unfalsifiable, meaning no amount of failure can disprove the framework. Instead of forcing a rigid system, treat frameworks like clothes: try them on, tailor what fits, and discard what doesn't. At WP Engine, letting teams pick one metric they personally cared about worked far better than any formal framework ever did.

Mastering the four abstraction levels of refinement
8 minutes by Maarten Dalmijn

Refinement meetings fail because teams discuss problems, solutions, technical steps, and work breakdown all at once, creating confusion and cognitive overload. Moving through these four levels in order, starting with the problem before touching any solution, fixes this. Over-preparing with finished user stories makes things worse, not better. Maarten suggests starting simple, slicing work into small humble pieces, and letting real collaboration shape the solution.

How do I give feedback without making someone defensive?
19 minutes by Andi Roberts

Giving feedback without defensiveness is the wrong goal. The real aim is to avoid adding unnecessary threat to an already difficult conversation. This means separating what you observed from what you concluded, explaining your reasoning, and staying genuinely open to information that might change your view. Research confirms that feedback directed at the person tends to backfire, while feedback focused on specific behaviour and its consequences is more likely to lead somewhere useful.

And the most popular article from the last issue was:

• The manager’s path in the age of AI