One trend I'm seeing across the industry: Engineering managers are becoming highly desired as ICs. Engineering fundamentals, combined with people skills, business/product understanding, and the ability to delegate, guide, and communicate clearly. Exactly what's needed in the AI era.

The tech lead role has changed. It’s no longer about being the best debugger in the room since AI handles the boilerplate. Today, it’s about systemic orchestration. The modern engineering leader isn't a gatekeeper of code but a force multiplier of intent.

Attitude > Technical Skills Why? Because in modern software development: • Frameworks change every 12 months • Syntax can be automated • Curiosity cannot be replicated Give me a hungry engineer who figures things out over a complacent expert any day.

Attitude > Tech skills. When assessing the potential of an engineer. Especially these days, when all the information is so much more accessible than it was years ago. With the right attitude, you can learn everything you need in order to make a bi

I can tell everything about someone’s seniority by the way they approach solving problems: Are they really taking care of the problem? Or do they just accept the first solution they come across and leave it for others to deal with?

Speed alone is not leverage in the AI era. Direction is leverage. Fast teams without clarity just arrive at the wrong place sooner.

Speaking at the TechLead conference in Amsterdam on June 11. My talk will be titled: Why Engineers Must Become Multipliers in the AI Era. If you're attending the conference, let me know, happy to meet and chat!

Interestingly, former Meta Distinguished Engineer's AI workflow is very simple: Write the spec → simple prompt → review the code. No crazy AI workflows. Just clear thinking, good judgment, and fast iteration.

Workflow of some of the best engineers I know is surprisingly simple: Write the spec → simple prompt → review the code. That’s it. Nothing fancy, and no crazy AI workflows. Just clear thinking, good judgment, and fast iteration.

The goal of engineering leaders has always been to do what’s best for the team, their people, organization, and the overall business. This hasn’t changed with AI.

24 Product Engineers, 0 PMs, 1 Product Designer This is the product & engineering org of Portkey, which recently announced its acquisition by Palo Alto Networks. More in this article: newsletter.eng-leadership.com/p/the-produ...

It's becoming more and more common for engineers to wear many different hats. Being: - forward-deployed engineers, - product-focused, - directly involved in customer support, etc. All about end-to-end ownership.

Great engineering leaders create leaders who inspire others. Leading also means knowing when to step back and let others shine.

How the tables have turned. Companies trying to “tokenmaxx” a month ago, are now trying minimize the spend and look for ways to efficiently use tokens.

Being AI-native as a software engineer is a lot more than just simply using AI tools. It means continuously identifying and eliminating bottlenecks across the entire software engineering lifecycle.

Yesterday's Engineering Leadership Live in San Francisco was a blast! It was a packed house and full of insightful conversations about engineering/engineering leadership.

Hanging out at the OpenAI's offices in San Francisco today. Then heading to the Engineering Leadership LIVE event! Still some time to join the event here: luma.com/m08ggil7

A lot of the skills that you need in order to do AI-asissted engineering well, is connected with engineering leadership skills: - Know what and how to delegate correctly - Dissect bigger tasks into smaller, manageable pieces

Parkinson's law: If you give someone four days for a task that they could realistically finish in less than two, they will almost always use the full four days.

A lot of the engineering these days is actually becoming “engineering leadership”. A lot of the skills that you need in order to do AI-asissted engineering well, is connected with being a great tech lead.

Your work rarely speaks for itself. You need to actively build a narrative why your work matters.

Updated speaker lineup for the Engineering Leadership Live event in San Francisco! - Gregor Ojstersek, CTO & Author Engineering Leadership newsletter Talk: AI-Native Engineering Leadership - Vinay Perneti, VP of Engineering, Augment Code

Full speaker lineup for the Engineering Leadership Live event in San Francisco! - Gregor Ojstersek, CTO & Author Engineering Leadership newsletter Talk: AI-Native Engineering Leadership

I'll be giving a talk at the Engineering Leadership Live event in San Francisco. The talk is titled: AI-Native Engineering Leadership I'll be sharing: - What does it mean to be an AI-native engineering leader - What has changed from 1-2 years ago

A great engineer thinks like a product manager.

Asking for a friend

Saying "I don't know" is a sign of seniority for me. It's impossible to know all of the things, especially in Software Engineering. So not knowing something is no issue at all. On the contrary, it shows me that you are self-aware and confident in yourself by saying that.

The most expensive review is the one that happens after the code exists. That’s why spec-driven development is becoming a great way to build. It’s much easier to review the spec thoroughly, than thoroughly review a whole bunch of AI-generated code.

AI can generate code faster than ever, but it can also scale technical debt faster than ever.

The most in-demand engineers at this time tend to fall into two groups: 1. Great generalists who can build and ship end-to-end 2. Extreme specialists with rare, hard-to-replace expertise in a specific technology or domain

PR of the year 🫡

The more senior you become, the more you succeed through others, not through your own output.

The more you grow in your career, the more you realize how important building the narrative around your work is. You can do the best work in the world, but if you hope that it will get noticed, you’re most likely wrong.

It's fine that non-engineers are contributing to the codebase, as long as their contributions are treated the same as contributions from engineers. Every opened PR should be up to the standards. No exceptions. The quality is important, not who opens the PR.

Everyone is saying managers should become more hands-on. But I believe the biggest impact of a manager is to enable others to do their best work.

Understanding the codebase and onboarding to it is a great use case for AI. What used to take days can now take hours.

You can solve leetcode-style challenges in a matter of seconds with AI. So, it doesn't make sense for them to be a part of tech interviews. My recommendation is: Open-ended questions and then drilling to fine details. The key is to understand their judgment. Not memorization.

“Anyone can build apps now”

Removing AI in tech interviews is wrong. AI-assisted engineering is already the standard, and technical interviews should reflect how modern software is actually built.

No matter how great technically you are, weak relationships and low visibility will limit your influence and opportunities.

Software engineering is becoming position-less. The boundaries between roles are blurring more and more.

Together with my friends from Augment Code, we are hosting a live event in San Francisco on May 26th!

A great engineering manager thinks like a product manager.

Removing AI in tech interviews is wrong. Modern engineering is: having good judgment + using AI to move faster. So, why remove something that engineers use and are expected to use every day.

The real meaning of VIBE coding

I strongly believe that in the first year of being in a FDE role, you learn 2x more than being in a SWE role. You learn all about good communication, managing expectations, planning, and prioritizing business value. Something mostly tech leads do in a normal engineering team.

Salesforce's bet: Future enterprise software will be run largely by AI agents, not humans clicking through user interfaces. Interestingly, they have been known for an interface-heavy experience, but now they're changing the script. Less UI, less clicking, more automation.

We're moving backwards! The only good thing, the Anthropic's api key is not hardcoded :D

99 AI generated PRs created -> LGTM 🤷‍♂️ Happy Friday and have a great weekend!

A junior engineer, who lives and breathes AI, paired with a senior engineer with a really good understanding of engineering practices. That combination can be extremely valuable, and both can learn a lot from each other. Companies that hire just seniors are missing out.