The New Shape of the Engineering Team

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

If AI can handle the boilerplate, the scaffolding, and a growing portion of routine implementation, what does that mean for how we compose engineering teams? It’s a question I’ve been turning over for a while now, and the answers I keep arriving at are uncomfortable.

The optimistic version is that AI frees engineers to focus on higher-value work, system design, problem framing, user understanding, architectural thinking. The pessimistic version is that it eliminates the entry-level work that junior engineers have traditionally used to learn the craft. The realistic version is probably somewhere in between, and navigating it well is one of the most important challenges facing technical leaders right now.

The Art of the One-on-One: Beyond Status Updates

Mon, 15 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In the first article in this series, I wrote about psychological safety, the foundation that makes everything else in leadership possible. If there’s one place where that foundation gets tested every single week, it’s the one-on-one.

I’ll be honest: my early one-on-ones were terrible. I’d sit down with a report, open Jira, and essentially run a standup for two people. “How’s the migration going? Any blockers? Cool, see you next week.” I thought I was being efficient. What I was actually doing was wasting the most valuable recurring meeting on my calendar, and probably theirs too.

Career-Development on guy@secdev.uk

The New Shape of the Engineering Team

The Art of the One-on-One: Beyond Status Updates