Are You Solving the Right Problem?
This week: corporate jargon that kills clarity, a tool for diagnosing what's actually broken, and why the straight line to success is a myth.
This week asks the same question from different angles: are you solving the right problem?
The words you reach for in all-hands might be working against you. The org dysfunction you keep patching has roots nobody’s looked at yet. And the straight line – in your career, your infrastructure, your prioritization – is already bending in ways worth getting ahead of.
1. Decode Corporate Jargon: Boost Engineering Clarity and Success
Mirek Stanek challenges engineering leaders to shift from empty corporate jargon to transparency and data-driven insights. Drawing inspiration from a legendary exchange with JFK, Stanek emphasizes the importance of every engineer understanding how their work contributes to the company’s ‘moonshot’.
Stanek demonstrates how he revamped his company’s All-Hands to focus on real metrics rather than ambiguous ambitions, transforming it into one of the most successful sessions by replacing ‘fluff’ with factual, actionable insights.
The shift he describes is smaller than you’d expect – and the result was one of the most successful sessions his team had ever run.
Why It Matters
The words engineering leaders choose don’t just reflect their thinking – they shape how their teams think. If your all-hands, roadmap reviews, or 1-on-1s are full of language that floats above the actual work, something important is getting lost in translation.
Read This If You’re Interested In
Running sharper all-hands and leadership communications
Understanding why smart people still reach for vague language
Closing the gap between what you say and what your team hears
2. Force Mapping: Uncover Hidden Organizational Dynamics for Real Change
Maarten Dalmijn starts from a frustrating but familiar place: your organization has a problem everyone can see, consultants have been in, and nothing has changed. Not because the interventions were bad – but because they were aimed at the wrong thing.
He introduces a structured approach to mapping the forces underneath organizational dysfunction. It’s not a framework in the usual sense. It’s closer to a diagnostic – one that forces you to ask why symptoms keep returning instead of just treating them again.
Why It Matters
Engineering leaders are often promoted for solving problems fast. But the hardest organizational problems don’t respond to speed – they respond to accuracy. Force Mapping is a tool for slowing down long enough to aim correctly.
Read This If You’re Interested In
Diagnosing systemic team problems that keep resurfacing
Building a clearer picture of why your org behaves the way it does
Moving from reactive fixes to structural interventions
3. Unlocking Interview Success: Mastering Behavioural Interviews for Engineering Leaders
Stephane Moreau tackles a common pitfall for engineering leaders: overlooking the importance of preparation for behavioural rounds. Moreau points out that technical expertise is often prioritized over leadership communication skills during interviews, which can lead to unexpected rejections.
The post introduces Moreau’s innovative Voice AI Interview Coach, designed to help engineering leaders articulate their stories effectively by providing real-time feedback and detailed evaluations.
The results he describes from using it will make you reconsider how much preparation actually matters here.
Why It Matters
As engineers move into leadership, the ability to articulate decisions and communicate experience becomes as important as the experience itself. Failing to practice this isn’t humility – it’s a blind spot.
Read This If You’re Interested In
Preparing for leadership interviews more deliberately
Understanding what interviewers are actually evaluating
Building confidence in telling your own story under pressure
4. Unpacking LLM Tracing: The Essential Guide for AI PMs
Shaili Guru opens with a scenario that’s increasingly common: your AI system is producing wrong answers, no error has been thrown, and you have no idea where things went sideways. The problem isn’t your model. It’s that you can’t see inside it.
She makes the case for tracing as the tool that changes this – not as a performance metric, but as something closer to a flight recorder. The distinction matters more than it sounds.
What she uncovers about where AI systems most commonly fail, and why conventional debugging misses it entirely, is the part worth reading slowly.
Why It Matters
Engineering leaders shipping AI features are inheriting a new category of failure – one that’s silent, user-facing, and hard to reproduce. Understanding how to surface it early is quickly becoming a core operational competency.
Read This If You’re Interested In
Debugging AI systems that fail without clear error signals
Understanding where hallucinations actually originate
Building more reliable AI pipelines from prototype to production
5. From Accidental Manager to Remarkable Leader: The Unseen Path of Engineering Excellence
Rajeev Rajan, CTO at Atlassian, spent a significant part of his career actively avoiding management. This episode of Modern CTO explores what changed – and why the leaders who resist the role earliest sometimes become the most effective once they step into it.
The conversation covers how Atlassian thinks about the tension between developer productivity and what Rajan calls “developer joy” – a distinction that sounds soft until he explains what it actually costs when it’s missing.
He also describes the moment in his own trajectory where the skills that made him a strong individual contributor stopped being enough.
Why It Matters
The path from IC to leader is one of the most disorienting transitions in engineering. Rajan’s account is unusually honest about what that transition actually requires – and what it asks you to let go of.
Listen To This If You’re Interested In
Understanding what changes when you move from IC to leader
Thinking about developer experience as a strategic priority
Learning from leaders who came to management reluctantly
6. Navigating the SaaS Evolution: Insights from Atlassian’s CEO
Atlassian’s CEO sits down with a16z to talk about what he’s calling a structural inflection point for SaaS – not a gradual shift, but something closer to a reset. The conversation covers what happens to software business models when AI moves from a feature to a foundation.
He doesn’t spend much time on the threat framing. The more interesting part is the taxonomy he draws between different types of SaaS companies, and why the same AI wave will hit each of them very differently.
The pricing question he raises near the end of the conversation doesn’t have a clean answer yet – and that ambiguity is worth sitting with.
Why It Matters
Engineering leaders building on or within SaaS platforms are operating inside business model assumptions that are actively being renegotiated. Understanding where those fault lines are helps you make better bets about what to build and how to price it.
Watch This If You’re Interested In
Understanding how AI is reshaping SaaS business models
Thinking about platform strategy during a period of structural change
Learning how a major software CEO is framing the next few years
7. Beyond Frameworks: Mastering Prioritization with Four Essential Components
Ant Murphy’s opening move is to tell you to stop looking for a better prioritization framework – and then explain why that instinct is itself the problem. The argument isn’t that frameworks are wrong, it’s that reaching for one is often a way of avoiding the harder judgment call underneath.
He breaks down four components that, he argues, every prioritization decision actually hinges on. Two of them are the ones teams usually talk about. The other two are the ones that drive most of the decisions nobody can explain later.
What he says about confidence – and how rarely it gets named as a factor – is the part that lands.
Why It Matters
Most prioritization debates in engineering teams aren’t really about the framework. They’re about unspoken disagreements on urgency and confidence. Naming those explicitly changes the conversation.
Read This If You’re Interested In
Improving how your team talks about prioritization decisions
Understanding what’s actually driving the calls you can’t explain
Moving past framework debates to clearer decision-making
8. The Myth of the Straight Line: Rethinking Success and Passion
Bruno challenges the conventional wisdom surrounding passion and success.
Drawing from personal encounters and influencing figures like Marc Randolph and James Clear, he unravels the ‘Plateau of Latent Potential’ to reveal a more intricate path to achievement: one rooted in grit and mastery rather than pure serendipity.
Discover the algebra that defines true success and see why embracing rejection can be a potent driving force. This piece is an invitation to redefine how we perceive luck and success – an essential read for anyone striving to master their craft.
Why It Matters
Engineering leaders who build teams are also, inevitably, shaping how those teams think about growth and setbacks. This piece is a useful recalibration – especially for leaders managing people who are discouraged by early results that don’t match their effort.
Read This If You’re Interested In
Rethinking how you coach engineers through slow or difficult periods
Understanding the relationship between grit, mastery, and long-term growth
Reframing what a non-linear career path actually signals
See you next week!
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