Reading content created for roles you collaborate with builds cross-functional empathy, uncovers hidden pain points, and lets engineering leaders work smarter with product, recruiting, and management.
Technical leaders often stay trapped inside the silos of their own responsibilities, missing the perspective of the people they depend on. This piece argues that the fastest way to gain a competitive edge is to deliberately consume the newsletters, podcasts, and talks that are produced for other roles-product, recruiting, QA, sales, and beyond. By treating those resources as if you were learning a new programming language, you develop the empathy and insight needed to anticipate concerns before they surface.
The author shares personal examples, from discovering recruiter complaints about unrealistic hiring managers to learning about Boolean search tactics that reveal how much skill recruiters bring to candidate sourcing. Those moments of "aha!" illustrate how role-specific content surfaces hidden friction points and equips managers to adjust their behavior-writing clearer review docs for over-burdened managers or defining realistic hiring criteria for recruiters.
Beyond anecdotes, the article lists concrete resources: Lenny's Podcast, Product School, Reforge courses, Manager Tools, and talks from LinkedIn Talent Connect. Each serves as a shortcut to the mental models of a different function, turning passive curiosity into actionable knowledge that can improve cross-team collaboration, hiring efficiency, and personal career growth.
For technical leaders the takeaway is simple: allocate regular time to consume at least one piece of content from a role you partner with each week. The payoff is a deeper understanding of their pain points, better alignment on goals, and a measurable boost in your own effectiveness as a cross-functional leader.
Check out the full stdlib collection for more frameworks, templates, and guides to accelerate your technical leadership journey.