Find resources to solve your technical leadership challenges
Answer senior executives' questions directly and succinctly to keep meetings focused, build credibility, and surface follow-up issues.
Will Larson's analysis of balancing trust-based management with necessary oversight and inspection systems
Escalate only when you've exhausted options and need higher-level input; give concise context, outline options, and state a clear ask to avoid over- or under-escalation.
Software survives when the team holds a shared mental model of its code; churn breaks that theory, causing bitrot and project death.
Employee handbook from the headless CMS company covering remote work practices and startup culture
Development guidelines and best practices from Inaka covering coding standards and project management
An open-source handbook of inclusive policies that gives engineering leaders concrete templates to build equitable hiring, onboarding, remote work, and culture practices.
Interactive cognitive challenge designed to reveal problem-solving approaches and decision-making patterns
Xavier Niel reveals how 42's tuition-free, teacher-less model forces students to self-direct their learning, creating engineers who thrive on peer collaboration and relentless problem-solving.
Hiring for "culture fit" lets unhealthy norms persist and blocks diversity; the article shows why the term is a trap and urges explicit expectations instead.
Comprehensive taxonomy of mental shortcuts and systematic errors that undermine technical decision-making
Workplaces often reward conformity, leaving introverts and unconventional thinkers feeling like outsiders; the piece shows why that hurts performance and offers concrete steps to broaden inclusion.
Strategic guide for translating DevEx improvements into compelling business proposals for executive buy-in
Revolutionary approach to measuring productivity by focusing on team-level blockers rather than traditional metrics
Delivery metrics let engineering leaders cut cycle time from hundreds of hours to tens, boost deployment frequency, and improve reliability without extra work, by turning data into process improvements.
Guide on how imprecise requests waste team time and strategies for communicating expectations clearly
Effective leaders boost performance by intentionally ceding control, letting teams own problems, and trusting their judgment-creating autonomy that drives faster delivery and higher morale.
Mental model for strategic decision-making by considering long-term consequences and asking 'And then what?'
Richard Marmorstein's critique of data-driven culture and framework for meaningful metrics usage
Leaders who refuse to decide can still drive decisions by asking probing questions, repeatedly surfacing the hardest parts, and listening until the other person owns the choice.
Engineering leaders learn why endless debate or blind obedience kills delivery and get concrete tactics-FG scale, rotational programs, explicit decision frameworks-to shift toward outcome-focused collaboration.
Unilateral decisions create false progress while consensus stalls teams; adopting consent lets groups move forward without waiting for unanimous approval.
Curated collection of mental models and principles for strategic thinking and team performance optimization
Adopt IETF's rough consensus model to balance rapid decisions with inclusive feedback, distinguishing non-critical remarks from fundamental flaws.
Strategic framework for approaching life-changing decisions with clarity and systematic thinking
Comprehensive guide to nearly 100 mental models for systematic thinking and strategic decision-making
Framework for cutting through decision paralysis by separating upsides from downsides and focusing on strengths
Gokul Rajaram's SPADE framework for systematic high-stakes decision-making with clear ownership and team alignment
Google's massive bureaucracy turns talented engineers into risk-averse mice, killing urgency, mission focus, and real value creation; the piece shows why cultural decay hurts performance and how leaders can spot it.
Data engineers should not be forced to write ETL; give data scientists end-to-end ownership while engineers build reusable platforms, breaking the dysfunctional Thinker-Doer cycle.
Data teams need both engineers and analysts; without a balanced hire mix the engineer drowns in reports and analysts burn out, so scaling analytics requires clear roles, reliable pipelines, and disciplined prioritization.
Erik Bernhardsson's narrative on transforming a fragmented data team into a strategic organizational powerhouse
Career development guide explaining the distinct responsibilities and expectations at each leadership level
A CTO or VPE must stay deeply technical to reliably judge quality, make trade-offs, earn team respect, and attract top engineers-otherwise they lose credibility and effectiveness.
Directors win by shifting from doing work themselves to coaching managers, building organization observability, and thinking in systems, so they can scale impact without becoming a bottleneck.
A CTO isn't just a senior engineer; they juggle seven distinct roles-from executive strategist to security owner-so leaders can see which responsibilities to focus on as their company grows.
Charity Majors' practical guide for rebuilding trust through intentional communication and strategic language
A hierarchy of disagreement levels lets you classify online arguments, helping you argue more constructively and reduce needless meanness.
Video communication platform for organizing and distributing team communications
Direct and empathetic approach to communicating difficult information as a leader
Marshall Rosenberg's communication approach focusing on empathy and conflict resolution
Effective product pitching strategy emphasizing live demonstrations over presentations
Buffer's radically transparent approach to communicating layoffs and leadership accountability
How engineering teams develop learned helplessness and normalize dysfunctional processes
Japanese practice of building consensus before formal decisions through informal consultation
Psychological learning model describing progression from incompetence to mastery
Comprehensive collection of public career frameworks and ladders from tech companies
A practical guide that breaks down dual-track engineering ladders, shows how they scale with team size, and provides a curated list of 30+ public career ladders for building or improving your own framework.
The stdlib collection is a community-curated library of practical, immediately useful, battle-tested resources for technical leadership. Each resource is designed to be immediately applicable to your role. New resources are added based on community feedback and emerging best practices.