Before You Build, Ask Yourself: Who is Your Bullseye Customer?
A shared customer hypothesis can resolve decisions that a month of roadmap debate can’t.
5 min read
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Thriving In Engineering
Newsletter by Alex Ponomarev
Proven leadership frameworks that help you stay calm under pressure, build thriving teams, and lead with confidence, distilled from 25 years of engineering leadership. Real lessons, not theory.
20 posts in the last 90 days · newest 5 Oct
When Building Gets Easy, Who Holds It All Together?
10 reads on the human work that holds engineering teams together
7 min read
Don’t Mistake Friendliness For Friendship
Being close to your team and being their manager are not the same, and the two run on different rules.
6 min read
Why Metacognition Beats Coding Skill in the AI Era | Carol Palombini, Psychologist | TIE
Why leaders, not tools, are what make or break AI adoption.
Nobody Prepares You To Make Decisions Other People Execute
From writing code to translating strategy into work an engineering team can execute.
4 min read
Hire, Get Hired, Stay Hired
9 reads on the full arc of a career, from the hiring decision to keeping your seat.
8 min read
The Rain Comes In The Fall
Bring an umbrella, not a forecast: What engineering managers learn about uncertainty.
5 min read
Don't Outsource Your Thinking to AI | Michał Poczwardowski | TIE
On judgment, honeypots, and the discipline of thinking for yourself.
Nobody's Job Description Survived This
How AI is redrawing who does what, and who reviews it.
8 min read
From Senior In Figma To Junior In Code: One Designer's Trade
How AI tools let a designer move from mockups to production code.
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The Engineering Manager’s Guide to Emotional Tolerance
Five ways to lead with emotion without losing yourself in the process.
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Why Non-Technical People Are Better at AI Than They Think | Alyssa Fu Ward, PhD | TIE
On the Human-Centered AI Capability Framework, and why "build with AI" means something different for everyone.
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"The Builder PM" — Amy Mitchell on Why AI Is Pulling PMs Back Into Engineering | TIE
On trading precision for a stack of maybes, and what actually closes a deal when the spec sheet can't.
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The Green Status That Isn't True — Michi Goetz, Director of TPM at Celonis | TIE
On the "TPM boardroom" method for pressure-testing decisions and the three stages he sees TPMs moving through, ending in what he calls an "AI architect."
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"Building on a Swamp" | Roman Nikolaev (Cambri) on Why AI Doesn't Fix a Broken Dev Process | TIE
On the car mechanic analogy for engineering's future, why AI on top of a broken dev process gives you almost no upside, and why every engineer is now effectively a manager.
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"Empathy Is Your Differentiator" — Colette Molteni on Why AI Doesn't Replace Human Skills | TIE
On the last-20%-still-needs-a-human problem, AI note-takers eroding trust in meetings, and her real prediction for the AI transformation timeline.
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"We Built an AI Lab a Year Before We Needed It" — Shamim Rajani (Genetech COO) | TIE
Building for a future you can't measure yet, the productivity paradox of AI-assisted code review, and what changed her mind about the blockchain comparison.
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