SWLW #727: Writing is no longer proof of work, Experts lead experts, and more.

In a world where it's hard to keep up with so much content, I hope my curation helps you find high-signal content worth reading slowly and deeply. Under "Culture," you'll find content worth reading and sharing with others; you'll need others' help to pull it off. Under "Peopleware," you'll find content that can help you approach situations differently with new perspectives and frameworks.

This Week's Favorite

The Revised Rules of Engineering Management With Will Larson (Video)
116 minutes read.

This is the classic ZIRP hangover: when managers were told never to make technical decisions, the only levers left were headcount and process. Will Larson explains how that created bloated orgs, over-protected engineers, and surveys used as a verdict instead of a conversation starter. I like his reminder that in a world where code is cheap, the leader who can go back to the details has a real edge. Listen to it on your commute to work, it will be time well spent.

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Culture

Whose Kid Is This
1 minute read.

My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile.

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Experts Lead Experts
3 minutes read.

I like the practical lesson hidden in this piece by Marty Cagan: the best technology managers got hands-on with AI to understand its nature, then went back to the bigger decisions. Use it to check your own leadership: do you know the tools well enough to judge your team's work and where the real constraint is now that building is cheap?

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Writing Is No Longer Proof of Work
5 minutes read.

The biggest takeaway for dealing with meat proxy or AI slop is to demand concise writing. This forces the writer to distill their idea and land their main arguments effectively for readers. Ernest Hemingway wrote it well before: "All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know."

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Design as a Garden: A Different Way to Think About Creative Work.
3 minutes read.

"Match effort to the season. Ask yourself: does this need more effort, or simply more time? Practice patience. And when the time is ripe, work intensely." Justin Jay Wang shares a useful filter for leaders who default to adding more people or pressure when a project stalls.

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Peopleware

Brand Is Who You Are
3 minutes read.

The logo and website are expressions of the brand, not the brand itself. You can hire someone to make a beautiful identity, but if it isn't connected to what the people behind the company believe, you are mostly choosing an appearance. With AI making polished output nearly free, that hollowness will be easier to spot.

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Steve Jobs Took 19 Seconds to Name the Biggest Lesson Apple Taught Him: “When I See Something Not Being Done Right, My First Reaction Isn’t to Go Fix It.” (Video)
2 minutes read.

Steve Jobs shares the lesson Apple taught him: "When I see something not being done right, my first reaction isn't to go fix it." -- I like this as a check for any leader who got promoted for being the best fixer. Every time you jump in, the team learns that quality is your job. What is the last thing you fixed yourself that really signaled something about your system?

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How to Pitch Really Damn Well
3 minutes read.

Worth reading even if you never plan to raise money. Aaron Harris argues that walking people through your operational complexity loses them, and that you should show how your current work leads to changing something foundational. Use it as a checklist on your next strategy doc: does it describe the world your team is building toward, or only the optimizations you did to get here?

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And finally, inspiring tweets...

@_oghenemaro: Devote the rest of your life in making progress.

@trq212: There’s 100% a kind of mania you can get into with coding agents, where it feels like you’re getting a lot done and working all the time but nothing is really happening. I think it's often a form of avoidance of something else in life.



p.s. if you're leading a team, consider writing and sharing your Manager README (it's free) or getting my e-book and interviews Leading Snowflakes: The New Engineering Manager's Handbook. You can also support me by becoming a patron. Thank you ❤️



Keep reading, keep learning.
-- Oren Ellenbogen.