UNEXPECTED ANTI-PATTERNS FOR ENGINEERING LEADERS

Summary from the TLDR newsletter

Engineering teams consisting of a couple hundred people might cost $50 to $100 million a year in salary, so it is frustrating for executives when they hear that engineering is an art and that outcomes are unpredictable. The misalignment between engineering leaders and other executives often stems from a lack of flexibility - too many well-meaning engineering leaders go by the book of conventional leadership advice. Applying rules too universally turns them into anti-patterns. The key to effective leadership lies in figuring out which scenarios are worth deliberately defying conventional logic and when to simply follow the rules.