@jstanier

Dad. CTO. Compilers Ph.D. Wrote some books. I post when I write something.

 Cumbria
theengineeringmanager.com
Joined September 2007
  • Tweets13.9K
  • Following36
  • Followers5.4K
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As individuals are capable of doing more work on their own, mostly thanks to AI, having a culture of DRIs has never been more useful. It also greatly helps ensure you’re hiring the right folks and coaching them in the right way. theengineeringmanager.substa…
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Everything about managers getting closer to the details boils down to one thing: how do you know the truth about what’s going on in your team? And even what is truth, anyway? substack.com/home/post/p-212…
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A simple test to see whether you're being hands-on enough as an engineering manager is to measure how much of your time you spend routing information, versus actually /doing/ things. theengineeringmanager.substa…
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Compounding is miraculous, and it is even more so when it is coupled with disciplined, bold conviction. That’s what happened at the Nomad Investment Partnership, and it’s equally applicable to our lives and work. theengineeringmanager.substa…
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Starting projects is easy and fun. Finishing them is hard and often stressful. One of the most valuable skills for anyone, especially now that it’s so easy to create work, is to finish it. theengineeringmanager.substa…
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A good metaphor can help reframe what it means to be hands-on and in the details whilst running a team, without getting dragged into the usual FUD narrative about it. theengineeringmanager.substa…
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Most organizations hit a crisis at some point, whether through continual downtime, slowness, or bugs piling up faster than you can fix them. Here's how you sort those situations out. open.substack.com/pub/theeng…
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James Stanier retweeted
PragmaticProgrammers
@pragprogJul 4
Now available in Japanese - Become a Great Engineering Leader by @jstanier
ジュンク堂書店池袋本店 PC書担当@junkudo_ike_pcMay 19
5/19新刊：ISBN978-4-8144-0168-0 オライリー・ジャパン 『シニアエンジニアリングリーダーのしごと』 James Stanier 著　風間勇志、高口太朗 訳　50冊入荷
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Most companies have a documentation culture where writing happens to record decisions. The best have a writing culture where writing is how the decisions actually happen. open.substack.com/pub/theeng…
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Discussion around AI has highlighted how poorly we can all think and express our opinions, regardless of whether we're highly sceptical or enthusiastic. Let's think more clearly and form opinions from experience, not proximity to what others are saying. theengineeringmanager.substa…
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Expanding on what we looked at last week on distilling principles from leaders, what happens if you distill yourself? Here’s a bunch of techniques to do so, including what I got as output as my own principles. open.substack.com/pub/theeng…
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Building on last month’s article about my CTO daily driver: one neat trick is that you can use LLMs to distill the wisdom of the legendary people you wish you could work with into a coach you can talk to every day and use to help make decisions. theengineeringmanager.substa…
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A deep dive into the Claude Code setup that I use to run my day and automate pretty much everything. open.substack.com/pub/theeng…
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But hey, don’t listen to me, let Claude Code’s /insights command tell you what it’s about(!): “You've turned Claude into a genuine chief-of-staff, running full-day CTO workflows that span morning briefings, performance review prep, weekly updates, and EOD captures.”
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The senior engineers of 2035 are being shaped by decisions happening right now: who gets hired, who gets mentored, and who gets the chance to experiment. What can you do about it, regardless of where you sit? open.substack.com/pub/theeng…
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What did I do in my first 90 days as CTO? I distilled everything I did: the listening tour, the two-question survey, picking one gnarly battle, and the crucial difference between principles that transfer and prescriptions that don't. theengineeringmanager.substa…
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AI is extraordinary at fast execution. But when execution is cheap, the leverage shifts to the decisions that precede it: specs, designs, and problem framing. But it can also improve your System 2 thinking, so you can actually slow down to speed up. theengineeringmanager.substa…
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I've been building my own management tools with AI instead of buying software. These included a bragdoc generator, a planning tool, Christmas 2025's R&D Wrapped with collectible holofoil cards, and a daily driver that runs my whole day from my terminal. open.substack.com/pub/theeng…
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The word "priority" was singular for 500 years. We only started saying "priorities" in the 1900s. Your team, department, or company should have one list, stack ranked from top to bottom; no ties allowed. open.substack.com/pub/theeng…
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The traditional career ladder assumed a stable world. But the last few years make the old mental models harder to rely on. Define your north star instead: who you are, what you value, and what kind of work you want to be doing. theengineeringmanager.substa…
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