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Engineering Leadership
Weekly newsletter for becoming a great engineering leader. Click to read Engineering Leadership, by Gregor Ojstersek, a Substack publication with hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
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- 323 from 3 Oct 2022 to 29 Oct 2026
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2026 89
- How to Manage Up
- Is LeetCode Dead? What’s the Alternative?
- How to Communicate Your Impact
- “The Multiplier Mindset” officially hit #1 Bestseller on Amazon 🤯 🎉
- How to Use AI to Become a More Effective Engineering Leader
- Wow! The Kindle edition of “The Multiplier Mindset” just hit #1 New Release on Amazon! 🎉
- Big News! “The Multiplier Mindset” E-Book Is Out, and Book Pre-Orders Are Open! 🎉
- How to Build Better Software with Spec-Driven Development
- How to Use AI to Learn Faster
- How to Develop a Pragmatic Mindset as an Engineer
- Lessons From 4 Years of Writing the Engineering Leadership Newsletter
- How to Develop a Proactive Mindset as an Engineer
- How Companies Assess Fit of Engineers on a Behavioral Interview
- How to Become a Leader Everyone Wants to Work With
- The Most Important Laws You Need to Know for Leading Engineering Teams
- How to Build a Reputation as a Reliable Engineer
- How to Deal With Company Politics as an Engineering Leader
- How to Become a Great Coach and Mentor
- How to Grow Past Senior Engineer
- What Elite Engineering Teams Do Differently in the Age of AI
- The “Player-Coach” Role is Becoming Increasingly Harder
- How Redis Builds AI-Native Engineering Teams
- Good Culture is the Biggest Productivity Hack, Not AI
- How Shutterstock Builds AI-Native Engineering Teams
- How to Tell if Your Manager is Actually Good?
- Inside OpenAI’s Forward Deployed Engineer Role
- How I Cut Observability Costs by 60% in 2 Days
- How to Have Great 1:1 Meetings
- How to Become an Engineering Multiplier Using AI
- How OpenAI Optimized AI Agents For Scale
- How to Do Spec-Driven Development
- Clear Writing Is Becoming a Superpower in the AI Era
- How Companies Build AI-Native Engineering Teams
- Lessons From Coaching 300+ Engineers and Engineering Leaders
- How Technical Should an Engineering Manager Be?
- How OpenAI Builds Infrastructure Teams
- A Lot of Software Engineering Is Becoming Engineering Leadership
- How Anthropic Builds AI-Native Engineering Teams
- 5 Learnings Building Canva for AI Agents
- Building Trust and Credibility is the New Moat for Engineering Leaders
- AI Transformation Journey: 3 Myths and Learnings
- How to Do Performance Reviews
- What the Top 1% of Engineering Teams Do Differently with AI
- Should You Go From Engineering Manager Back to Being an IC?
- How to Grow From Senior to Staff Engineer in the AI Era
- How OpenAI Codex Tech Lead Does AI-Assisted Engineering
- The Product Engineer Company: How Portkey Works and Builds Its Product
- AI-Native Engineering Leadership
- How to Finish Engineering Projects Early Without Added Stress
- How to Build a Narrative Around Your Work
- How to Avoid AI Code Slop
- How to Manage Your Time as a First-Time Lead
- How to Use AI to Onboard Into a Codebase Faster
- Removing AI in Tech Interviews is Wrong
- How to Thrive as an EM in the AI Era
- Should You Become a Forward Deployed Engineer?
- 3 Key AI Trends and How Salesforce Engineers use AI
- The Differences Between US and EU Tech Companies
- How an AI-Native Startup From SF Works and Builds Its Product
- Become a Great Generalist or Extreme Specialist
- Code Review is the New Bottleneck For Engineering Teams
- Meta Created an Internal Leaderboard on AI Token Usage
- How to Use OpenClaw as an Engineering Leader
- Would I Still Go The Engineering Manager Route in 2026?
- How to Evaluate AI Fluency in Technical Interviews
- Good Judgment is the New Important Skill for Engineers
- How to Do AI-Assisted Engineering
- The “Spotlight Effect” Is Holding You Back as an Engineer or Engineering Leader
- Startups Should Evaluate Engineers Differently From Big Companies
- Inside OpenAI: How They Hire, Onboard, Promote, and Build Elite Engineering Teams
- How Engineering Managers Can Turn Team Growth Into Visible Impact
- Inside OpenAI's Engineering Culture: How the Teams Behind ChatGPT Work
- The Evolution of Software Engineering Productivity
- Software Engineering is Becoming Position-Less
- How OpenAI's Codex Team Works and Leverages AI
- How OpenAI Builds AI-Native Engineering Teams
- Learning Tracks: Become an Engineering Multiplier
- The Tension Between Technical and Less-Technical People Because of AI
- 96% Engineers Don’t Fully Trust AI Output, Yet Only 48% Verify It
- Building Social Capital: Guide for Engineers and Engineering Leaders
- Laid Off as an Engineering Leader at Meta to Doing an MBA in Solopreneurship
- How to Build a Successful Engineer <> Manager Relationship
- How to Nail Big Tech Behavioral Interviews as a Senior Software Engineer
- Companies Should Hire Junior Engineers
- How Coinbase Scaled Their Hiring to 150 Engineers Per Month
- Avoid the New Leader Syndrome as an Engineer
- Differences Between Lead Roles and How to Find Your Right Path
- Become a Great Engineering Leader in 2026
- How to Help Engineers Define Their Growth Goals
2025 105
- Best Engineering Leaders Know How To Switch Off
- Engineering Leadership Newsletter in 2025
- What This Year Taught Me About Engineering Leadership
- AI Coding Tools Are Not the Problem, Lack of Accountability Is
- How to Start With Public Speaking as an Engineer or Engineering Leader
- OpenAI's Report: The State of Enterprise AI
- This is How I do a Full Engineering Org Audit
- My Advice For Engineers and Engineering Leaders to Get a New Role Faster
- How to Be Pragmatic as an Engineer
- Essential Skills for Engineers to Thrive in the AI Era
- Engineering Multiplier Archetypes
- What’s Really Like to Be an AI/ML Engineer
- The Impact of AI on the Performance of Software and Systems
- Why Engineers Must Become Multipliers in the AI-Era
- Managers Have the Right Skills for AI Coding, While ICs Have Issues
- How to Give Constructive Feedback with Confidence as an Engineering Leader
- How to Become a Resourceful Engineer
- My Mistakes and Advice Leading Engineering Teams
- Saying "I don't know" Is a Sign of Seniority For Me
- How to Use AI to Help With Planning Engineering Projects
- How Engineering Teams Set Goals and Measure Performance
- Engineering Leader’s Guide: How to Become a Great Coach and Mentor
- Tech Lead is Becoming One of the Most Important Roles in Tech Due to GenAI
- How to Use AI to Help With Software Engineering Tasks
- How to Build Trust as an Engineering Leader Part 2: Structure and Execute the Plan
- Amazing 3 Years of Writing the Engineering Leadership Newsletter 🥳 🎉
- Companies Should Stop Obsessing Over AI Tools And Do This Instead
- How to Stay Relevant as an Engineering Leader While Empowering Others
- Your Network is Your Asset as an Engineering Leader
- How AI Is Impacting Engineering Leadership
- This Is Holding Most Engineers Back from Lead Roles
- 200+ Resources to Become a Great Engineering Leader in 2026
- The Impact of AI on Engineering Teams
- How to Use AI to Improve Teamwork in Engineering Teams
- Stuck at Senior Engineer - How to Break Through and Reach the Next Level
- 7 Must-Have Engineering Manager Stories That Will Land You the Offer
- OpenAI's Product Leader Reveals: AI Product Strategy for Engineering Leaders
- LLMs: Common Terms Explained, Simply
- Guide to Rapidly Improving AI Products Part 2
- A Fake Tech Company Scam: Here's How I Caught It in Time
- Guide to Rapidly Improving AI Products Part 1
- From Shy Engineer to Director at Oracle and a Skilled Communicator
- Seeing the Bad Helps You Spot the Good
- The State of Software Development in 2025
- Companies Should Hire More Engineers in the Age of AI
- Engineer to Leader: 10 Insights to Get You Started
- Become an Engineering Leader Everyone Wants to Work With
- Your Engineering Team Should be Looking to Solve Customer Problems
- Biggest Mistakes Engineering Leaders Make With AI
- How Engineering Leaders Stay Calm and Effective When It Gets Personal
- AI Evals: How To Systematically Improve and Evaluate AI
- How to Measure AI Impact in Engineering Teams
- Guide to Prompt Engineering
- How to Ace Engineering Manager Interviews
- Engineering Leader's Guide to Managing Unrealistic AI Expectations
- Why 51% of Engineering Leaders Believe AI Is Impacting the Industry Negatively
- Become More Social as an Engineer
- The State of Engineering Leadership in 2025
- First time in a leading position? This is what to do
- The 2-Week Vacation Test for Engineers and Managers
- Decrease in Entry-Level Tech Jobs
- 15 Productivity Hacks Every Engineer & Manager Should Know
- Future Proof Your Career as an Engineer in Gen AI World
- Setting Effective Targets for Developer Productivity Metrics in the Age of Gen AI
- Not Communicating Your Impact is Killing Your Career
- How HelloBetter Designed Their Interview Process Against AI Cheating
- Engineer's Guide to Freelance Work
- How to Use AI to Be a Great Engineering Leader
- How to Gain Respect From Your Peers and Leadership as an Engineer
- How I Grew From Engineer to CTO
- The Importance of Writing in the Engineering Industry
- Coordination Crisis in Modern Tech Work
- Full Roadmap to Break Into Engineering Leadership
- Top AI Coding Tools for Engineering Teams in 2025
- What’s Next After Senior Engineer?
- Enforcing the Use of AI in Engineering Teams - Good or Bad Thing?
- How to Develop a Senior Mindset
- 5 AI Tools to Build to Be a Better Engineering Leader in 2025
- How Can Engineers and PMs Collaborate Effectively?
- How to Use Cursor AI to Build Side Projects
- Selling Isn’t Just for Sales: Why Engineers and Managers do it too
- From Invisible to In-Demand: LinkedIn For Engineers and Managers Part 2
- Is Vibe Coding the Future of Software Engineering?
- From Invisible to In-Demand: LinkedIn For Engineers and Managers Part 1
- My learnings from teaching 200+ engineers and leads
- How to Use AI to Increase Software Development Productivity
- How to Communicate With Stakeholders the Right Way
- 5 Lessons Learned Setting Up a Global Engineering Org at Google
- Why you should do a Tech Lead rotation in your engineering team
- 5 Mindset Shifts Needed to Grow From Engineer to Leader
- Help your manager to help you
- 15 Lessons From 15 Years in Tech
- How to Be a Proactive Engineer
- From Engineer to Principal Solutions Architect at AWS with Prasad Rao
- How to Build Trust as an Engineering Leader
- How to Develop EQ as an Engineer or a Manager
- How to Be a Reliable Engineer
- How I Was Able to Get Promoted While Constant Reorganization
- New Experiences → Key to Moving Forward in Your Career
- 5 Learnings When Building and Scaling a Service-Based Tech Company
- Will AI Replace Mid-Level Engineers in 2025?
- How to Create a Culture of Ownership in Your Engineering Team
- Great Engineering Leaders Create Leaders
- 5 Skills to Develop to Grow From Senior to Staff Engineer
- Become a Great Engineering Leader in 2025
2024 65
- It was amazing 2024, on to 2025
- Work-Life Balance → Key to Long-Term Career Success
- Why engineers hate meetings and how to fix it
- How to handle underperformance
- LinkedIn Guide for Engineers and Managers
- 8 signs that you have a good manager
- 3 Main Soft Skills a Tech Lead Needs to Develop
- How Teaching Made me a Better Engineer and Manager
- The whole University IT system stopped working 😱
- CPTO: A role every company should consider?
- From laid off to hired: A Software Engineer’s guide
- Leading 1 team vs 3 teams vs 5+ teams
- How to become a Fractional CTO?
- 12 ways to become a CTO
- Should you do on-call rotations in your engineering org?
- How I organized my time as a full-time CTO
- Discipline over Motivation in the Engineering Industry
- When Should You Buy vs Build in Software Development
- Simple Code is the Best Code
- Grow in your career by organizing an engineering guild
- How to use engineering metrics for the success of engineers and teams
- Software Engineering team structure that works
- You have an AI product, how to get users?
- Engineering org structure that works
- The importance of data when making decisions in the engineering industry
- It’s been amazing 2 years of writing the Engineering Leadership newsletter 🥳 🎉
- Why your job search is failing as an engineer or a manager (and how to fix it)
- Growing from engineer to Staff engineer and thriving
- You don’t need to be a manager to have a successful career in the engineering industry
- Become the Engineer Everyone Wants to Work With
- The importance of having a career growth plan in the engineering industry
- Engineer’s guide to convincing your Product Manager to prioritize technical debt
- Empathy is a Superpower in the Engineering Industry
- Good managers are hard to find and once you have them, they should be appreciated
- How to Propose an Impactful Improvement to the Codebase and Own the Implementation
- Perfectionism - One of the Biggest Productivity Killers in the Engineering Industry
- How to Build Good Relationships Inside and Outside Your Engineering Team
- How to Have a Top Performing, Healthy and Active Day as an Engineer or Manager
- How to Let Your Manager Know About Your Goals and Aspirations
- My process for writing this newsletter
- I am not a fan of heroism in the engineering industry
- Become the Go-To Engineer in Your Organization
- Senior Engineer to Lead: Who to promote and how to train them
- Deadlines are not so bad, I’ll tell you why
- How to grow from mid-level to senior Software Engineer
- Timeless skills in Software Development
- How to become a CTO
- How to Build Credibility in the Engineering Industry
- How to Prevent Burning Out in the Engineering Industry
- Going from impostor one day to feeling like a superhuman the next day
- How to recognize the potential in engineers
- Great Teams Build Great Software
- How to Manage Up as an Engineer or a Manager
- From Tech Lead to Team Lead
- Simplifying as Much as Possible is the Way to go in the Engineering Industry
- Context-Switching - One of the Worst Productivity Killers in the Engineering Industry
- Blameless culture should be a standard in the engineering industry
- Engineering is More About People Than Tech
- The Importance of Forming opinions in the Engineering Industry
- How to start, grow and monetize your engineering newsletter
- A CS Degree is not needed to be successful as a Software Engineer
- The Importance of Personal Branding in the Engineering Industry
- Keep a Brag List of the Wins you Achieved, Thank me Later
- 100+ resources to become a great engineering leader
- The power of questioning your first instinct in the engineering industry
2023 52
- Amazing year 2023, on to 2024
- Best Engineers are Focusing on Helping Others
- Biggest Productivity Killers in the Engineering Industry
- Starting my career again as a junior engineer
- How to grow from senior to a lead role
- A good engineer thinks like a product manager
- What does a CTO do
- How to Make and Embrace Changes
- From IC to manager
- How to develop a great tech strategy
- Become a better engineer by working on side projects
- My secret for growing from engineer to CTO
- How I measure developer productivity
- Thrive in your first 90 days when starting a new position as an engineer
- How to have great 1:1 meetings with your manager
- The Importance of Well-Being in the Engineering Industry
- How to handle resignations
- Thriving in a competitive engineering market
- How to create a great engineering organization where people can thrive
- What to look for when hiring a new engineer for your team?
- How to create great technical specifications
- Growing from engineer to architect and thriving
- The software development process that works
- Building teams with a purpose in mind
- How does a great software development team structure look like
- How to conduct Behavioral interviews
- Guide to a great process for hiring engineers
- From on-site to remote working: 3 important learnings
- How to handle Incidents
- Growing from engineer to manager and thriving
- Which is the right engineering career path for you?
- 4 essential tips for building high-performing teams
- 6 tips to thrive in a fully remote team
- How to conduct great technical interviews
- A detailed brief is key to a great hiring process
- The importance of aligning business and tech
- 7 common mistakes when growing from an engineer to a team lead
- How to estimate larger functionalities
- 5 learnings of a great collaboration between a developer and a product manager
- The first 90 days when starting a new engineering leadership position
- Letter to myself when I first started with engineering management
- 5 important pointers to enhance your engineering CV
- Tips for successful interviews for engineering positions
- 8 examples of OKRs for your engineering team
- 3 tips for effective OKRs for your engineering team
- 3 key ideas to finding your leadership style
- 5 tips for managing your time as an engineering manager
- Learning to be a great engineer/engineering leader is a marathon, not a sprint
- How technical should an engineering manager be
- 7 important traits of a good engineering manager
- The significance of effective delegation and clear communication in software development
- Getting comfortable with being uncomfortable
2022 12
- Top 10 books for Engineering Managers
- How to differentiate good vs bad product teams
- How to have great 1:1 meetings
- Importance of asking the right questions before making a technical decision
- Inspiring continuous learning in engineering organizations
- Guidelines for giving feedback to direct reports
- How to be a great software development team lead
- How to make decisions and resolve conflicts between engineers
- Software development is a team sport
- Guidelines for great communication with direct reports
- How to show your value as an engineer
- Welcome to Engineering Leadership Newsletter