Issue #709
Essential Reading For Engineering Leaders
Tuesday 21st April’s issue is presented by Augment Code
Measuring The Impact Of AI On Your Engineering Team
Most engineering orgs have adopted AI coding tools. Few can tie them to delivery speed, defect rates, or ROI.
In this fireside chat, Vinay Perneti (VP Eng, Augment Code) and Stephen Barrett (CTO, Milestone) break down how leading teams pair AI-native dev workflows with rigorous measurement — where AI saves real time in the SDLC, how to correlate usage with code quality, and what governance looks like at scale.
Register For The Fireside Chat
The Difference Between Manager And Director
— Nick Zylkowski
tl;dr: “I was recently asked: ‘What’s the difference between a manager and a director?’ I answered back then, focusing on the business orientation of the role, operating at a higher level, and redefining how you know if your team is operating well. But the question stayed with me. It’s a good one. The more I thought about it, the more I clarified the mental model I’ve been operating with for years now. One that helped me to grow into the current role and grow a successor who replaced me as a director when I was leaving the organisation.”
Management Leadership
How To Understand Things
— Nabeel Qureshi
tl;dr: “The smartest person I’ve ever known had a habit that, as a teenager, I found striking. After he’d prove a theorem, or solve a problem, he’d go back and continue thinking about the problem and try to figure out different proofs of the same thing. Sometimes he’d spend hours on a problem he’d already solved.”
Coaching CareerGrowth
Measuring The Impact Of AI On Your Engineering Team
— Vinay Perneti, Stephen Barrett
tl;dr: “Most engineering orgs have adopted AI coding tools. Few can tie them to delivery speed, defect rates, or ROI. In this fireside chat, Vinay Perneti (VP Eng, Augment Code) and Stephen Barrett (CTO, Milestone) break down how leading teams pair AI-native dev workflows with rigorous measurement — where AI saves real time in the SDLC, how to correlate usage with code quality, and what governance looks like at scale.”
Promoted by Augment Code
AI Event Metrics
High Amplitude Disagreeableness
tl;dr: “True startup people are one of the most important advantages that many tech companies have. Startup people are aggressive, entrepreneurial, and often bring a dynamism that allows them to cut through significant roadblocks. When there’s a large platform shift (e.g. the AI wave that is currently occurring), they’re often literally the only people at your organization that can help you transition into the new world.”
Management Culture
“Write tests until fear is transformed into boredom.” — Kent Beck
AI Impact Report: Q1 2026
— Justin Reock
tl;dr: “Each quarter, we analyze the prior quarter’s data to benchmark AI adoption rates, productivity impact, and how teams are using these tools. For this edition, we expanded our dataset by over 40% more data points to give you a more representative picture.”
Management AI
Hurry Up And 10x: The Path To Real AI Productivity
tl;dr: “AI promised 10x productivity. Most teams got faster code generation and the same deployment bottlenecks. Platform experts from OpenAI and ACI Worldwide explain why CI/CD maturity determines whether AI actually works — and what systemic roadblocks need removal before engineering leaders see ROI.”
Promoted by Uplevel
Productivity AI
My AI Workflow (Without Losing My Skills)
— Marc Gauthier
tl;dr: “My workflow with AI changed so much over the past few months that I postponed writing this article multiple times… but now is the time to do it! Not because my ways of working got stable, but because I think having a snapshot of what I was doing would be fun to revisit in a few years. Also, I feel like it is a realistic approach and we need more articles like this when it comes to working with AI.”
DeveloperProductivity AI
Making Illegal State Unrepresentable
— Nicolas Fränkel
tl;dr: “As a developer, I want to make illegal states unrepresentable, i.e., users of my API can’t create non-existent transitions. My hypothesis is that only a static typing system allows this at compile-time. Dynamic typing systems rely on runtime validation. In this blog post, I will show that it holds true, with a caveat.”
LanguageDesign
Managing Context In Long-Run Agentic Applications
— Dominic Marks
tl;dr: “In complex, long-running agentic systems, maintaining alignment and coherent reasoning between agents requires careful design. In this second article of our series, we explore these challenges and the mechanisms we built to keep teams of agents working productively over long time spans. We present a range of complementary techniques that balance the conflicting requirements of continuity and creativity.”