/Management

How To Communicate The Reality Of AI-Assisted Engineering In Today’s Hype Cycle

- Laura Tacho Abi Noda tl;dr: “A lot of engineering leaders are feeling the pressure: execs have been sold on massive productivity gains, and so many have inflated expectations. It’s on engineering leaders to ground these conversations in reality, by focusing on what the tools are actually being used for, the impact they’re having so far, and what it’ll take to enable teams to get more out of AI. Here’s Laura with a practical guide to help.”

featured in #624

Is All Micromanagement Bad? Here's How the Best Leaders Balance Details And Delegation

tl;dr: “When you step into management, whether you dutifully trained for that promotion or were thrust into it, the collective wisdom around your new role can be distilled into one directive: “Don’t micromanage.” It’s the golden rule of management — if you want to be a good manager. But has this well-meaning advice created an anti-pattern for brand-new managers and seasoned leaders alike?”

featured in #624

Remote Software Engineer Salary Report

tl;dr: Terminal’s Remote Software Engineer Salary Report includes data from 260K+ candidates across Latin America, Canada and Europe. Employers can better inform hiring decisions and candidates can understand their earning potential.

featured in #624

Short-Term vs Long-Term

- Mike Fisher tl;dr: “For these decisions, I think the best approach is a “portfolio approach” that means evaluating initiatives not just individually, but also in relation to each other and their overall impact on the company's financial and strategic objectives. This approach helps optimize resource allocation, balance risk and reward, and ensure a sustainable, long-term strategy. This approach isn’t just about spreading bets across different time horizons, it also enables smarter, more aligned, and ultimately more effective decision-making across the organization.”

featured in #623

9 Questions to Ask When You Start to Notice Underperformance

- Claire Lew tl;dr: “If we truly care about our team members, it’s essential to speak up compassionately when we notice changes. We’re not rocking the boat — we’re ensuring it’s still headed in the right direction. The sooner you discuss these concerns, the better. Addressing performance early gives them a genuine chance to correct course, which may be the most compassionate act of all.”

featured in #623

Developers Don’t Need More Documentation

- Dennis Pilarinos tl;dr: Docs get written, but answers stay hard to find. The problem isn’t the docs themselves. It’s that the context developers need is scattered, outdated, or missing entirely. Why does this keep happening? And what’s the alternative?

featured in #623

The Staff Meeting Ritual

- Allen Cheung tl;dr: “I started this ritual about 7–8 years ago when I first started managing managers and wanted a better format for bringing together the more senior, busier, more expensive people on my teams. Across teams and companies, I’ve iterated on the meeting, modifying the format to accommodate my team’s suggestions and what I saw were the gaps in our organization.”

featured in #623

What Does Effective Coordination Look Like In Distributed Software Teams?

- Lizzie Matusov tl;dr: “As engineering teams spread across time zones, coordination becomes a balancing act between responsiveness and deep work. With Slack threads piling up and meetings crossing time zones, the real challenge isn’t communication—it’s coordination. This week we ask: What does effective coordination look like in globally distributed teams—and how should teams balance meetings and async tools like Slack?”

featured in #622

Your Manager Is Not Your Best Friend

tl;dr: “As a manager, your empathy needs to be highly conditional. Your job is to get to the truth of a matter in a respectful way, not make your team feel good. You are largely stuck with your coworkers, and you need to get stuff done together or everyone suffers. If you break up with your girlfriend you get unconditional sympathy. But if you break up with your girlfriend, and the 3 of us were trying to climb Mt. Everest together, I’m going to be a lot more measured in how I communicate and balance your relationship so that we can all survive the next few days.”

featured in #622

The Staff Meeting Ritual

- Allen Cheung tl;dr: “I started this ritual about 7–8 years ago when I first started managing managers and wanted a better format for bringing together the more senior, busier, more expensive people on my teams. Across teams and companies, I’ve iterated on the meeting, modifying the format to accommodate my team’s suggestions and what I saw were the gaps in our organization.”

featured in #622