Care and Feeding of Engineers
summary
Argues for a concrete career model: 75% technical / 25% manager roles where technical leads keep authority while delegating nontechnical work to PMs or coaches. Claims vulnerability builds trust, junior engineers succeed because they have fewer bad habits, and mistakes must be safe to learn from. Uses Zipcar anecdote — downtime means a soaking member who can’t get into a car — and enforces a hands‑on metric: one hands-on keyboard thing a week to stay connected to reality.
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chapters (18)
- 0:00Intro
- 0:41Who am I
- 1:57The old model
- 2:40Great leaders
- 5:31Why vulnerability matters
- 6:37Listen to people
- 8:15Listen
- 9:16Storytelling
- 11:10Culture of Learning
- 12:03Junior Engineers
- 15:05Organizational Engineering
- 15:51Conways Law
- 16:29Nontechnical Manager Organization
- 17:01Turn Engineer into Leader
- 18:32Scale it up
- 19:51Parallel structures
- 20:15Coaching
- 21:28Questions
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