DORA Webinar; Leading in Uncertain Times, Vibe-Coding Workflows, How Good Engineers Become Bad Leaders
Issue #50 Bytes
🌱 Dive into Learning-Rich Sundays with groCTO ⤵️
📺 Hows & Whats of DORA ft. Joan, EM at New Relic & Mario, Sr. EM at Contentsquare
In the latest session of ‘The Hows and Whats of DORA’ webinar, metrics expert Mario Viktorov Mechoulam, Senior Engineering Manager at Contentsquare, and Joan Díaz Capell, Engineering Manager at New Relic, shared their expertise on engineering metrics and their real-world application in different teams.
The session emphasized the importance of aligning engineering metrics with business goals and product success, avoiding vanity metrics, and leveraging data to improve collaboration and team well-being. Interested to learn more?
Check out the full webinar👇
Article of the Week ⭐
“A common mistake leaders make—one I've made myself—is jumping straight into solution mode. But during uncertain times, people often don't want you to fix their problems; they want to feel heard.”
6 Critical Principles for Leading in Uncertain Times
Ethan Evans and Jason Yoong from LevelUp interviewed Omar Halabieh for you with regards to his routine and secrets that made him successful as one of Amazon’s Directors.
Traditional leadership often centers on control, hierarchy, and certainty but that model is breaking down in today’s work environments. The real challenge now is creating clarity and trust in the face of uncertainty. Strong leadership looks more like facilitation than command. It means listening more, giving people room to own their work, and building a culture where feedback flows in every direction, not just top-down.
Leaders need to get comfortable with ambiguity. The pace of change means you won’t always have the full picture or the perfect plan. Teams don’t expect perfection, but they do expect honesty, adaptability, and someone who can help make sense of the noise.
1. Listen Actively (Really Listen)
Good leadership starts with listening closely and often. Teams need space to share their challenges, ideas, and concerns. Leaders should set up regular feedback opportunities like surveys, skip-level meetings, and informal chats. It’s also important to:
Act on feedback quickly where possible.
Explain decisions clearly if changes aren’t made.
Thank team members for being honest.
2. Communicate Transparently (Again and Again)
Teams rely on clear and regular updates to feel secure. Leaders should explain what is happening, what is still uncertain, and what comes next. Repeating key messages in different ways helps everyone stay on the same page. Good communication reduces rumors and keeps teams focused.
Effective formats include:
Weekly team updates.
Live Q&A sessions.
Written summaries or follow-ups.
3. Cultivate Optimism (With Reality Checks)
Optimism keeps teams motivated, especially when times are tough. Leaders should highlight small wins and milestones to remind people of the progress being made. Breaking big challenges into smaller tasks helps teams feel a sense of achievement. Recognizing both effort and outcomes keeps morale high.
4. Keep the Team Focused (On What They Control)
It is easy for teams to get distracted by outside factors like market shifts or company changes. Leaders should help teams focus on the work they can control, such as project goals, daily tasks, and skill-building. Using simple tools like a “control circle” can help teams see:
What they can act on now.
What they can influence.
What they should be aware of but not worry about.
This keeps teams grounded and productive.
5. Double Down on Empathy (The Often-Forgotten Essential)
Empathy is a core part of strong leadership. Leaders should create space for deeper conversations, asking questions like:
What are you excited about?
What are you worried about?
What support do you need?
6. Be Available and Visible (Beyond Just Showing Up)
Leaders need to be present and easy to reach, especially during uncertain times. This means holding regular office hours, responding to messages quickly, and showing up for team events. Good visibility also includes:
Sharing clear updates about priorities.
Being calm and focused in meetings.
Visiting different teams when possible.
A visible leader helps teams feel confident and supported.
Other highlights 👇
Vibe-coding workflows 🪄
It’s easy to get swept up in the hype around AI-assisted coding but without a smart workflow, the process can feel chaotic or even slow you down. The Refactoring team’s guide breaks down a practical approach to integrating AI coding tools into real engineering workflows, focusing on keeping developers in control while leveraging AI’s strengths.
It covers a top-down coding strategy, practical use of scaffolding and testing, and a set of supporting techniques that save serious time and effort.
A Top-Down Workflow for AI Coding
One of the biggest pitfalls in AI coding is jumping straight into code generation. The smarter way is to work from the top down. Start with brainstorming and requirement gathering, using AI to help shape the high-level system design. Once the architecture is solid, move step-by-step toward detailed specifications and scaffolding. This approach:
Keeps your cognitive load manageable.
Allows errors or misunderstandings to be caught early.
Ensures the AI is aligned with your real project needs.
Avoid getting tangled in the details too early, also helps avoid hallucinations
Scaffolding, Testing, and Mid-Loop Generation
After the design phase, the next step is scaffolding. Use AI to build out code outlines such as class structures, functions, and folder hierarchies before writing any detailed logic. This makes it easy to catch structural mistakes early.
Once scaffolding is in place, AI can generate scoped code blocks, filling in the details. Testing is also streamlined:
Use AI to generate test cases from your code.
Or, in test-driven development, feed your tests to the AI and have it write code to pass them.
Supporting Techniques to Boost Productivity
Beyond the main workflow, AI tools offer powerful support across the coding spectrum. Handy use cases include:
Stack trace analysis: Instantly diagnose errors by pasting stack traces into your AI assistant.
Refactoring: Get AI help to clean up and optimize legacy code.
Complex query writing: Use AI to write tricky SQL or regex patterns in seconds.
Code explanation and documentation: Ask AI to explain unfamiliar code or generate documentation in formats like AsciiDoc.
Learning new techniques: Speed up onboarding by asking AI for tutorials or code samples in new frameworks or libraries.
These small but impactful tactics save hours and reduce cognitive friction throughout the development process.
How Good Engineers Become Bad Leaders
Christine Miao explains why good engineers often struggle when they move into leadership roles. In most industries, advancing requires learning to communicate a vision, persuade others, and take credit for results. In engineering, it often happens differently—people get promoted simply by solving tough technical problems, with no need to explain or sell their work to a wider audience.
This creates a gap. When engineers step into leadership, they suddenly face stakeholders who don’t understand the technical details and care more about business outcomes. Misunderstandings and frustration follow, especially when engineering work is undervalued or dismissed.
The consequences are clear:
Engineers feel sidelined or frustrated.
Many step away from leadership altogether.
Some stay but isolate their teams from the business, continuing the cycle.
To break this pattern, leaders need to stop expecting automatic understanding. A key part of leadership is making your work clear and building trust with non-technical teams. By practicing open communication and helping juniors navigate cross-functional work early, engineering leaders can build stronger, more collaborative teams. Leadership is not just having all the answers, but also about creating an environment where people solve problems together and feel their work matters.
Find Yourself 🌻
That’s it for Today!
Whether you’re innovating on new projects, staying ahead of tech trends, or taking a strategic pause to recharge, may your day be as impactful and inspiring as your leadership.
See you next week(end), Ciao 👋
Credits 🙏
Curators - Diligently curated by our community members Denis & Kovid
Featured Authors -
, The Team,Sponsors - This newsletter is sponsored by Typo AI - Ship reliable software faster.
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