Practical Engineering Management

The Multi-Agent Hustle

Mirek Stanek — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 06:06:32 GMT

Almost 15 years ago, I ran a small software house focused on mobile development. While building an Android app for a client, they asked if we could do the iOS version in parallel.

“Of course we can”, I said, having no single iOS engineer available. This is how I started a few-month crunch session with two IDEs, Android Studio and Xcode, running side by s…

The Best Team I Know Writes Everything Down

Mirek Stanek — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 05:04:05 GMT

Dear leaders,

The race to “AI nativity” goes on. Most of us feel the disruption is coming and keep thinking about how to transform into an (extremely) fast-paced environment.

When you read one of the playbooks, like Anthropic’s AI-native SDLC playbook, FOMO hits hard:

Traditional: An idea passes through backlog entries, user stories, story points, and refi…

The "Junior Developer" is Deprecated

Mirek Stanek — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 05:44:11 GMT

A few months ago, a bunch of students approached me at a conference and asked, "Do you hire juniors?" We didn’t at that time. Then they asked, "What would you advise us to do to land our first job in software engineering?"

I have to admit, it wasn’t an easy question to answer.

That’s why I sat down and wrote this piece. It’s for junior engineers wannabe.

Imagine There Is No JIRA

Mirek Stanek — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 05:03:35 GMT

Part I: The Chaos

You start your day, open your laptop to navigate to your favorite place, and…

JIRA is gone.

Just like that. The paralysis is immediate.

You don’t know what to do anymore. You are 50% of …

AI’s True Value is Subtraction

Mirek Stanek — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 05:02:32 GMT

I love data, dashboards, metrics. Always proud of how much data-driven I am. But I’m also a massive pain in the ass for engineering teams.

When I led mobile engineering teams, I started my day in Mixpanel and Crashlytics. Happy paths, UX glitches, conversions, error codes. I wanted to know everything.

Today, leading Platform Engineering, I practically li…

Tesler’s Law of Communication

Mirek Stanek — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 05:04:16 GMT

In product design, there is a fundamental principle known as Tesler’s Law, or the Law of Conservation of Complexity (see on the laws of UX). It states that every system has a baseline of complexity that cannot be destroyed—it can only be shifted.

As a designer or engineer, you face a choice: you can either force the user to navigate a complicated interf…

The Empathy Bottleneck

Mirek Stanek — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 05:02:56 GMT

These years, I’ve been leading a platform engineering organization that serves our entire product engineering team. I have a bunch of incredibly strong senior and principal engineers—the kind of creators and system thinkers who can crack the hardest architectural problems. Greenfield, brownfield, monolith, distributed architecture, old languages - nothi…

Somewhere Between Professional and Unprofessional is the Truth

Mirek Stanek — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 05:02:07 GMT

Many engineering leaders are obsessed with maintaining a sterile, perfectly sanitized environment. They want every discussion grounded exclusively in KPIs, objectives, and outcomes. They want “professionalism.”

But here is a hard truth you need to swallow: if your team is always perfectly polite and measured with you, they are probably hiding something.

…

Stop Saying “It Depends.”

Mirek Stanek — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 05:03:11 GMT

“Well, it depends.”

We love saying it. We think it signals to the room that we grasp the vast, complex, multi-dimensional chess game of software architecture.

We think it makes us sound incredibly smart.

In reality? You are doing one of two things: dodging the responsibility of making a hard call, or quietly bragging about your own technical brilliance wit…

The End of the Traditional Coder

Mirek Stanek — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 05:02:32 GMT

Today’s conversation around AI is entirely focused on the wrong question: “Will AI replace software engineers?”

The reality is far more nuanced. AI is not replacing the engineer; it is fundamentally redefining the baseline leverage of the role. We have reached a point where coding is no longer the bottleneck. Output is cheap, and syntax generation is ne…

Leader’s Week 2026: How I Lead a 50+ Person Org on a 4-Day Workweek

Mirek Stanek — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 06:02:20 GMT

People often ask me how I manage a 40-person platform engineering organization and the entire R&D Site at the same time, a few side gigs that grow into startups, and still log 1,500km a year training for running races.

The assumption is usually that I have some secret productivity hack or that I’m just working all the time. But working harder is a trap.

S…

The End of the People Manager

Mirek Stanek — Mon, 25 May 2026 05:02:26 GMT

First, Anthropic says the AI is capable of taking on a manager’s job. Now, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky puts a target, stating that the era of the pure people manager is over. (see the recent interview: How Brian Chesky Is Redesigning Airbnb for the AI Era)

For the last decade, the tech industry has popularized a very specific archetype of leadership: the det…

The CIA Guide to Sabotaging Your Engineering Team

Mirek Stanek — Mon, 18 May 2026 05:02:41 GMT

In 1944, the precursor to the CIA published a highly classified document called the Simple Sabotage Field Manual. Its purpose was to train ordinary citizens in occupied Europe how to quietly disrupt the enemy’s war machine from the inside.

While it contained tips on lighting fires and breaking machinery, its most devastating section focused on “bureauc…

The AI Amplifying Capabilities

Mirek Stanek — Mon, 11 May 2026 05:02:54 GMT

If you are leading an engineering organization today, you don’t need another pitch about the promise of AI. You already know the tools are out there.

Your job is no longer about whether we adopt AI, but about how we actually get a return on our investment without destabilizing our systems. Especially when C-level has been pushing you hard on this transf…

The AI Illusion: Your Next Big Breakthrough is Actually Just Good Engineering

Mirek Stanek — Mon, 04 May 2026 05:02:50 GMT

Every engineering leader today feels the pressure. Every week, a new tech giant pulls back the curtain on a seemingly magical AI tool.

Spotify unveils Honk, an agentic platform that effortlessly updates hundreds of repositories in the background. “Spotify's top developers haven't manually written code since December 2025”.

Rippling announces Rippling AI, …

The Accelerator and the Brakes

Mirek Stanek — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 05:02:40 GMT

In my article on Donella Meadows’ Leverage Points, we explored how engineering leaders are, in essence, system designers.

We shifted away from low-leverage interventions (like tweaking Jira story points) to high-leverage moves like shifting cultural paradigms.

But there is a middle layer that deserves an article entirely of its own: Feedback Loops and Information Flows.

As an engineering leader, we actively manage feedback loops every single day. We bounce between two extremes: offering vague, unhelpful praise or delivering relentless “constructive” criticism that grinds our teams down.

To build an autonomous, high-performing engineering culture, you have to understand the difference between Reinforcing Loops, Balancing Loops, and the critical process of Amplification.

The Two Loops of Leadership

In systems thinking, there are two types of feedback loops that govern how a system behaves.

1. Reinforcing Loops (The Accelerators)

Reinforcing loops compound. They amplify a behavior or result. In software, it’s tech debt (bad code makes it harder to write good code). In leadership, it’s how you scale culture. When you praise an engineer for writing excellent documentation, they write more of it, others see it, and a culture of documentation grows.

The Trap: Vague Reinforcement. Saying, “Hey, good job on that release” is empty calories. The engineer feels a momentary ego boost, but the system doesn’t learn what specific behavior to repeat.

The entire article is available only for paid subscribers. You can use the training budget (here’s a slide for your HR). Thanks for supporting Practical Engineering Management!

We Are Done as Managers According to Anthropic

Mirek Stanek — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 05:03:13 GMT

A few weeks ago, Anthropic shared its economic research about the labor market impacts of AI.

Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence, by Anthropic

I have to admit, the chart of theoretical vs observed AI coverage stayed with me for longer. Math, computer science, admin & office, legal - I get these.

But management? Huh, that feels l…

The Ultimate Builder

Mirek Stanek — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 05:02:26 GMT

A while ago, I found myself in a situation that is painfully familiar to many in the corporate world. I got promoted. I took on a new role, heavier responsibilities, and the classic promise of a compensation review in the “very next cycle.”

A few months later, that cycle arrived. My reward? Nothing.

It was disappointing. Turbulent times and budget cuts, s…

The Physics of Firing

Mirek Stanek — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 05:02:42 GMT

As leaders, we face a unique challenge: we rarely see the immediate results of our work.

When we were individual contributors, our code produced rapid, tangible outcomes. But as leaders, the effects of our decisions—or our passivity—often take months to surface.

Behind the scenes of our daily management, we are constantly fighting two invisible, relentle…

Are You Leading a Team, or Just a Group of Experts?

Mirek Stanek — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 05:03:11 GMT

We all want a team of rockstars.

We spend months recruiting principal engineers, hoping that bringing top-tier talent into the same room will automatically translate into outlier results.

But there is a trap here that many engineering leaders fall into: we confuse a group of brilliant individuals with an actual, functioning team.

If you have a strong gro…