The Single Responsibility of Engineering Leaders

Jan 12, 2026

∙ Paid

What’s the top advice for engineering leaders?

Focus.
Pick one thing.
Execute relentlessly.

It’s nothing bad about it. But it’s just aimed at the wrong role.

Leadership Is Not About Certainty

By the time you become an engineering leader, almost everything you touch is uncertain.

Projects.
Product bets.
Architecture changes.
Hiring decisions.
Reorgs.

Even the initiatives that arrive with executive blessing are not truths. They are hypotheses dressed as plans (more about it here).

We rarely say this out loud, but it’s true:

Most initiatives fail.
Some quietly.
Some politically.
Some after months of sunk effort.

And yet we often behave as if our job is to make one of them succeed at all costs.

That’s the trap.

There’s a line from Sundar Pichai's interview that stuck with me. He said that his job is simply to move the needle.

At first, that sounds vague. But over time, I think I came to understand what he meant.

Moving the needle is not about defending a single initiative.
It’s about shifting the odds.

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