QFM063: Engineering Leadership Reading List - April 2025

Source: Photo by Clark Tibbs on Unsplash

This month's Engineering Leadership Reading List explores career progression and organisational structures. Career Development: What It Really Means to be a Manager, Director, or VP critiques traditional HR leveling practices within large companies, emphasising the distinct responsibilities at each leadership tier. The article advocates for VPs to take full responsibility for their plans' success or failure rather than hiding behind group approval, positioning this accountability as preparation for potential CEO roles.

Technical excellence receives detailed examination through individual contributor perspectives. The Best Programmers I Know identifies traits that define exceptional programmers, emphasising deep tool knowledge, problem-solving skills, constant learning, and meaningful reputation building. The article advocates for practical improvements like admitting ignorance when appropriate, reading documentation thoroughly, and communicating effectively, whilst highlighting the importance of patience, coding simplicity, and helping others consistently.

AI's impact on development practices emerges as a central theme across two articles. The Post-Developer Era revisits predictions about AI replacing developers, concluding that whilst AI tools are increasingly used across the software industry, human guidance and expertise remain crucial for successful development outcomes. This connects to Claude Code: Best practices for agentic coding, which provides practical guidance for integrating Claude into development workflows through special 'CLAUDE.md' files that document essential commands, code style guidelines, and setup instructions.

Project management and AI integration also receive attention. AI Architecture and Scaffolding with Claude Code demonstrates methodologies for planning and starting AI development projects, using templates to define business context, application purpose, and desired outcomes. The approach leverages automated scripts and detailed PLAN.md structures to improve project kick-off processes whilst reducing manual intervention.

Business strategy considerations appear in How to Structure a B2B Marketplace Venture, which examines strategic considerations for companies launching business-to-business marketplaces. The article explores organisational structure choices between in-house development and separate entities, drawing insights from a survey of 200 B2B marketplaces that reveals over half operate as pure startups rather than corporate spinoffs or internal units.

As always, the Quantum Fax Machine Propellor Hat Key will guide your browsing. Enjoy!

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Originally published on quantumfaxmachine.com and cross-posted on Medium.

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