QFM111: Engineering Leadership Reading List - April 2026
Source: Photo by Dylan Gillis on Unsplash
Five voices on what AI is doing to engineering practice and management. The ladder is missing rungs (Negroni Venture Studios) argues that the junior-to-senior career path is being eroded by AI taking the work that used to teach craft. Martin Fowler answers the same problem from inside engineering with Structured-Prompt-Driven Development: when prompting becomes the bottleneck, structure it like you'd structure code. Andy Matuschak's classic "Work with the garage door up" gets new relevance — working in public is one of the few ways to keep cognitive surrender at bay.
German Velasco's What managerial economics can tell us about AI and software development drags the management lens onto it: the firm's boundary, transaction costs, the make-vs-buy decision — all of it is shifting now that the marginal cost of a competent engineer has collapsed. Meanwhile The beginning of programming as we'll know it (bitsplitting.org) takes a longer view, and Nebula on building with no team is the most candid public log we have of what AI-augmented solo building actually feels like — including its honest failure modes.
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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