Software Lead Weekly
Issue #708, 19th June 2026
This Week's Favorite
Homo Agenticus
3 minutes read.
When people say that AI is great at tasks but (for now) poor at "jobs," this is what it means: "In agents, intelligence does not automatically confer coordination because each agent can act inside a step without carrying the whole system’s state. So the types of agentic organisations that fit change depending on the types of work. For code-like work, one strong continuous context can beat a committee. Decomposition is hard. For reasoning tasks, routing and retry can help because a bad first answer does not have to end the run." -- It's our job to think how to compensate for it with the right harness and adding humans to the loop upon judgment that agents are stuck at a local maximum.
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3 minutes read.
When people say that AI is great at tasks but (for now) poor at "jobs," this is what it means: "In agents, intelligence does not automatically confer coordination because each agent can act inside a step without carrying the whole system’s state. So the types of agentic organisations that fit change depending on the types of work. For code-like work, one strong continuous context can beat a committee. Decomposition is hard. For reasoning tasks, routing and retry can help because a bad first answer does not have to end the run." -- It's our job to think how to compensate for it with the right harness and adding humans to the loop upon judgment that agents are stuck at a local maximum.
Read it later via Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Culture
My Dog After Eating My Philosophy Book
1 minutes read.
My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile.
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1 minutes read.
My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile.
Read it later via Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Don't Stack Weaknesses: Org Charts With Stacked Weaknesses End in Disrepair.
3 minutes read.
This hits so hard, and why you have to think first about which capabilities and skills are missing and then see that you have the right teammates: "Almost every leader has at least one major weakness. The great strategist is weak operationally. The great technician is weak strategically. And so on. The real damage happens when you stack weaknesses - when a leader is weak at something and their direct reports are weak at the same thing. This is a disaster, and it happens far more often than you’d think. Part of the reason for this is that leaders tend to hire people with the same skills they have. They’ll dress it up as hiring for “values” instead of “skills” so it doesn’t look like they’re cloning themselves - but people ultimately search for and evaluate the things they’re good at."
Read it later via Instapaper.
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3 minutes read.
This hits so hard, and why you have to think first about which capabilities and skills are missing and then see that you have the right teammates: "Almost every leader has at least one major weakness. The great strategist is weak operationally. The great technician is weak strategically. And so on. The real damage happens when you stack weaknesses - when a leader is weak at something and their direct reports are weak at the same thing. This is a disaster, and it happens far more often than you’d think. Part of the reason for this is that leaders tend to hire people with the same skills they have. They’ll dress it up as hiring for “values” instead of “skills” so it doesn’t look like they’re cloning themselves - but people ultimately search for and evaluate the things they’re good at."
Read it later via Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
AI Demands More Engineering Discipline. Not Less
7 minutes read.
Charity Majors is spot on. Our unfair advantage as engineers is to carefully navigate nuances (having insights on top of data) to successfully build complex systems of humans and code.
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7 minutes read.
Charity Majors is spot on. Our unfair advantage as engineers is to carefully navigate nuances (having insights on top of data) to successfully build complex systems of humans and code.
Read it later via Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
The End of Determinism: What’s Left for Engineers When AI Writes the Code (Video)
16 minutes read.
Tom Enden covers the value of software engineers in today's world. Many of the insights Tom shares are true regardless of AI. Hence, it begs the question: do you invest enough time to consider your impact in 12-18 months as a professional, beyond the obvious (e.g., a bigger scope, harder challenges)?
Read it later via Instapaper.
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16 minutes read.
Tom Enden covers the value of software engineers in today's world. Many of the insights Tom shares are true regardless of AI. Hence, it begs the question: do you invest enough time to consider your impact in 12-18 months as a professional, beyond the obvious (e.g., a bigger scope, harder challenges)?
Read it later via Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Peopleware
Death by 1,000 Compromises: How to Tap Into Founder Mode
13 minutes read.
Mark Pincus (the founder of Zynga) shares a framework you can use to ask yourself bigger questions when planning your career and life. This is the best framing around the most common anti-pattern when thinking about your life: "Stop Being an Expert Witness" and how to hire accrodingly: "I was a frustrated expert witness in jobs I had in my twenties; later, I learned to hire other expert witnesses and set them free as “CEOs” by giving them the authority to make decisions in their area of expertise. What’s your current situation?"
Read it later via Instapaper.
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13 minutes read.
Mark Pincus (the founder of Zynga) shares a framework you can use to ask yourself bigger questions when planning your career and life. This is the best framing around the most common anti-pattern when thinking about your life: "Stop Being an Expert Witness" and how to hire accrodingly: "I was a frustrated expert witness in jobs I had in my twenties; later, I learned to hire other expert witnesses and set them free as “CEOs” by giving them the authority to make decisions in their area of expertise. What’s your current situation?"
Read it later via Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
We Do Not Build for Humans
3 minutes read.
If you're building a product, you must read this post from a UX (or Agent Experience, so AX) perspective as a product thinker. This is exactly where humans can think about where the future is heading and build the experience to ride the new wave of innovation rather than chasing the past. Are you building for humans or for agents?
Read it later via Instapaper.
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3 minutes read.
If you're building a product, you must read this post from a UX (or Agent Experience, so AX) perspective as a product thinker. This is exactly where humans can think about where the future is heading and build the experience to ride the new wave of innovation rather than chasing the past. Are you building for humans or for agents?
Read it later via Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Inspiring Tweets
@justinskycak: Most people overestimate their level of natural talent while simultaneously underestimating the level of *unnatural* talent they could engineer through consistent high-quality training.
@readswithravi: Marcus Aurelius wrote this over 1800 years ago: “Do not disturb yourself by imagining your whole life at once.”
- Oren
P.S. Can you share this email? I'd love for more people to experiment and improve their company's culture.
P.S. Can you share this email? I'd love for more people to experiment and improve their company's culture.