An engineer I work with noticed a reliability issue in a system owned by another team. They dropped into their Slack channel, flagged the problem, and offered a concrete fix. The response was fast: the system owner picked apart their suggestion, dismissed the approach, and closed the thread. The issue stayed open for months.

Similarly, in the past, I made myself a blocking reviewer on certain types of PRs because I didn’t trust anyone else to do the right thing. I didn’t use the word “territorial” at the time. I told myself it was about quality. What was actually happening: I was slowing everyone down because I was afraid someone would mess up, and I couldn’t find a better way to prevent that (e.g., teaching people).

I was, for all intents and purposes, territorial. I felt like I had to protect rather than share. Block rather than open. Restrict rather than expand. And that's what territorial behavior is: treating something as yours to protect rather than yours to share.

Territorial behavior is one of the most common collaboration problems in Tech, and one of the least named. Because nobody thinks of themselves as territorial. Yet most of us have been territorial at some point, or have been on the receiving end.

So what do we do about it? In this article, we’ll cover:

• How territorial behavior shows up

• What causes territorial behavior

• What to do when others are being territorial

• What to do when you’re the territorial one

• Why this matters in 2026 more than ever before

First, a word from today’s sponsor:

The old adage of “what gets measured gets improved” is more true than ever. In fact, when it comes to AI dev tool rollouts, I’m seeing a lot of companies wanting to improve their AI adoption and productivity, but still struggling to even measure it.

The latest AI Engineering Trends report from Jellyfish finds that top AI adopters are reaping the benefits, with PR throughput doubling and 8% coming from autonomous agents. You could be one of them.

It’s time you measured your AI adoption and impact - and started seeing the gains.

Explore the AI Engineering Trends Report

How territorial behavior shows up

Territorial behavior can show up in many ways. Here are some of the most common examples I see in engineering teams.

Shutting down ideas before they get a fair hearing. “That won’t work.” “No, we’re not going to go this route.” “That’s not how we do it here.” Sometimes the dismissal is blunt. Sometimes it’s dressed up as a technical objection while the real resistance stays unspoken: this would take away scope, and I don’t want it to. And sometimes it’s subtler. The same idea lands differently depending on who brings it, and the people doing it may not even realize it.

Gatekeeping knowledge. Having only one person who understands how something works. Sparse documentation. Slow onboarding. Critical tribal knowledge that lives in one person’s head and nowhere else. Context that travels by Slack DM and never makes it to a wiki. The knowledge gap resulted from not making knowledge sharing a priority. Over time, that gap became a moat. If there are things only I know, I stay essential.

Gatekeeping information flow and decision-making. This happens when all information, decisions, deployments, or escalations in a particular area have to go through one person. It looks like thoroughness, safety, and rigor, but ends up becoming a way of control. If everything runs through me, I stay essential.

Other examples include: lack of transparency about roadmaps or priorities, excluding people from relevant meetings, or resisting cross-team collaboration on shared problems.

What causes territorial behavior

In my experience coaching engineers and leaders, it usually comes down to one of these things.

Lack of trust. Sometimes, territorial behavior is less about a specific idea and everything to do with the person bringing it. Do they understand the context? Will they break something I’ll have to fix? Will they get the credit while I clean up the mess? The less you trust those stepping into your territory, the harder you defend it.

Perceived lack of control. Reorgs, shifting priorities, new tools, new people. When everything around you is changing, and you can’t control any of it, guarding your domain makes you less vulnerable. If no one else can touch it (or knows how to), no one else can take it away, no?

Being burned in the past. You let someone else own a migration, and it caused an incident. You shared an idea for a re-architecturaland watched someone else present it at the design review (and get credit for it). After enough of that, territorial behavior becomes scar tissue: the last time I caved, it went badly.

Job security. This one sits underneath all the others. When you’ve been the expert on something for years, anyone stepping into that space feels like a threat. The proposal itself is secondary. The question underneath is what stings: am I still the person who matters here?

And sometimes it's just overwhelm. When you're already stretched thin, someone stepping into your area feels like one more thing to manage. The instinct to push back can also simply be about capacity.

Subscribe now

What to do when others are being territorial

You can’t prevent someone from being territorial, but you can be thoughtful about your approach when entering their space.

Lead with curiosity. Before you propose anything, ask questions. “How does this work today? What have you tried? What am I missing?” Curiosity signals respect for the context they’ve built. It also helps you understand what you’re actually walking into before you start suggesting changes.

Do your homework. Show you’ve engaged with their domain before you show up with opinions. Read the docs. Understand the history. If you’re proposing something in someone else’s area and you haven’t bothered to learn how it works today, you’ve already lost them. Doing the work upfront is how you earn trust.

Be transparent about what you want. Are you trying to help? Suggest a different approach? Flag a concern? Say it upfront. People are much more open to input when you’re being upfront and with good intentions.

Include them early and give them a real role. Don’t ambush them with a proposal they’re hearing for the first time. Don’t route around them because they’re difficult. Bring them in before decisions are made, and give them a job in the conversation: “I’d love your input on the tradeoffs here” or “you’d be the right person to flag if we’re missing something.”

Name the problem, not the person. “I’m noticing it’s hard to get visibility into this part of the system. Can we figure out a better approach?” is an opening. “You’re being territorial” is a fight.

Enjoying this article? Hit the ❤️ button or share it with a friend or coworker. 🙏🏻

What to do when you’re the territorial one

The advice above works if you’re dealing with someone who has a pattern of being territorial. But what about yourself? What if you’re starting to feel territorial? Here’s how to handle that.

Get curious before getting defensive. When someone steps into your area, ask what they’re seeing that you might have stopped noticing. If someone is proposing changes to your system, there’s usually a reason. Even if their approach was intrusive, there might be a seed of value to what they’re saying.

Engage with the idea, don’t just shut it down. When someone proposes something in your domain, the territorial instinct is to push back before you’ve actually heard them out. Slow that down. Ask questions. Let the idea marinate before you decide what to do with it.

Be principled when you say no. You’re allowed to say no. But make sure your “no” is about the idea, not about who’s bringing it or the fact that they’re in your space. If you can’t articulate why the idea is wrong on its own merits, then maybe you should revisit your “no”.

Name what you actually need. Territorial behavior often serves as a proxy for a legitimate concern. Something like I want to be consulted, or I need clarity on who’s making this call. Saying that directly is more effective and far less damaging than aggressively pushing back and giving everyone else a hard time.

Why this matters in 2026 more than ever before

Territorial behavior is a human instinct. You’re never going to eliminate it, and you shouldn’t have to. But the cost of letting it go unchecked is real. Information slows. Ideas get killed before they’re tested. The people with fresh perspectives stop bringing them. The 2024 Stack Overflow Developer Survey found that 45% of developers say knowledge silos hurt their productivity multiple times a week.

And it’s getting worse. More and more code is being generated rather than authored. Ownership lines are blurring. The question “if the tool can do what I do, what exactly is my territory?” is only going to get louder. Every trigger in this article is being amplified right now.

So pay attention to it. In yourself, in your team. Have the conversations before the behavior calcifies. There’s a difference between holding your ground because you have something worth defending and holding it because you’re afraid of what happens if you let go. The first one earns respect. The second one costs you the thing you were trying to protect.

Until next time,
Irina Stanescu

Enjoying this article? Hit the ❤️ button or share it with a friend or coworker. 🙏🏻

In case you missed it:

I’ve gotten this wrong in both directions. Too soft, and nothing changed. Too hard, and people got defensive or shut down entirely.

For example: Someone’s not delivering. You mention it once, gently. Then again. You offer to help. Nothing changes. You could be more direct, but you don’t manage them. You hope they’ll self-correct. They don’t.

Or the flip side: you’re frustrated, so you finally say the thing, and say it too strongly. They get defensive. The conversation goes nowhere.

Either way, the outcome you wanted didn’t happen.

So how do you adjust the intensity of your communication? Not just what you say, but how strongly you say it?

Thank you Jellyfish for sponsoring today’s article!

Most AI dev tool rollouts look like buying all the ingredients and hoping a meal appears. Everyone’s experimenting, nobody’s coordinating, and when leadership asks about ROI the best answer is “it feels faster?” That’s not cooking. That’s just grocery shopping.

Groceries don’t become dinner on their own. But everyone wants to skip straight to the eating. The actual work? Telemetry, training, accountability, and the willingness to make real organizational changes, not just buy more licenses.

Ingredients don’t make a meal. Process does. If your AI rollout feels scattered, get help from Jellyfish, the Intelligence Platform for AI-Integrated Engineering.

Request a demo here!

I think of communication as an intensity dial. On the low end: support, gentleness, patience. On the high end: clarity, urgency, directness. Most conversations live somewhere in between.

In today’s article, you’ll learn what happens at both extremes (and why we get stuck there or bounce from one extreme to another), how to find the right level of intensity for the moment, and how to move the dial gradually without going 0 to 100 and torching the relationship.

When the intensity is too low

Here’s an example from my coaching practice. A client of mine had just been laid off. We were working together to get him ready for interviews. I knew it was a hard moment.

The first week, he hadn’t done much prep. I was understanding and said: “Totally understandable, I know how emotionally taxing this whole experience has been. Let’s regroup next week”. The second and third week, same thing. I let it slide again.

By the fourth week, still no progress. That’s when I realized the intensity I was communicating was too low. My job as a coach was to help him get a new job, and we were not making progress. I had to elevate the intensity, so I said: “I don’t think you’re taking this process seriously. And I’m worried.”

That’s what it means to adjust the dial. I didn’t go in hard from day one. But after two weeks of soft nudges not landing, it was time to turn it up. I wasn’t trying to scare him, but I had to be direct. The softness wasn’t helping anymore. It was just creating space for avoidance.

Ways this shows up in Tech:

• You give feedback in a 1:1, but wrap it in so much cushion that the person walks away thinking they’re doing fine.

• Someone’s coasting. You soften the message: “Maybe this isn’t the right project for you?” But underneath, the real message is: this isn’t good enough.

• You keep waiting for “the right moment” to have the hard conversation. The right moment never comes.

When we’re soft, we tell ourselves we’re being empathetic. But often, we’re just avoiding discomfort. Ours and theirs.

And if we stay soft for too long, resentment creeps in. You keep things polite on the surface, but underneath, you’re irritated. That’s when the passive-aggressive behaviors start: pointed comments, vague frustrations, performance nitpicks that come out of nowhere. The real conversation still isn’t happening, but now the tension is.

Enjoying this article? Hit the ❤️ button or share it with a friend or coworker. 🙏🏻

When the intensity is too high

High intensity has its own failure mode. You’re clear, direct, no-nonsense. But you come in too strong, too early, or with too little context.

I learned this one the hard way. When I was a first time tech lead at Google, someone on the team had written a poor oncall runbook. Instead of talking to them first, I criticized it publicly. In a group setting. I thought I was being direct and efficient, just flagging a problem so we could fix it. What I actually did was embarrass them in front of the team.

The runbook got fixed. But something else broke. That person stopped bringing ideas to the table. They got quieter in meetings. It took months to rebuild the trust, and honestly, I’m not sure I ever fully did.

That’s what “too intense” looks like. You might be right about the problem. But the way you surface it makes it impossible for the other person to hear it.

Other ways this shows up:

• Jumping into feedback before the other person even knows there’s a problem

• Letting things slide, then unloading all your feedback at once. It feels like an ambush.

• Bringing feedback that could’ve been shared 1:1 for the first time in front of others

• Suddenly escalating your tone because frustration has been building under the surface

When people get defensive or shut down, the focus falls on how you said things, not what you said. There is no productive conversation to be had then.

Subscribe now

The middle range most people skip

Intensity isn’t binary. It’s not “soft” or “hard.” It’s a gradient, and the skill is learning how to move through it deliberately.

For simplicity, let’s assume in the next paragraphs that intensity dial has a scale from 0 to 10.

Most people get stuck at the extremes. They camp out at level 1-2, hinting, asking open-ended questions, sugar-coating. And when that doesn’t work, and more time goes by, they jump straight to level 8 out of frustration. The middle gets skipped entirely.

The skill is controlling the dial. Moving from 3 to 5 when the first conversation didn’t land. Holding at 5 for another week to give it time. Recognizing when the situation actually calls for 7. Each turn of the dial sends a signal: this matters, and I need you to hear it.

Here’s what that looks like in practice. I specifically picked situations where you don’t have authority, but you’re still accountable for outcomes, because I found these to be what challenge people the most. The intensity increases as the issue keeps resurfacing.

Situation #1: Peer consistently missing 1-1s or breaking commitments to you

🟢 “Hey, I noticed we had to reschedule our 1-1 again. Want to find a time that works better?”

🟡 “I feel like we keep missing our sync time. These conversations are important for [specific reason]—can we prioritize them?”

🟠 “We’ve rescheduled three times this month. I need these check-ins to stay aligned on [project/dependency].”

🔴 “I’m going to be direct: when we keep canceling, it makes it hard for me to do my part effectively. I need us to either commit to this time or find a different approach.”

⚫ “If we can’t find a way to stay connected regularly, I’ll need to bring [manager/project lead] in to help us figure out a structure that works.”

Situation #2: Architectural concerns being dismissed

🟢 “Can we spend a bit more time on the long-term implications?”

🟡 “I’m concerned we’re trading short-term speed for long-term maintainability.”

🟠 “We’ve seen this pattern cause [specific problem] on [past project], and I’m worried we’re heading toward the same outcome.”

🔴 “As the person who’ll be maintaining this, I need us to be explicit about the technical debt and operational risk we’re accepting.”

⚫ “I can’t sign off on this without documenting my concerns. If we’re not aligned on risk tolerance, this needs to go to [CTO/VP Engineering].”

Situation #3: Another team blocking progress

🟢 “Can you help me understand your team’s priorities around this?”

🟡 “This dependency is on our critical path for [specific milestone], and we’re currently blocked.”

🟠 “It’s been [X weeks], and we’re at the point where this is affecting our [Q1 release/customer commitment].”

🔴 “Without this by [specific date], we will miss [specific commitment]. I need a clear commitment or an alternative path forward.”

⚫ “If we can’t get [specific deliverable] by [date], I’m escalating to [VP/shared manager] that we’re missing [commitment] due to this dependency.”

Please note that none of these starts confrontational. They earn their intensity over time. Each step removes ambiguity, becomes more and more straightforward, and gets clearer about how serious the impact is.

To help you practice dialing your intensity dial, check out the bonuses at the end of the article.

Conclusion

When something matters enough to repeat, it matters enough to say differently.

The dial is there to use. Turn it deliberately. Match the intensity to the stakes, and you’ll get through.

Until next time,
Irina Stanescu

Did you enjoy this article? Hit the ❤️ button or share it with a friend or coworker. 🙏🏻

🎁 Bonus #1: 4 Questions to know where to turn the dial

1. Have I had this conversation before without change? If yes, you’re probably too soft. Repetition without intensification doesn’t tell people the issue is serious.

2. If I asked them to rate how serious this is, would their number match mine? If theirs is lower, your message isn’t landing. If theirs is higher, you might be coming in hotter than you realize.

3. Have I given them a real chance to correct before escalating? Change takes time, so turning the dial needs to be gradual if you want to be fair to the other person.

4. If someone said this to me at this intensity, would I hear the message or feel attacked? If you’d feel attacked, then don’t say it, no matter how frustrated you are. It’s not an excuse.

🎁 Bonus #2: Use this AI prompt to turn the intensity dial

Read more

There is probably something you know you should be doing, and you keep finding good reasons not to. Reaching out to that person. Starting that new project. Setting up that new system. Learning that new tool. Everything you are procrastinating on.

I came across this quote recently:

“The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.”

I forgot where I found it, but something about it started haunting me. An awareness that had been dormant suddenly woke up, and now it won’t stop nagging me about all the things I have been avoiding.

Before finding this quote, I thought I was being strategic about pursuing my goals. Thoughtful. Preparing. That I needed the right time, the right approach, the right knowledge.

I wanted magic. That rush of success and achievement. The feeling of doing something great and worthwhile. But I was not really creating that magic. Instead, I was waiting for it to find me.

The quote exposed the truth: I was avoiding. And the magic I was desperately seeking was sitting right there in the work I was dilly-dallying my way around.

Today’s article is about avoidance and why the things we resist most hold what we need most. We will discuss:

• What this quote actually means

• Why we avoid what is good for us

• My realization about avoidance

• 🔒 The work I stopped avoiding and the magic I found (paid subscribers only)

• 🔒 The work I am still avoiding (paid subscribers only)

• 🔒 Questions to ask yourself to figure out what you’re avoiding (paid subscribers only)

Let’s get started!

Subscribe now

What this quote actually means

The “magic” isn’t something supernatural

It’s the transformation, breakthrough, or fulfillment we’re desperately seeking. That missing piece we think will complete us. It’s getting closer to self-actualization, reaching our potential.

It’s the confidence, purpose, or success we keep searching for in shortcuts - the next course we buy but don’t finish, the book we purchase but don’t implement, the advice we collect but don’t follow.

The “work” isn’t about your job

It’s the actual effort we avoid. Not buying the course, but doing every assignment. Not reading about fitness, but showing up at the gym when you don’t feel like it. Not planning the project, but building it and facing the failures. Not rehearsing the conversation, but having it.

It’s the hours of practice, the failed attempts, the uncomfortable repetition, the trying again after it didn’t work.

But if we know the work leads to the magic we want, why do we avoid it so consistently?

Why we avoid what’s good for us

Here’s the strange thing about being human: we’re exceptionally good at avoiding the exact things we know would be good for us.

Avoidance is a defense mechanism - and an effective one. It protects us from what feels genuinely terrifying: success and happiness.

We’re afraid of success

We’re afraid of success because it eliminates our excuses. No more blaming circumstances or bad luck. People will expect things from us. We might lose what we gain.

Success makes us visible, and visibility is vulnerable. It’s unknown territory, and we’d rather stay with what we know - even if what we know isn’t working.

We’re afraid of being happy

We’re afraid of being happy because it means we have something to lose. When we’re coasting, when we’re in neutral, when we’re just maintaining the status quo - we’re safe. We can’t fall any further.

But happiness? That’s vulnerable. That’s acknowledging we care. That’s admitting what matters to us.

We’re afraid of wanting

Even wanting is vulnerable. To want is to admit you don’t have. Even worse is actually doing the things. Now we might fail publicly. Everyone sees what we want and watches us not get it.

The more we want something, the more it would hurt to fail. So the things we want most become the things we avoid most. We stay in “I could if I wanted to” rather than risk finding out we couldn’t even when we tried.

Enjoying this article? Hit the ❤️ button or share it with a friend or coworker. 🙏🏻

The fundamental truth

But here’s what I realized: this quote captures something fundamental about the journey from potential to performance.

We all have potential - that’s safe. But performance requires doing the work we’re avoiding. If we want to close the gap between who we could be and who we are, we must put in the work we avoid.

(The rest of this article - including the work I stopped avoiding, the work I'm still avoiding, and questions to help you find yours - is exclusive to paid subscribers) …

Read more

I’ve supported hundreds of engineers and leaders with various ambitious goals, and the difference between those who make it and those who don’t isn’t talent or effort. It’s something most people have never heard of: macro focus.

Most people who pick me as a coach want more. More scope, more recognition, more impact. They’re smart, competent, and have a lot of potential. They have big ambitions, yet somehow, something is missing, and they feel stuck.

Wanting more is the easy part. What’s harder is figuring out what exactly you want, how to get there, and committing to it long enough to see results.

My obsession with performance psychology (from entrepreneurs to athletes to Formula 1 drivers) has taught me that most people think focus means productivity hacks or to-do lists. But that’s just micro-focus. Macro-focus is something entirely different.

What is Macro Focus?

Macro focus is the strategic, long-term commitment to a specific direction, not just for days or weeks, but for months or years. While micro-focus is about managing your attention hour by hour, macro-focus is about managing your trajectory quarter by quarter.

Think of it like this: micro-focus helps you climb the ladder efficiently. Macro-focus ensures you’ve leaned it against the right wall.

The problem is, even smart, ambitious people get this wrong. Let me show you how and why that happens, so you can learn how to overcome it.

Thank you to today’s sponsor Jellyfish:

From autonomous agents to code assistants, AI is changing software development faster than most teams can measure.

That’s why Jellyfish is leading the innovation in measuring AI impact and releasing new features that bring together system data, developer sentiment, and guided insights – giving leaders a clearer, faster, and more complete picture of how AI is transforming their organizations and the overall SDLC.

New features for Jellyfish AI Impact include:

• Autonomous Agent Insights

• Developer Insights

• Executive Reporting Workflows

Request a demo and start guiding AI strategy with confidence.

Request a Demo

Five Patterns That Sabotage Macro Focus (And How to Fix Them)

Most ambitious people aren’t lacking in effort or intelligence. They’re lacking in focus. And I don’t mean they can’t concentrate. I mean they haven’t committed to a clear direction long enough to see it through. Here are the five patterns I see most often.

Pattern #1: Lack of Clarity

When you don’t have clarity on where you want to get to, you say yes to projects, roles, or opportunities that seem interesting in the moment, but don’t add up to anything long-term. You end up reacting instead of choosing.

I’ve been there myself. At Uber, I told myself I was aiming for more scope and leadership so I could get to Staff and eventually move into EM. It was more like a wish rather than a clear plan.
But the reality was, I was in an environment that didn’t fit me culturally. I stayed longer than I should have, hoping things would shift or that I could power through. Eventually, I did get more scope, but it came at the cost of burnout. I lost time, yes, but more than that, I lost energy by forcing progress in the wrong environment.

The fix: Get specific about what success looks like for you. Not just the title or the number, but the actual day-to-day reality you’re working toward. What kind of problems do you want to solve? What kind of team do you want to work with? What does a good week look like? Clarity isn’t just about the destination; it’s about understanding the journey you’re signing up for.

Pattern #2: Doing Too Many Things at Once

Ambitious people often want too many things at once. And often, they’re in conflict.

One client had been in the same role for ten years when he was suddenly laid off. The goal was clear: find a new role, ideally at a company that aligned better with his values and long-term direction. But at the same time, he wanted to help a friend build a prototype for a startup. Both things needed deep, focused effort. Instead, he found himself context-switching constantly and making slow progress on both fronts. We had to get honest about what he could realistically commit to—and what would have to wait if landing a new role was truly the priority.

The fix: Pick your primary focus for this season. Not forever, just for the next 3-6 months. Everything else becomes secondary. Yes, you’ll miss out on some things. That’s not a bug; it’s a feature. Saying no to good opportunities is how you create space for great ones.

Enjoying this article? Hit the ❤️ button or share it with a friend or coworker. 🙏🏻

Pattern #3: Not Doing Enough

There’s a gap between intention and action. One client wanted to increase their visibility at work, with the goal of being seen as a stronger candidate for promotion. But week after week, they weren’t taking the steps that would make that happen: speaking up in meetings, sharing their work more broadly, volunteering for cross-team efforts, or even preparing intentionally for their 1:1s.

The intention was there, but the follow-through wasn’t. Here’s what made it click for them: we did the math. At their current pace of action, it would take years to build the visibility they needed. But their promotion cycle was in six months. The gap between their timeline and their effort was massive. Once they saw that, everything changed. We shifted from vague ambitions to specific, weekly commitments. Not suggestions, commitments. One new person reached out to. One meeting where they’d speak up. One work artifact shared broadly. Suddenly, progress became visible, measurable. And more importantly, they finally believed it was possible.

The fix: Scale your effort to match your ambition. Big goals require big commitments. If you’re not willing or able to invest significantly in something right now, either scale down the goal or push it to a future season when you can give it what it needs.

Pattern #4: Not Trusting the Process

When I started my coaching business, I thought a few months would be enough to get things off the ground and start turning a profit. Very naive of me.

I had a solid plan: build a foundation, grow slowly, focus on doing good work. But I constantly second-guessed it. Should I be doing more outreach? Should I pivot my niche? Should I launch something else entirely?

What I’ve learned is that even the right plan will look like it’s failing in the early stages. The hardest part isn’t creating the strategy, it’s staying with it long enough for it to start compounding.

The fix: Document your plan and your reasons for it. When doubt creeps in (and it will), you’ll have a record of your clear-headed thinking to reference. Build in regular reflection points, but between those checkpoints, trust the process. Most overnight successes are years in the making.

Pattern #5: Quitting Too Soon

Even when people start with a plan, many don’t stick with it. They get discouraged when progress is slow. They quit too soon.

I see this constantly with people trying to break into Staff or leadership roles. They’ll try a new approach for a few weeks, not see immediate results, and assume it’s not working. But most meaningful change has a lag time. The work you do today might not show results for months.

The fix: Set realistic timelines and checkpoints. If you don’t know what that looks like, try to find others who are on a similar journey further ahead. Seek external perspectives to help you shape your timeline, then stick to it. To not make any impulse decisions, remain objective by baking into the plan both success criteria and exit/pivot criteria that you set upfront and compare against.

Here’s the Thing

Without deliberate focus, months can go by without meaningful movement. You’ll be busy. You’ll be trying. But you won’t be progressing toward what you actually want.

That’s not a discipline problem. It’s a design problem.

What moves people from potential to performance isn’t just the ability to work hard. It’s the clarity and confidence to work hard on the right thing, for long enough to see real results.

Most people never develop this skill. They bounce from goal to goal, opportunity to opportunity, always busy but never quite arriving anywhere.

But if you’re reading this, you’re not most people. You want more, and you’re willing to do something about it. The question is: are you ready to stop spreading yourself thin and start going deep?

Macro focus is a skill you can develop. And if you want help, support isn’t a luxury. It’s the lever that makes everything else work.

Until next time,
Irina Stanescu

Did you enjoy this article? Hit the ❤️ button or share it with a friend or coworker. 🙏🏻

Wanting to learn more? Here are 3 ways I can help:

1. 1-1 coaching - For more info email me at thecaringtechie@gmail.com or DM me!

2. Join the next cohort of my course “Impact through Influence in Engineering Teams”.

3. Book a one-hour call where we can tackle your most pressing issues.

In case you missed it:

In maybe 70% of those cases, the root issue wasn’t skill, it was a lack of self-confidence! Once I figured that out, I started acting differently: giving them space to make calls, backing them in front of others, and reinforcing their judgment. Over time, they trusted themselves more and started meeting and eventually exceeding my expectations.

You might think, well, confidence is a personal trait: you either have it or you don’t. And sure, there’s truth to that. But I’ve seen enough to believe this: managers can build confidence, and they can shatter it. Sometimes, without even noticing.

Confidence is built through belief and action. As a manager, you have more influence over both than you might realize. You can inspire belief by cheering people on, and you can create the conditions for action that prove that belief true. People need to experience through their own work that they are capable → and that’s where real confidence is born.

This article is about a key leadership skill that directly drives performance: knowing how to avoid the traps that undermine your team’s confidence, and learning how to build it instead.

A word from our sponsor, Jellyfish.

If last year meant experimenting with AI, it’s undeniable that AI coding tools are now an essential part of engineering work. The 2025 State of Engineering Management report shows 90% of teams now use them, up from 61% in 2024.

For leaders, AI metrics are just as important as traditional metrics like allocation and mean time to resolution. But if it’s hard to separate vanity from high-value metrics in general, it’s even more challenging for AI.

That’s where the newly released 7 AI KPIs Every Engineering Leader Should Track guide comes in. It explains how to:

• Track adoption with KPIs like Daily Active Users and AI-Generated Code

• Measure productivity via throughput, satisfaction, and code quality

• Connect AI to business outcomes like cost efficiency and growth capacity

• Avoid vanity metrics that distort what success really looks like

Download the free 7 AI KPIs guide and start measuring what matters today.

Download Now

Now back to our article!

What makes people doubt themselves at work

Most managers don’t go around thinking, How can I make my team feel unsure of themselves today? But it happens anyway, usually in subtle, well-intentioned ways, such as:

• Micromanaging. Constant check-ins or corrections send the message “I don’t trust you to handle this.”. This erodes trust faster than anything. It’s hard to trust yourself when your manager doesn’t.

• Public criticism, even if framed as feedback. When criticism happens in front of others, it sounds more like exposure, rather than guidance. It creates shame, which is the feeling that “something is wrong with me” rather than “I did something wrong.” Shame shuts people down. Instead of learning, they feel insecure and unsafe. It’s the wrong timing for growth and the perfect setup for doubt.

• Silence. A lack of feedback rarely feels neutral. Most people fill the gap with self-doubt: “No news probably means I’m underperforming.”

• Jumping in to help too fast. Struggles aren’t necessarily failures but they are part of learning. When managers step in immediately, people don’t get the chance to work through challenges themselves. What they internalize isn’t “I’m supported” but “I can’t handle doing this on my own.”

• Inconsistent expectations. When the goal post keeps moving, people can’t enjoy the cycle of success. Instead of building confidence from setting and hitting clear goals, they feel like no matter how hard they work, success is still out of reach.

Most of this happens without bad intent. Managers are usually trying to help, but the impact can be the opposite. Before labeling someone as an underperformer, it’s worth asking: do they actually lack the skills, or do they just lack the confidence? Often, trying a few simple changes in how you respond can make the difference.

The good news: building confidence isn’t complicated

You don’t need motivational speeches. What matters are small, consistent interactions that say: You’ve got this. I trust you to figure it out. I’m here if you need me.

Each of the pitfalls mentioned previously has an opposite move that builds confidence instead of breaking it:

• Criticize in private, praise in public. People remember public moments far longer, use them to anchor pride, not shame. “I want to share this with the team. You were instrumental in handling yesterday’s incident, thank you!”

• Give people autonomy. Set guardrails, then step back. The act of struggling through and succeeding on their own is where confidence grows. “Here’s the outcome we need. I trust you to decide how to get there. I’m here if you need me.”

• Ask before jumping in. Think like a coach. The goal isn’t to solve the problem for them, but to help them build the muscle of solving it themselves. “What options have you considered so far?” “What’s your next step?”

• Define what good looks like. Clarity and consistency in standards make it easier for people to measure their own progress. “For this project, ‘done’ means the code is reviewed, tested, and documented. Let’s keep that as our bar.”

• Replace silence with signals. Most people assume the worst if they hear nothing; small acknowledgments can go a long way. “You’re on the right track, keep going.”

In addition to that, you can reinforce confidence through how you communicate:

• Encouragement. Hearing it matters, even when you think it’s obvious. Reassurance spoken out loud helps counteract the doubts in their head. “I believe in you.”

• Consultation. Asking for input shows that their perspective is valued, and it’s one of the most effective ways of influence. “What do you think we should do?”

• Introspection. Helping them name their own doubts makes it easier to move past them. “What’s making you second-guess yourself?”

And here’s the key: even if you think you’ve already said it once, or already tried, say it again. Try repeatedly until it sticks. Confidence takes time to build with consistent reinforcement. Sometimes you’ll need to repeat the same encouragement or reassurance ten times before it lands. That’s normal.

Confidence isn’t in the job description, but it should be part of the work. What will you do differently tomorrow to help your team believe in themselves?

Until next time,

Irina

Did you enjoy this article? Hit the ❤️ button or share it with a friend or coworker. 🙏🏻

Related reading:

AI dev tools are everywhere, but real ROI is harder to measure.

That’s why Jellyfish built AI Impact: the first vendor-agnostic way to measure Copilot, Cursor, Gemini, Amazon Q, Claude Code, Windsurf, and review agents like CodeRabbit, Graphite, and Greptile → all in one place.

After analyzing over 2M PRs, we found AI-assisted work cut cycle times ~16% while keeping quality steady. But results vary: different tools, different teams, different outcomes. You want to know how your team is doing? Jellyfish can help.

👉 Request a demo

Now let’s get into today’s topic.

A client asked to write a design doc for a multi-month, cross-team effort. His manager told him to skip it: “We don’t have time to plan.”. When my client told me this, I was half-surprised. I mean… I get it, planning isn’t most people’s favorite thing in Tech. It feels like slowing down, and plenty of teams have been dragged down by long, convoluted planning cycles. No wonder a real aversion to it has grown.

But to skip planning completely is a risky business, especially if it becomes the norm.

We like to get things done faster, but we like to get them done right even more. Skipping planning doesn’t help with either; it just pushes the hard parts downstream, where they’re harder and more expensive to fix.

This article takes on the rise of planning aversion and the most common arguments against planning. We’ll look at why planning feels so disliked, what it’s really for, and how to keep it light enough to move quickly while solid enough to prevent thrash.

Isn’t planning just a bunch of docs and spreadsheets and meetings?

If you’re a manager who’s slogged through a multi-week planning cycle full of decks, spreadsheets, and approval meetings, you’re right to be skeptical. And if you’re an IC who’s spent days writing documents and sitting in meetings where nothing useful came out, you’re right too. Planning didn’t become unpopular by accident.

But planning is more than its bureaucratic parts. The essence of planning is the moment when you ask:

What problems are we solving and why? How hard are they? What do I need to solve these problems? Who should be involved in this? What are the unknowns? What’s the riskiest part? In which order should we tackle things?

Answering those questions doesn’t require a six-month roadmap or a 20-page design doc. It can be as lightweight as sketching an edge case on a whiteboard, a quick Slack thread with a diagram, a one-pager to align two teams, or a 15-minute sync on rollout steps.

There are small planning moments everywhere. They don’t have to be heavy; they just need to happen. The format you choose matters less. What matters more is finding clarity and making sure you’re going in the right direction.

If plans always change, why bother?

This question gets to the crux of planning aversion, and the reframe I like to use comes from the following quote:

“Plans are useless, but planning is everything.” - Dwight D. Eisenhower

What Eisenhower meant is that the artifact (aka the plan) will always become outdated. But the act of planning is where the value comes from because it forces you to think through risks, tradeoffs, and unknowns. That’s what makes you better prepared, even when things change.

Planning is mental hygiene. Brushing your teeth doesn’t guarantee perfect dental health, but skipping it guarantees problems later. Planning works the same way: small, consistent steps that keep projects healthy.

Zero planning will come to bite you, while over-planning will slow you down. The sweet spot is just enough planning to create clarity and alignment, without wasting weeks on details that won’t survive first contact with reality.

Subscribe now

What if we just don’t have time to plan?

There’s a lot of pressure on managers and individual contributors alike to deliver faster and better. I get it. When you have a mountain of items on your to-do list, planning only feels like adding more to the list. It’s easier to just start building and figure things out along the way.

But when we don’t plan and jump headfirst into building, what usually ends up happening is: realizing the problem wasn’t clear, or that the solution was not correct or complete. Or the right stakeholders were not involved, people weren’t aligned, and the solution is built on a house of cards of incorrect assumptions.

We say we don’t have time for planning, but then we spend twice as much on rework, firefighting, and debates that could have been avoided. Now the deadline is missed, everyone’s frustrated, and there’s even less time.

The truth is you almost always have time to think ahead. And this is not a bottleneck. The real bottleneck is thrash. So planning needs to be seen as a task in and of itself.

But isn’t skipping planning a way to show bias toward action?

“Bias toward action” is one of the most misused phrases in tech. I wrote about why it should be used with caution here.

Yes, most decisions aren’t one-way doors. Yes, you can usually fix things later. But ask yourself: is the rework really worth it? Does skipping a short alignment step actually get you to results faster?

A true bias toward action means taking thoughtful action fast enough to learn, deliberate enough to avoid waste. And the activity of planning is a form of action. Nuance matters.

How do you find the sweet spot between no planning and drowning in it?

It depends. The right amount of planning varies with your role, the scope, and the length of the effort. An EM planning a quarter looks different from an IC scoping a feature, and scoping a feature looks different from architecting a multi-quarter cross-functional effort.

Two rules of thumb help:

• Planning should never take as long as the work itself. If you’re spending more time planning than building, you’ve gone too far.

• Planning should move from high-level to fine-grained as you go. Start broad, then add detail as the effort gets closer and more concrete.

So how do you right-size it in practice? Here’s what that looks like for engineering managers, leaders, and individual contributors.

For engineering managers and leaders

Planning at the leadership level isn’t about creating a year-long plan in excruciating detail. It’s about giving your team a vision and a high-level roadmap to help them understand the priorities and allow them to move efficiently.

The way to do that is to build planning into the rhythm of the work. That can look like:

• Creating a high-level roadmap for the quarter so priorities are clear. Focus more on the vision and less on the details.

• Writing lightweight strategy docs that focus on tradeoffs.

• Running backlog refinement and sprint planning as ongoing mini-planning cycles, not one-off events.

• Making space for design reviews and spikes before complex projects start.

Each of these practices is an investment that creates a steady rhythm of planning and replanning that keeps the team aligned as things shift.

For individual contributors

It’s about giving yourself and your teammates enough clarity to avoid thrash once you start building.

The fastest way to do that is to make your thinking visible. That can look like:

• Writing a one-pager to clarify the problem and the approach.

• Getting alignment with cross-functional partners before diving in.

• Asking for a design spike if the solution isn’t clear.

• Drawing a system diagram to spot edge cases and integration points. Show, don’t tell!

• Breaking down a big problem into a to-do list of smaller, testable tasks.

None of these steps are heavy. But each one makes misalignment visible earlier, when it’s cheap to fix. And each one creates artifacts you can share, so you’re not carrying the whole plan in your head.

Conclusion

You do not have to love planning. You do have to do enough of it to give your work a real shot. Keep it light. Do it often. Use it to reduce risk and thrash. That is how you move fast without paying for it later.

What’s your stance on planning? Have you found the sweet spot for you and your team? Would love to hear from you.

Until next time,
Irina

Did you enjoy this article? Hit the ❤️ button or share it with a friend or coworker. 🙏🏻

Related reading:

If you’re weighing a new role, chasing an idea that only you can bring to life, or simply curious about where tech is headed, she’s someone worth knowing. Find her here.

Thank you, Oana, for graciously sharing your wisdom with us!

Picture this: you get a message from a recruiter:

We’re growing fast and building something you don’t want to miss. We’ve got strong momentum and exciting opportunities for engineers and managers. When is a good time to chat?

So you take a look. The space seems interesting. Their website looks polished. They seem to be doing well. Then you talk to the recruiter, meet the hiring manager, or the founding team. Everyone’s sharp, enthusiastic, and easy to talk to. You go through the interviews. Eventually, you get an offer.

If the project feels promising and the people seem great, it’s tempting to say yes.

But joining a startup is a bet. You’re not writing a check. Instead, you're putting in something harder to get back: your time, focus, energy, and reputation. Once those are spent, there’s no refund.

That’s why you have to think like an investor.

Venture capitalists do exhaustive due diligence before signing a check. They spend weeks, sometimes months, evaluating a company, questioning the market, the team, the business model, and the timing. They stress-test their assumptions. They don’t just ask, “Is this exciting?” They ask, “Is this going to be at least a 500m exit or an IPO? Is the upside worth the risk?”

If choosing a company is such a big deal for a VC, why wouldn’t you approach finding a job with the same level of scrutiny?

Of course, you won’t have weeks to evaluate every opportunity. You probably won’t get full access until you have an offer in hand. But you can still sharpen how you think. You can still ask better questions: earlier, faster, and more deliberately. This article will help you do that, so keep reading.

Learn the skill that decides who leads the future

In the age of AI, influence is the real differentiator that keeps you ahead, and it’s exactly what you’ll learn in Impact through Influence. This is the final live cohort, and you don’t want to miss it. Final cohort starts Monday, August 18.

Enroll today!

1. Is this a market worth betting on?

Don Valentine, the late founder of Sequoia, always started by looking at the market: its size, its dynamics, and the nature of the competition. Some early-stage VCs are more into the founder’s story, but most VCs Series A and beyond are market-first.

Why? Because the market sets the ceiling. A brilliant team in a shrinking or crowded space won’t get far. But even a mediocre product can survive in a fast-growing market with real demand.

As someone considering joining a startup, you should be asking similar questions. Here’s how to think about it:

• Is this market growing, or just trendy? A lot of startups pitch themselves as riding some inevitable wave (AI, climate, fintech, whatever’s hot). But the real question is: what’s changing now that didn’t exist five years ago? Are there real tailwinds pushing this market forward?

• How big could this get if they win? This is where most people get stuck because “market size” feels abstract. You don’t need to get it perfectly right, but you do need a sense of scale. Are we talking thousands of customers or millions? Is this a niche product or a category-defining company? Does this feel like a $50M business or a $5B one?

  Pro tip: Use AI to sanity check your assumptions
  “What is the total addressable market for [X] in [industry]?”
  “What would it take for a company in this space to reach $100M in annual revenue?”

• How many customers would they need to hit $100M ARR? If they sell a $5,000/year SaaS tool, they need 20,000 customers. Is that realistic in this market? How hard is customer acquisition? Is the pricing sustainable?

• Is this a market you believe in? Deciding the market potential is about conviction as much as it is about scale. If this space grows, will you be proud to say you spent your time here? Will it open doors for you in the future, or box you in?

If the market looks promising, there will be competition, so the next question is whether this company has what it takes.

Subscribe now

2. Can this team actually win?

VCs often say they invest in teams, not just ideas, and for good reason. The team that learns fastest, hires well, sells well, and actually delivers is the one that wins.

As a candidate, you won’t get the full cap table, but you can still try to understand who’s building this thing, how they think, and whether they can actually pull it off.

• Who is the founding team, and how do they complement each other? Do they bring different strengths (tech, product, domain)? Or is it two engineers with a deck and no traction? Look them up. See what they’ve shipped, what companies they’ve worked at, and what ideas they’ve explored in public.

• How big is the team now, and who are the early hires? A 5-person company looks different from a 25-person one. Early hires set the tone and culture. Are there strong engineers on board? Any respected operators or advisors? Ask who you’ll be working with directly (actual collaborators, not just reporting lines).

• Can you get a sense of what leadership values? A company’s culture is a mirror of its leaders; it shows in what gets rewarded, ignored, and how people act under pressure. Is that aligned with your values? Ask:

  • “What kinds of decisions have been the hardest so far?”

  • “How does the team handle conflict?”

  • “What happens when something goes wrong?”

• Are strong people sticking around? Ask how long early hires have stayed. Ask what roles they’ve grown into. Some turnover is normal and desired, but if all early hires left, that’s a red flag. “Hire fast, fire faster” is just an excuse for not knowing how to hire well.

• Are they moving fast and learning in public? Check their changelog, blog, GitHub, product releases, anything that gives a sense of how fast they move. Are they shipping? Are they listening to feedback? Or are they quietly building in a vacuum?

• Do they have founder–market fit? How did they become interested in this space? How well do they know the industry? Do they understand the problem firsthand?

3. Is there a business behind the product?

It’s easy to get excited about a product that looks cool or feels new. But VCs are trained to look past the surface and ask: Is this a real business?

As a candidate, you don’t need a financial model. But you do need to understand whether there’s a path to real revenue, sustainable growth, and customer pull.

• Is this a vitamin or a painkiller? In tough markets, people pay for painkillers, not vitamins.

• Is there a clear business model? Ask how they plan to make money. Who’s the buyer? What budget is this coming from?

• Is anyone paying or committed to paying? If not, are there active pilots, contracts in the pipeline, or users who’ve tried to pay?

• What’s the quality of revenue? Retention matters as much as growth. Are customers renewing? Ask about usage, customer feedback, or churn.

• If things go well, what does this business look like in 2–3 years?

• How much money do they have in the bank, and when do they have to raise again? What milestone do they need to hit for a successful raise?

Subscribe now

4. What’s the actual $$$ deal you’re getting?

If you’ve made it this far, the market looks good, the team seems capable, and the business is real. Now it’s time to look at the actual offer.

In venture, this would be the part where investors obsess over one thing: entry price. Because no matter how promising the company is, the question becomes: Is it still a good deal at this price?

You should be asking the same thing:

• What’s the current valuation? You don’t need an exact number, but ballpark matters. This impacts how much your equity could be worth, and how much risk is already priced in. Ask directly or estimate based on the last funding round and stage.

• How much equity are you being offered, and what does it translate to in ownership? A big-sounding equity number (e.g. “you’ll get 50,000 shares”) is meaningless without knowing the total shares outstanding. Try to get your actual percentage. If they won’t tell you, that’s a signal in itself.

• Are they planning to raise soon, and what happens to your stake if they do? Raising another round can help the business, but it also dilutes your equity. Ask how much they’ve raised already, how much runway they have, and what the next raise might look like.

• What are the financial outcomes that could make this meaningful for you? If this company exits at $500M, what would your stake be worth? Is that outcome plausible, or are you hoping for a unicorn to break even?

• What are you giving up by taking this deal? Lower salary? Less stability? Fewer benefits? Be clear about the tradeoffs you’re making, advocate for yourself, and negotiate (yes, you can!).

5. Is this the right move for you?

This is the part VCs don’t ask, because it doesn’t affect them. They’re not joining the company. This is where you shift from evaluating the company to evaluating your fit with the company.

• Why are you considering this opportunity? Is it money? Experience? Ownership? Impact? Or just an escape from something else? Be honest with yourself.

• Does the stage match where you are in your career and life? Pre-seed & Series A might sound exciting, but do you actually want the constant uncertainty? Series B and beyond might be more stable, but the financial upside will be smaller.

• Will this role grow your skills, or stall them? Who will you be learning from? Will you be building momentum for your next step?

• Are you excited to work with these people, every day, in hard moments? Does this group seem like the kind of people you can trust to navigate the chaos?

Conclusion

Treat picking a job with the rigour and scrutiny it deserves. Aim to answer these 5 key questions:

• Is this a market worth betting on?

• Can this team actually win?

• Is there a business behind the product?

• What’s the actual deal you’re getting?

• Is this the right move for you?

Remember: You’re making one of the biggest investments you can make: your time, focus, and energy. Treat it like a VC treats millions of dollars.

Until next time,
Irina & Oana

Did you enjoy this article? Hit the ❤️ button or share it with a friend or coworker. 🙏🏻

This past year, I’ve fallen deep into the world of Formula 1.

It started with the Senna series on Netflix, then came Drive to Survive, and next thing you know, I’m watching all the live races, feeling the adrenaline of each win and each loss like they were mine.

At first, it was just entertainment. But the more I watched, the more I understood that racing is just one part of F1. The rest is teamwork, strategy, mindset, and leadership at the highest levels. And if you’ve been reading me for a while, you know those are exactly the things I care most about, and Formula 1 is rich with lessons in all of them.

Why this matters:

Just like Formula 1, Tech is no stranger to pressure. In Silicon Valley and beyond, we celebrate efficiency, chase ambitious goals, and play to win. Both worlds demand high performance and come with intense pressure. That’s why F1 feels so familiar, a different arena, but similar high stakes, intensity, and leadership lessons.

Today, I want to zoom in on one lesson that stood out the most: how a team leader’s mindset and messaging shape how their people perform.

To do that, let’s compare the leadership styles of two of the most well-known leaders in the sport: Christian Horner (as of yesterday, former Team Principal of Red Bull Racing) and Toto Wolff (Team Principal of Mercedes).

I’ll also explain how all this applies to the Tech industry and what you can learn from these F1 leaders.

Note: as I was wrapping up this piece, Christian Horner was sacked from Red Bull. See my thoughts on it at the end of the article.

What you need to know about Formula 1

There are two major titles in F1:

• the Drivers’ Championship for the top-performing driver

• and the Constructors’ Championship for the team with the most combined points

Teams care about both championships: for pride, legacy, and money. The higher they finish in the Constructors’ standings, the more prize money they receive. In 2024, that pool exceeded $1.2 billion.

Drivers only score points if they finish a race in the top 10. That means every position counts.

To maximize the team’s performance, you want both drivers as high as possible. The challenge is that balancing team success with individual ambition creates constant tension, and sometimes one comes at the cost of the other.

Every decision matters. And how the team principal leads? That matters even more.

With that context in mind, let’s look at how two very different leaders approach the same high-stakes environment, and what that means for the teams they lead.

Christian Horner: The pressure cooker approach

Christian Horner had been at the helm of Red Bull Racing since 2005. He’s ambitious, media-savvy, and very hungry for winning.

In 2016, he signed Max Verstappen’s at just 17 and has built the team around him since. Verstappen won his debut race with Red Bull in 2016, which was an outstanding result for his age, and set the benchmark for Horner.

“Max is currently the hottest F1 property at the moment” — Christian Horner, Drive to Survive, Season 3

Since then, Max became the central figure at Red Bull, leading him to win 4 Drivers Championships during 2021-2024. Despite that, the team won only 2 Constructors’ Championships in the same timeframe.

Horner’s style: deliver and deal with the pressure, or you’re out. He talks openly about pressure being part of the Red Bull DNA:

“The reality is that, if you can’t cope with the pressure and scrutiny, you’re never going to make it at the highest levels in Formula 1” — Christian Horner, Drive to Survive, Season 3

He’s not wrong, F1 is brutally competitive. But Horner uses that to add gas to the flame and put even more pressure. He tracks mistakes publicly. Questions driver's confidence. Constantly compares everyone to Max. Even a solid P6? Not enough.

The impact of this kind of attitude on the second drivers is, as you might expect, more mistakes, shaken confidence, and disappointing performance.

Why has Red Bull won more drivers’ championships than constructors? The explanation lies in the other seat. Remember, I mentioned you need both drivers scoring points to be competitive as a team.

The problem is Horner is still chasing another one in a generation rockstar like Max. And because he hasn’t found one, he keeps cycling through “second drivers”.

Take Pierre Gasly. Demoted mid-season in 2019 by Horner, he returned to the AlphaTauri team where, with more support and less pressure, he won the 2020 Italian Grand Prix. He beat both Red Bulls that day. Same driver. Different environment. Different results.

Lastly, this year, Liam Lawson was demoted after not performing after only 2 (!!) races and swapped seats with Yuki Tsunoda from the sister team Racing Bulls. Lawson is doing better at Racing Bulls, and Yuki is performing worse at Red Bull. Coincidence much?

Subscribe now

Toto Wolff: The people-focused approach

Mercedes, under Toto Wolff, dominated the 2010s. With Lewis Hamilton, they won 7 Drivers’ Championships and 8 Constructors’ Championships between 2014 and 2021.

But Mercedes isn’t #1 right now. Since the 2022 regulation changes, they’ve struggled with car performance.

Still, Wolff leads the same way he always has. He’s not reactive. He plays the long game.

Wolff is a strategist and a culture builder. He invests in people. He looks for potential and then creates the conditions for it to grow.

Wolff’s leadership shows up most in the hard moments. When Hamilton announced he was leaving Mercedes in 2024, Wolff sent him this very heartwarming message:

“Now you’re opening up a new chapter with Ferrari, but it’s most important to remember one thing: find your people. … Because when you find your people, you don’t just beat the world – you change it. - ” — Formula 1 official, from Wolff’s farewell voice message to Lewis Hamilton, December 2024

That’s Toto. He puts people first.

“It’s about hiring and developing the right individuals, forming a culture and a team spirit around them and defining the core objective, and once that is defined, we leave it to each other in our respective fields to deliver on the core objective” – Toto Wolf, YouTube interview

Toto’s leadership style has a very different angle. He believes high performance needs confidence, support, and autonomy, the stuff psychological safety is made of. And it shows.

George Russell joined Mercedes full-time in 2022. From the start, he was treated as a long-term investment. He got coaching, not comparisons. Trust, not threats. He didn’t win his debut race, like Max, but scored his first F1 win within a year, and he kept improving ever since.

And now, all eyes are on Kimi Antonelli, the 17-year-old Mercedes rookie driver being groomed to become the next Hamilton. He’s young, still learning, and clearly not perfect yet. But Toto is backing him fully.

If Kimi were at Red Bull? I wouldn’t be surprised if Horner might have already ruled him out because he’s not at Max’s level. But Wolff sees what could be, not just what is. And that makes a world of a difference.

So what does this have to do with Tech?

If high performance were just about skill, every fast driver would win. But that’s not how it works, neither F1 nor Tech. Mindset matters. Environment matters. And most of all, leadership matters.

I’ve worked with plenty of Horner-types and Toto-types in tech. These two leadership styles show up in engineering teams all the time.

The Horner type: high pressure, immediate expectations, and little patience for growth. New hires are expected to deliver like top performers from day one. There’s not much focus on onboarding, team support, or setting people up for success. When things go wrong, the blame falls on the individual. It’s about squeezing out performance, fast.

The Toto type: long-term thinking, strong culture, and a deep belief in helping people succeed. These teams take onboarding seriously. They create clarity, invest in building systems of support, and understand that even the best hires need time to settle in. Performance is earned through trust, not fear.

You might say that these are just different philosophies of leadership. Yes, but with real performance consequences.

If you build a Red Bull-style culture and try to motivate through pressure, you might be setting people up to fail because they don’t feel psychologically safe. Self-doubt creeps in. They get in their own heads. And instead of performing, they freeze.

A single rockstar can’t carry the weight of an entire team, and not everyone starts out as a rockstar. If you only bet on people who shine immediately and overlook those who need time to ramp up, you’re limiting your team’s long-term potential. Some of the strongest performers are the ones who grow into the role, if you give them the chance.

And if you’re troubleshooting performance by repeating that expectations are high, without asking “What’s getting in the way?”, you might be overlooking great talent that simply needs better support.

You don’t get high performance by pushing harder. You get it by creating the conditions where people can do their best work.

So what kind of leader do you want to be: a Horner or a Wolff?

Until next time,
Irina Stanescu

Later edit: Plot twist! Horner got sacked from Red Bull

The news dropped just as I was finishing this article. I didn’t see it coming, but in hindsight, maybe the signs were there. Whatever was happening behind the scenes, one thing is clear: Horner’s leadership created irreparable damage. Even with the highest-paid rockstar driver, the empire didn’t stand behind him.

Did you enjoy this article? Hit the ❤️ button or share it with a friend or coworker. 🙏🏻

📢The 9th cohort of “Impact through Influence” is open for registration 📢Whether you're an engineer, manager, or somewhere in between, join us live to learn the frameworks, strategies, and tools to influence and become influential at work!

Claim your $100 off!

“Agh, that was so stupid of me.”

“That was such a basic thing, how did I miss it?”

“I’m such an idiot, why did I do that??”

“Why can’t I just get it right?”

“Everyone else seems to be doing fine. Why am I so bad at this?”

If you’ve ever said these things to yourself, congratulations: you’re probably someone with high standards. And you’re likely very hard on yourself.

I know I am. And I’ve seen the same pattern in some of the most talented engineers and leaders I’ve worked with. That pattern? A loud inner critic.

The voice that chimes in after every mistake, misstep, or moment of doubt. The relentless commentator who reviews your day and finds everything you could’ve done better. We think it’s part of what makes us good. If we don’t call ourselves out, who will? We can’t let ourselves off the hook, no?

But negative self-talk can only take you so far. It’s not the true essence of what makes a high performer, and here is why.

The perfectionist’s trap

If you’re in Tech, you probably love solving problems. You probably also have a deep perfectionist streak.

We look at the world and notice every inefficiency. We finish a project and immediately focus on what could have been better instead of celebrating what we actually shipped.

We hold ourselves to extremely high standards, and wonder why that’s a problem. Isn’t that what high performers do?

Perfectionism backfires when we don’t meet those standards. Not if but when. Because no one’s perfect, and mistakes are bound to happen.

The perfectionism ↔ negative self-talk vicious cycle

Perfectionism and negative self-talk feed each other.

When you set impossible standards, you're constantly "failing" by your own measure. Every mistake becomes proof you're not good enough. Instead of noticing what went well, you fixate on what went wrong.

That harsh inner voice makes you terrified of messing up, so you over-prepare, over-polish, and second-guess everything. You aim for perfection to silence the inner critic, but it only makes it louder.

Here's the paradox: perfectionism promises protection from criticism, especially your own, but delivers the opposite. The louder the inner critic, the more hesitant, risk-averse, and slower to learn you are. And when things go wrong, that critical voice often turns what could be productive reflection into self-attack.

You’d never talk this way to someone you love

If your closest friend made a mistake, would you call them an idiot? Would you say, “Wow, I guess you’re just not made for this. Maybe you should just give up.”?

Of course not. You’d remind them of what they’ve done well. You’d help them zoom out, learn, and try again, no big deal.

So why don’t we offer ourselves the same kindness?

You can still reflect on what went wrong. But blaming yourself isn’t required. There’s a difference between self-awareness and self-attack.

Listen to your inner friend

The good news is that you can quiet the hypercritical voice in your head if you start actively cultivating your “inner friend”.

When my critic says, “This is basic, how did I miss it?”, the inner friend says, “Okay, you missed it. What systems can help you catch it next time?”

When the critic says, “They’re going to find out I have no idea what I’m doing,” the inner friend says, “You bring a valuable perspective, even if you don’t have all the answers.”

Having high standards and being your own friend are not mutually exclusive.

Would love to hear from you. Do you have a loud inner critic? How do you manage it?

Until next time,
Irina

Did you enjoy this article? Hit the ❤️ button or share it with a friend or coworker. 🙏🏻

Me: Talk me through what happened with that proposal you mentioned.

Client: I posted a six-page doc in Slack two days before our team meeting—overview, architecture diagrams, APIs, performance numbers, even edge-cases. I asked everyone to “take a look before Thursday.”

Me: And on Thursday, how many had read it?

Client: One person skimmed the intro. Most hadn’t opened it. So I shared my screen and started walking through it.

Me: What was the room vibe while you were talking?

Client: Honestly? People were multitasking. A couple were on their laptops, one was eating lunch. Eyes weren’t exactly on me.

Me: Where did you start?

Client: I jumped straight into the diagram: API design, system components, all the technical pieces.

Me: So a deep dive, right out of the gate. Did you ever zoom out to explain why this matters now?

Client: Not really. I figured the urgency was obvious. I just kept talking for about fifteen minutes.

Me: And how did folks respond?

Client: A few polite clarifying questions. Then my manager wrapped with: “Thanks, great work, let’s circle back after launch.” That was a month ago. Nobody’s mentioned it since.

This chat with my client is a textbook case of what happens when a good idea gets a lukewarm response.

Too often, good proposals are met with polite nods, vague “let’s revisit later” comments, or silent apathy. Not because people disagree, but because they weren’t really listening in the first place. The first step to getting buy-in is getting people to actually listen.

If people are tuning you out, structure, clarity, and delivery are usually why. This article will help you diagnose what’s going wrong, so you can fix what’s blocking your message from getting through.

Read more

The landscape is shifting, quietly, steadily, and faster than most realize. According to the World Economic Forum, 23% of all jobs are expected to change by 2027, with 83 million roles disappearing and 69 million new ones emerging.

Even core roles, such as software engineering, are being redefined. Anthropic’s CEO recently predicted that AI will be writing 90% of code within six months, and nearly all software development could be automated within a year. That might sound extreme, but the direction is clear: the value of “just writing code” is dropping fast.

Meanwhile, Tech companies are already raising expectations: more output, fewer people, faster delivery. If you keep doing what’s always worked, you may start to feel like you're falling behind. Not because you’re any less capable, but because the environment around you has changed.

Plenty of people think adapting to AI just means writing better prompts or playing with new tools. But those are surface-level skills. The real shift is deeper.

It’s about how you see your role, how you define value and impact, and how willing you are to reinvent yourself again and again.

If you don’t shift how you think, no amount of skill will keep you relevant.

Disclaimer: I’m figuring this out too. I don’t have all the answers, this is just my way of thinking out loud with you.

In this article, we discuss:

• The hidden habits that will quietly make you obsolete

• 🔒 The mindset shifts that will actually make you future-ready (exclusive for paid subscribers)

• 🔒 How to move from anxiety to action, with clear next steps (exclusive for paid subscribers)

If you want to stay relevant, grow faster, and lead in the AI age, this is for you.

What used to be enough isn’t enough anymore

You’ve probably built your career by doing good work, meeting expectations, and being dependable. These are still good things, and also table stakes.

Let’s call out the mindsets that once felt safe, but no longer are:

Being a great executor

Doing what you’re told, even brilliantly, isn’t enough anymore. If the work can be automated, delegated, or deprioritized, it probably will be.

What matters now is whether the problems you’re solving are still worth solving—and whether your role in solving them is defensible. The safest thing you can do is stop assuming you’re safe.

Banking on your seniority or job title

Seniority used to be a moat. Now it can be a trap. Your title won’t protect you if your role gets redefined or replaced. The more senior you are, the more expensive you are, and the more pressure there is to prove your worth.

Ten years of experience isn’t the same as one year repeated ten times. What matters is how fast you can evolve. What keeps you in the game is relevance, not your level.

Waiting for a roadmap

Believing someone will tell you exactly what to do is a mistake. This isn’t a paved road. It’s a world we haven’t lived in before. Nobody’s handing you a map. You have to draw your own.

If you’re still in “wait-and-see”, then what are you waiting for?

Hoping things will “get back to normal”

We’re not heading back to normal. This is the new normal, and the pace of change is only accelerating from here.

The traits you need in this new reality

Read more

You finally have some free time. No meetings, no urgent fires.
You could finally update your brag doc, add those missing tests, improve that dashboard, fix those alerts, take that course, or read that book. If you’re an engineering manager, you could document your team norms, give that difficult feedback you’ve been pushing off, or finally reach out to that peer you’ve been meaning to build a better relationship with.

You know all of this pays off. But in the moment? You’d rather do anything else.

We all do this to a certain degree: avoiding the things we don’t like, even when they’re good for us.

In today’s article, we’ll explore:

• Why we avoid difficult tasks

• What happens in our brain when we push through resistance

• 🔒 How high performers get things done (especially when they don’t feel like it)

• 🔒 And how to tell when a hard thing isn’t worth doing at all

Why do we avoid doing things?

Even when something is objectively good for us, our brains love to push it off. Why?

• It’s not urgent - No one is breathing down your neck.

• It feels too big - Overwhelming tasks are easier to delay.

• It’s tedious - It’s dull. Repetitive. Boring.

• It’s uncomfortable - We don’t know what to expect.

• It’s not immediately rewarding - It’ll pay off later, but right now it just feels like extra effort.

All of this is completely normal. Our brains are designed to avoid effort and discomfort. To understand what’s really going on, we need to look at what happens in the brain when we push through.

The neuroscience of doing hard things

Scientists have found that pushing through resistance strengthens a part of the brain called the anterior mid-cingulate cortex. This region is bigger in people who consistently challenge themselves (especially by doing the things they don’t want to do).

So every time you push through the mental resistance - whether it’s picking up that task, writing the doc, or having the tough 1:1 - you’re literally rewiring your brain to get better at doing hard things.

Subscribe now

Discomfort = Growth

Comfort never made anyone better. The moments that shape our careers - the big leaps, the breakthroughs, the things we’re proud of - always come from doing something hard.

Like any muscle, mental toughness is built through reps. It’s never one big act of discipline, but thousands of small moments where you show up and do the work, despite resistance.

Growth almost always comes with growing pains.

🔒 What high performers do differently

(paid content below this line)

Read more

It’s a piece of advice repeated so often that it’s practically a workplace mantra.

And yet, most of us don’t ask enough questions. Instead, we hold back, make assumptions, fill in the blanks ourselves, and move forward with incomplete information. The result? Misunderstandings, miscommunications, and mistakes that could have been avoided with a simple, well-placed question.

The idea for this article came from a recent conversation with one of my 1-1 coaching clients that went something like this:

Client: “I don’t know why my manager suddenly asked about this. He seemed stressed and a bit micromanage-y.”

Me: “Did you ask him?”

Client: “Not really. I didn’t want it to seem like I was questioning his authority.”

My client’s response brought up a common misconception: that asking questions can be seen as a challenge rather than a tool for clarity and collaboration. He assumed his manager was unhappy with him and hesitated to ask for fear of making things worse. I encouraged him to go ask and coached him on how to frame his question to get the clarity he needed.

In our next session, he came back relieved. It turned out there had been a simple miscommunication. His manager wasn’t upset—he was reacting to incomplete information. The fact that my client asked the question helped clear up the misunderstanding and improved their working relationship.

This conversation made me realize how often we hold back from asking questions, why that’s the case, and what to do about it, so in this article, we’ll cover:

• Why we don’t ask enough questions

• How to avoid seeming insecure when asking questions

• How to ask questions without coming across as confrontational

• How to frame questions from a place of curiosity

Let’s dive in.

(paid content below this line)

Read more

A while ago, I decided to share what annoys me on LinkedIn, and unsurprisingly, most engineers seem to be triggered by similar things.

This guide captures the most common ways folks unintentionally (or otherwise) drive senior (and above) engineers up the wall. Use it wisely!

If you’re an engineer, I’d love to hear which resonated most with you and which I missed. Also, maaaybe share this article with the people who annoy you, so that they’ll stop doing it and all engineers can live happily ever after.

1. “This is broken, fix it now” and no, I haven’t tried to figure it out on my own

Picture this: An engineer gets an urgent message: “This is broken! Can you fix it ASAP?” No context, no details, just pure panic.

The engineer sighs and asks, “What exactly is broken? Any error messages? What did you try so far?” The answer? “Uhh… I haven’t really looked into it yet. But I need it fixed fast.”

A few minutes of troubleshooting later, the engineer realizes it was something trivial, like a typo in a config file, an expired session, or a missing semicolon.

Why it’s annoying: Escalating without even trying basic troubleshooting wastes everyone’s time. It interrupts the engineer’s focus on something that might not even require their involvement.

Before escalating, spend a few minutes figuring out whether the issue is actually broken, and gather details (check logs, try a restart, or at least describe what’s happening). When reporting an issue, provide details: what’s broken, what you expected to happen, and what you’ve tried so far. A little effort upfront saves a lot of unnecessary back-and-forth.

2. “We really need you to look into this urgent thing”, because I already promised it without checking with you, and it would make me look bad

Picture this: An engineer gets an urgent ping: “Hey, can you look into this ASAP? It’s really important.” They pause whatever they’re doing and ask, “What’s the urgency?” The response is vague: “The stakeholders are really pushing for it.”

After digging deeper, the engineer discovers the real issue—someone (usually a PM, manager, or exec) has already committed to a timeline without checking feasibility. Now, to avoid looking bad, they need the engineer to drop everything and make it happen.

Why it’s a problem: This is the classic boy cried wolf situation. If everything is treated as urgent, engineers will stop taking urgency seriously. Constant interruptions kill focus, slow down meaningful work, and erode trust.

Be very discerning about creating scope creep and use the “urgent” label only when it’s truly urgent. Instead, be very discerning about interruptions, stick to the normal prioritization process, and be prepared to explain why.

3. “I just need a rough t-shirt estimate” so I can later promise it to our VP

Picture this: A PM/TPM/manager asks for a “quick estimate”, assuring the engineer they “just need a rough t-shirt size.” Despite hesitation, the engineer throws out a number based on gut feeling, often overly optimistic. Next thing you know, this vague estimate is advertised to higher-ups with high confidence, and it becomes the locked-in deadline.

Why it’s a problem: That 30-second estimate has somehow morphed into your binding deadline because “leadership heard about it.” This pattern creates pressure to make snap decisions without proper scoping and unfairly traps you in arbitrary, often unfeasible, deadlines.

An off-the-cuff estimate, even if it's just a "t-shirt size," isn’t something that should be broadcast as a solid commitment. Proper estimations take time.

4. Add a “Sync“ meeting to their calendar, but don’t provide any context or agenda; you can cover it in the meeting

Picture this: An engineer gets a vague calendar invite: “Weekly sync”. No agenda, no explanation. This triggers a series of unnecessary mental loops:

• Is this meeting urgent?

• What am I expected to contribute?

• Do I need to prepare something?

Why it’s annoying: Engineers juggle a million things at once. A vague meeting invite forces them to waste time chasing context. Providing a clear title, description, and agenda upfront saves everyone time and helps engineers show up prepared (or decline if they don’t need to be there).

5. “I set a quick 30 mins for later today to chat about X” because I didn’t want to type this out over Slack/email

Picture this: The engineer is in deep in focus, when suddenly: ping! A calendar invite appears out of nowhere: “Quick chat about X”. They check Slack. No messages. No prior discussion. Just an unexpected 30-minute slot now blocking their calendar.

When they join the meeting, it turns out this entire conversation could have been a two-sentence Slack message. Or worse, it’s a verbal brain dump of thoughts that aren’t even fully formed yet, and now the engineer is expected to help structure them.

Why it’s annoying: Engineers value deep focus time, and unnecessary meetings break that flow. If something can be handled asynchronously, respect their time and send a message instead.

6. “This is really urgent, can’t we just hack something together for now?”, and we both know I’ll conveniently forget about it later

Picture this: Someone needs something urgent to be addressed ASAP. After discussing with the engineer, they realize the correct solution is complicated, so they insist on a “quick hack” with the promise of “We’ll totally come back and clean it up later.”

The hack goes live, the requester moves on, and months pass. One day, the engineer stumbles upon the mess in the codebase and remembers:

1. That "temporary" fix is still there.

2. No one logged a ticket to fix it.

3. The original requester has conveniently forgotten all about it.

Now, the engineer has to either clean it up themselves or deal with the inevitable production issue when it breaks at the worst possible time.

Why it’s a problem: Quick hacks are fine in rare cases, but only if there’s a plan to clean them up. More often than not, they become permanent and lead to an unmaintainable codebase. If you’re asking for a shortcut, make sure you also prioritize fixing the mess later.

Subscribe now

7. “Oh yeah, we did ask you for that quick hack but unfortunately, we can’t fix it now (or never) because we have other priorities”

Picture this: In sprint planning or backlog grooming, the engineer brings up that quick hack that was introduced a while ago.

Leadership’s response? “Yeahhh, we get it… but right now, we need you to focus on more important priorities.”.

This cycle repeats, and every time the fix gets deprioritized, the hack solidifies into the codebase. Eventually, it becomes so deeply embedded that fixing it would require a full rewrite, and now it’s definitely too big to prioritize.

Why it’s a problem: Engineers already reluctantly agreed to the hack, on the condition that it wouldn’t become a forever problem. The people who insisted on the hack have now moved on, leaving the engineers stuck maintaining the mess.

If you force a quick hack, commit to fixing it. Log a ticket, assign it a priority, and don’t just let it rot. If engineers tell you it’s time to clean something up, listen to them, they’re not asking for fun. Recognize that every time you push off tech debt, you’re borrowing against future engineering productivity. At some point, that debt will come due.

8. “We have a new top priority! We’re agile!” but we secretly don’t have a long-term plan and are just making things up as we go

Picture this: An engineer joins the weekly team meeting, expecting updates on the current sprint. Instead, leadership announces a “new top priority” that completely overrides last month’s “new top priority”.

They ask, “What about the work we just started?”
The response: “We need to be flexible! We’re agile!”

This happens again in the next sprint. And the next. The engineer stops bothering to plan ahead because, at this point, why even try?

Why it’s a problem: Few things are more disruptive to engineering than constant priority shifts. They make it impossible for engineers to plan or finish meaningful work.

Frequent changes don’t equal agility. Don’t use “agile” as an excuse for poor planning. Yes, we can be nimble, but every shift should come with a clear reason that makes sense to the team, not just a buzzword. If something truly is a top priority, commit to it long enough for engineers to make real progress.

Conclusion

If you want to annoy your engineers, just follow this list and you’ll succeed effortlessly! But I wouldn’t recommend it.

Senior engineers are the backbone of your team. They keep things running, ensure projects get delivered, and prevent your codebase from turning into spaghetti. The good ones? They’re rare and highly sought after.

So if you want to keep your engineers happy (and keep them around), avoid these common pitfalls.

Until next time,
Your Caring Techie

Did you enjoy this article? Hit the ❤️ button or share it with a friend or coworker. 🙏🏻

Related reading

You might have seen me mention the course here and there throughout past editions of this newsletter, but I never really talked about what inspired me to create it and what makes it special.

Before I dive into it, here are the key details:

• Dates:
  May: May 26th - June 6th - SOLD OUT

  June: June 16th - June 28th - SOLD OUT
  August: August 17th - August 29th

• Time: Classes are held every Monday and Wednesday at 8am PST

• Where: On Zoom via the Maven platform

  Claim your $100 off!

In this course, we’ll tackle how to:

• Unlock personal power: Identify limiting mindsets, reprogram them, and align body language to enhance influence.

• Build your reputation: Define and showcase your expertise to be seen as a strategic contributor.

• Foster trust: Create meaningful, reciprocal relationships with peers, allies, and sponsors.

• Persuade effectively: Frame, present, and pitch ideas to gain buy-in and support.

• Navigate conflict: Handle resistance and disagreements to strengthen your influence.

What motivated me to create this course?

If you’ve been here for a while, you might already know that influence is a topic I’m deeply passionate about—and one I’ve written about often in this newsletter.

Influence is a critical skill for engineers, yet it’s rarely taught. As a Tech Lead, I quickly realized that I couldn’t just tell people what to do and expect everyone to listen to me. I needed something else: influence.

I made many mistakes along the way, but with time, influence became my most powerful tool, especially since I didn’t have formal authority over my team.

Looking back at my journey, and after talking to many of you, I realized influence is a common challenge, especially after senior levels, for both individual contributors and managers. This is how “Impact through Influence” was born about a year ago.

Since then, five public and one private cohort have graduated from the course, totaling over 100 students, and the feedback has been incredible.

Who is this course for?

This course is great for anyone working in Tech, but the emphasis is on the following audience:

• Tech Leads or Senior+ Engineers who lack formal authority but need to lead, motivate, and drive decisions.

• Engineering Managers who want to navigate challenging cross-functional projects where hierarchical influence isn’t enough.

• Anyone who wants to expand their impact, take on bigger challenges, and level up in their career.

What’s special about this re-launch?

As I mentioned, last year over 100 students took the course, and with each cohort, I made continuous improvements to keep making the course better and better for you. The last time I taught this course was in September 2024, and since then, I wanted to invest an extended time to take the course to the next level.

Here’s what’s new:

• More hands-on exercises and breakout rooms to practice what you learn.

• Cheatsheets for every module that you can start using immediately.

• Condensed theoretical content to make room for more actionable insights.

Why this course might be a good choice for you

• It’s more accessible than 1:1 coaching but just as impactful.

  While 1:1 coaching can be incredibly valuable, it’s often expensive and time-intensive. This course is designed to deliver a similar level of insight and transformation in a more affordable and scalable format. You’ll get actionable strategies, personalized feedback, and the opportunity to learn alongside people just like you who share similar challenges.

• It solidifies the topics I’ve covered in this newsletter.

  If you’ve been following my newsletter, you know I often write about critical skills such as influence, communication, emotional intelligence, and managing up. This course takes many of the ideas from my articles and turns them into a structured, step-by-step influence-building framework. You’ll walk away with a clear roadmap for applying these concepts in your day-to-day work.

• It addresses real-world challenges faced by software engineers, tech leads, and managers every day.

  This course is about solving the problems you actually face. Whether it’s getting buy-in for a technical decision, motivating a team without formal authority, or navigating cross-functional conflicts, we’ll tackle the issues that matter most to you.

• It’s packed with lessons from my own mistakes, so you don’t have to repeat them.

  I’ve made plenty of mistakes in my career, especially when it came to people stuff. This course is built on those hard-earned lessons. I’ll share what went wrong, how I fixed it, and how you can avoid those pitfalls altogether by discussing real-life case studies.

• It teaches everything I wish I had known when I became a senior engineer.

  Stepping into a senior role often comes with a steep learning curve. You’re expected to lead, influence, and deliver results—but no one teaches you how. This course fills that gap. It’s the playbook I wish I had when I first became a senior engineer, packed with practical tools and strategies to help you succeed.

What do we cover in the course?

The course is divided into two parts:

• Part 1: Building Influence: In modules 1 & 2, you build the foundations of influence. We cover: influential mindsets & presence, creating a strong reputation, building strategic relationships, and managing stakeholders.

• Part 2: Putting Influence in Action: In modules 3 & 4 we dive into real-world scenarios and hands-on exercises to master: asking for anything, giving feedback, handling negotiations and disagreements, and getting buy-in on any proposal.

A sneak peek into the course: Free resources

• A collection of interviews on the topic of “Influence”

• All the articles I wrote about influence

What previous students have to say

“As a staff software engineer who has focused most of my career on improving my technical skills, I have failed to influence what I thought was a better output in some situations. Those experiences made me seek the help of an expert, and I couldn't have landed in a better spot than Irina's course. Irina's course made me rethink how I showed up in these situations and helped me expand my toolkit to increase the impact of my work. I am excited about the growth opportunities ahead of me, from improving my personal brand to building stronger relationships to achieve better outcomes.” - Francisco, Staff Software Engineer

“I am a tech lead and the classic description of the role is 'lead through influence'. As I grew in my career it became obvious that being a strong engineer was not enough. I've spend last year working on my soft skills and I was still not seeing the results I wanted. This class came at the perfect moment. It pulled together all the separate concepts I've read about and created a complete picture of how influence works - spoiler alert, it's more than being articulate and having the best ideas. Irina created a useful framework to make things easy to understand and remember. The real-world use cases resonated perfectly with my role as a tech lead. They significantly helped me internalize the concepts and apply them in my daily interactions. This class was an investment absolutely worth making, both in terms of time and money.” - Andreea, Staff Software Engineer

“Really amazing course. The material is packed full of information and the lectures were very easy to follow. The teacher, Irina, presents a very complex topic in a very calm, mindful, and approachable way.” Fabricio, Principal Software Engineer

“I can't recommend this training enough. The course's structural approach deconstructs the complex topics of influencing into digestible pieces. With a focus on engineers, it delivers directly applicable knowledge. A major advantage is the real-world examples Irina includes to connect theory and practice seamlessly. If you are thinking about enrolling, do not hesitate - it's a game-changer.” - Adrien, Engineering Manager

If you’re ready to take your influence and impact to the next level, I’d love to see you in the next cohort. Spots are limited, and we’re already 50% filled!

Get 10% for limited time only!

Let’s build influence together and create the impact you’ve been striving for!

Until next time,
Irina

Did you enjoy this article? Hit the ❤️ button or share it with a friend or coworker. 🙏🏻

Related Reading

For most tech companies, this time of year marks the delightful season of annual performance evaluations. While some may be gearing up to apply for promotions, for most people, it’s about receiving performance ratings and finding out how their bonuses stack up.

If writing self-assessments is part of your evaluation process and you want to avoid the most common pitfalls, you’re in the right place.

The tips in this article are drawn from my firsthand experience reviewing tens—if not hundreds—of self-assessments during my time at Google and Uber. So, if you’re ready to learn how to craft an assessment that maximizes your impact and makes it easier for your manager to support you, keep reading!

Mistake #1: Assuming your manager knows everything you did

Why it’s a problem: Managers can’t see everything, especially collaboration, mentoring, or smaller wins. Assuming they remember or have full visibility of your work sets you up for disappointment. Even if they had access to all the information, they likely don’t have time to piece it together. This could result in your contributions being overlooked or undervalued, which will only hinder your career.

What to do instead: Help them help you. Connect the dots for them and spoon-feed them all the information they need to evaluate you. Present your achievements clearly, including the behind-the-scenes stuff (see point #4 below).

Mistake #2: Being vague or generic

Why it’s a problem: Using overly general phrases without specifics makes it hard for managers to understand the scope and impact of your work. Without specificity, your accomplishments could seem minor or unimportant.

• Example: "I worked on backend performance improvements", "contributed to multiple projects" or "helped improve the system" — don’t explain what was done or why it mattered.

What to do instead: Use specifics and measurable outcomes, like "contributed 50+ code changes across 3 services, reducing page load times by 25%”.

Mistake #3: Excessive unnecessary details

Why it’s a problem: As we saw in the previous point, we need to add details to our contributions, but being excessive about it is also unhelpful. Adding every minor task overwhelms your manager and dilutes the impact of key achievements.

• Example: Listing every code review you participated in or all the meetings you attended instead of summarizing your most significant contributions.

What to do instead: Start with a brain dump. Then categorize them under a few main “big rocks” / projects / efforts. For each, summarize your biggest contributions and provide curated links to impactful work, like design docs or RFCs. Stack rank and prune when things seem too much.

Mistake #4: Ignoring behind-the-scenes contributions

Why it’s a problem: Leaving out teamwork, mentorship, or collaboration gives an incomplete view of how you contributed. Managers often don’t see these day-to-day contributions unless you highlight them.

• Example: Failing to mention that you onboarded a new hire or resolved conflicts during a project.

What to do instead: Highlight examples of collaboration, mentorship, or thank-you notes from colleagues. These moments are precious because they showcase the value you bring beyond technical work.

You are reading a free article of The Caring Techie Newsletter. I post weekly-ish articles on career growth, leadership and communication for high performing ICs and leaders.

If you’re enjoying this article and want to support my work and be part of the community, please consider becoming a paying subscriber. Thank you! 🙏🏻

Mistake #5: Downplaying your accomplishments

Why it’s a problem: Using modest or self-deprecating language undervalues your work and plants an incomplete view of your impact in your manager’s brain.

• Example: Writing, "I think I did okay" instead of, "Successfully led the project to completion, meeting all deadlines."

What to do instead: Present your achievements confidently and factually. Own your narrative without exaggeration.

Mistake #6: Not tracking your work year-round

Why it’s a problem: Trying to recall everything at the last minute means you’ll likely forget key contributions, hence your review will be incomplete and less impactful.

What to do instead: Keep a “brag doc”, “yay me” file or weekly work log to track accomplishments and feedback year-round. Keeping track of your work will speed up writing your self-assessment and you’ll be more thorough.

Mistake #7: Submitting a rushed, unpolished review

Why it’s a problem: A last-minute, sloppy review full of typos or unclear language reflects poorly on your professionalism. It can make your manager question the quality of your work.

What to do instead: Proofread and polish your review. Do at least one round of edits for brevity and clarity.

Mistake #8: Not correlating accomplishments with competencies and role expectations

Why it’s a problem: As mentioned in point #1, the goal of a self-assessment is to help your manager help you. To determine whether you’re exceeding, meeting or below expectations, they will compare it with the pre-existing competencies and expectations for your role. Why not help them evaluate you?

What to do instead: Compare your achievements to defined expectations. Highlight areas where you’ve excelled and reflect on areas for growth. By comparing yourself against the benchmark you advocate for your own performance and strengthen your case for a promotion or high rating.

Final words

By avoiding the common mistakes described in this article, you can ensure your manager sees the full scope of your contributions. Remember, your self-review is your chance to advocate for yourself, so spending the time on is worth it.

Think of it as an investment in your career: a well-written review not only helps you stand out during performance evaluations but also builds a strong case for promotions, raises, or new opportunities. Take control of your story, highlight your wins, and don’t be afraid to show your value. Your career will thank you!

Until next time,

Irina - Your Caring Techie

Did you enjoy this article? Hit the ❤️ button or share it with a friend or coworker. 🙏🏻

When you’re ready, here are 3 ways I can help:

1. Book a one-hour call where we can tackle your most pressing issues.

2. Private coaching - I am opening a handful of coaching spots to work with me 1-1, email me at thecaringtechie@gmail.com or DM me to learn more!

3. Join the next cohort of my course “Impact through Influence in Engineering Teams” to learn the mindsets, frameworks, and tools you need to build your influence at work. Cohorts 7&8 are open for registration!

There are two approaches to life:

• Reacting to what happens – Waiting for opportunities or problems to happen then taking action based on that.

• Creating what happens – Being intentional about what you want and taking deliberate steps to make it real.

I’ve tried both of them, and I can tell you – the former doesn’t feel good. It feels disempowering, especially if the opportunities and problems are not aligned with your desires. You stay busy, but something’s missing. It can feel like you’re on autopilot.

Being intentional, though? It brings energy and passion. The most successful people I know take this path. They align their work with what excites and challenges them. Intentionality is the foundation of a thriving career—and life.

This is why I love stepping into a new year because it feels like a fresh canvas on which I can paint whatever I want. I get to set my intentions about the direction I want my year to go.

To set myself up for a fantastic new year, I need to get my mind in the right place. For that, I need 3 things: clarity, purpose, and focus.

The advice I mention in today’s article is comprised of things I’ve been religiously doing for the past 3 years, that have benefitted me tremendously. Before we dive, a word from today’s sponsor JellyFish.

Struggling to forecast 2025 roadmap delivery dates? You're not alone. Engineering leaders face immense pressure to meet deadlines while driving innovation.

Download the Essential Guide to Software Delivery Management and learn how to:

• Effectively track deliverable progress and projections

• Avoid over-committing your teams

• Communicate delivery trade-offs using data

• Develop and release high-quality work on-schedule

… now back to today’s article.

Getting clear about what drives you

The key to clarity is reflection, and the key to finding what drives you is reconnecting with what makes you come alive and what got you started in the first place . A one-hour clarity session can work wonders in helping you figure these things out.

Block an hour in early January. Put your phone on Do Not Disturb. Take your laptop or a notebook and start writing things down.

Have you ever asked yourself: What are your core life pillars? These are foundational areas or aspects of one’s life, each playing a critical role in building a meaningful life.

For example, my 4 core pillars are:

• Health & Fitness

• Relationships

• Career & Business

• Personal Growth

I define a successful life for myself if each year I am able to nurture and progress each of these core pillars. So start by figuring out what your pillars are —they might be different than mine.

Then, for each of these pillars, I first look back at the previous year. This simple exercise can reveal patterns I haven’t noticed.

• What gave me energy? What projects or tasks made time fly?

• What drained me? Where did I feel exhausted or unmotivated?

• Where did I grow? And where did I feel stuck or stagnant?

Then, I look at the year ahead.

• What do I want to keep from 2024? And what am I ready to change?

• How can I do more of what gave me energy? And how can I do less of what drains me?

• What am I curious about learning this year?

While doing this exploration, I pay attention to how I’m feeling as I’m writing things down. If fear or anxiety come up, that’s a signal to me that I have to dig deeper. The feelings I’m looking for are joy and peace; that’s when I know I’m on the right track.

Once you get clarity on some of these questions, a vision starts to emerge.

Define your vision and your anti-vision

It is important to approach this process of reflection with curiosity. Sometimes an hour might not be enough. Sometimes you might need to split it into multiple sessions. And other times you simply might not know how to answer some of these questions.

If defining the vision for the year ahead is too daunting, consider starting with an anti-vision. Most people who find it challenging to articulate what they want find it easier to talk about what they don’t want. Then it’s easier to reverse it into what you do want.

For example:

• Anti-vision: I don’t want to feel overwhelmed and burnt out by the end of the year.

• Vision: I want to feel calm, organized, and in control of my schedule.

• Anti-vision: I don’t want to be stuck doing work that feels meaningless.

• Vision: I want to work on projects that align with my values and contribute to something bigger.

• Anti-vision: I don’t want to have health problems and be lonely.

• Vision: I want to prioritize my well-being and spend quality time with people I care about.

Starting with the anti-vision makes the process less intimidating and it’s a good starting point.

Protect your focus at all costs

Distractions are the biggest enemy of making intentions reality and getting what you want. Once you’re clear on your vision and have a good idea of what needs to be done, focus becomes critical.

Here are some things that have helped me say no to distractions:

• Create a vision board: Because I’m a visual person, each year I create a vision board and have it front and center near my desk. It’s been an incredible tool for helping me stay clear and focused on my goals.

• Read Indistractable by Nir Eyal: I read this book a few years ago and it felt very refreshing. Nir has a lot of practical advice for how to increase focus, reduce distractions, and become “indistractable.”

• Say no to autopilot: Once you’re in the mode of just going through the motions, it’s hard to get out of it. What has helped me most with this is developing mindfulness through meditation. It’s like a workout for your brain. If meditation is something you’ve been curious about, I highly recommend the Headspace app to start.

• Commit to using a time management/productivity system: I currently use a combination of Notion and a physical planner. I created my own Notion template that seems to do the job. Find whatever works for you and stick to it.

Conclusion

Being intentional about stepping is more than just setting goals. Your goal should be aligning your year with what truly matters to you. By gaining clarity, defining your vision (or anti-vision), and fiercely protecting your focus, you can create a year that feels meaningful and fulfilling. Here’s to a year of living on purpose!

Until next time,

Irina - Your Caring Techie

Only a few days left to take advantage of the 40% off yearly subscriptions. Don’t miss out!

Get 40% off yearly subscription

Did you enjoy this article? Hit the ❤️ button or share it with a friend or coworker. 🙏🏻

Do you need support finding your clarity & purpose again? Here are 3 ways I can help:

1. Book a one-hour call where we can tackle your most pressing issues.

2. Private coaching - I am opening a handful of coaching spots to work with me 1-1, email me at thecaringtechie@gmail.com or DM me to learn more!

3. Join the next cohort of my course “Impact through Influence in Engineering Teams” where in 2 weeks of live classes you learn the mindsets, frameworks, and tools you need to build your personal brand, build relationships, get buy-in and become influential at work.

The end of the year, being so close to my birthday, always makes me reflective.

How did I spend this year? Was it aligned with the intentions I set? What did I learn? Am I on track with my goals? And what are my intentions for 2025?

But first, today is my birthday! 🥳

To celebrate, for the first time, I’m offering a limited time, only 40% off on annual subscriptions. Lock your price in forever!

Get 40% off annual subscription!

Now let’s look back at what happened in 2024 and what’s in store for 2025.

Highlights of 2024

2024 was my first full year as a solopreneur. When I left my Tech Lead Manager role in July 2023, I planned to take a break and then job hunt. Until then, I had been working full-time while running a side coaching business I started in 2020.

The newsletter's growth in 2023 and the chance to teach a course on Maven shifted my direction toward entrepreneurship.

So, I dedicated 2024 to coaching, teaching, creating, and writing. Solopreneurship brought discomfort and uncertainty, but also growth. As a one-person company, I had to navigate areas outside my expertise—challenging but rewarding.

What I learned in 2024

My first year of solopreneurship taught me so much. I’ll likely write more about this, but here are a few of the key takeaways:

• It’s okay to not know and do it anyway – Uncertainty is part of entrepreneurship. If you don’t get comfortable with it, you’ll get stuck.

• Don’t take things personally – Viewing yourself as a business helps you detach emotionally. Just like in business, some ideas succeed, some don’t.

• Take the leap – Not having a cushy tech job was scary, but not pursuing my calling felt scarier. This year, I helped people and made a living from it. I’m proud of that.

Here’s how the year looked in numbers

• Taught my Maven course “Impact through Influence” to 100+ students from Meta, Google, Dropbox, and more.

• Partnered with my first corporate client to deliver a custom version of the course!

• Spent over 200 hours coaching 1-1 clients.

• Wrote 36 newsletters and 140 LinkedIn posts.

• Each newsletter article now averages 30k views—unreal!

• Substack and LinkedIn grew significantly:

  • Substack: 14435 → 52454 subscribers

  • LinkedIn: 22898 → 52470 followers

• Spoke at 2 international conferences:

  • Craft Budapest - “Beyond Coding: Individual Leadership is here to stay”

  • LeadDev Berlin - Keynote: “Leading through scarcity” (video not available yet for the general public)

• Guest appearances on 5 podcasts – Full list here.

LinkedIn highlights

A few posts went viral this year:

• My most viral post with over 1 million views was about being a woman in tech.

  

• Another one focused on the power of self-advocacy.

• I also wrote about the super skill of senior engineers at Google and Uber.

I was able to get my word cloud for my LinkedIn posts, it looks something like this:

Newsletter highlights

This year’s articles centered on evergreen themes for engineers and leaders: influence, communication, emotional intelligence, and career growth.

Top 3 most viewed articles of 2024

• 3 Critical Skills to Grow Beyond Senior Levels

• How to Self-Manage (Even if You Have a Manager)

• 7 Mindsets Slowing Down Your Career Growth

Main newsletter themes

Influence

Influence was a major theme in 2024—a crucial skill for everyone:

• Why influence is a vital skill for anyone

• Top mistakes people make when influencing

• Why influential people have a lot of social capital and How to build social capital

Emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence is vital but often lacking in tech. Key articles:

• The difference between being kind and being nice

• How to cultivate clarity and kindness in your team

• Tips for staying kind and open in high-pressure situations

Communication

A pillar of “The Caring Techie Newsletter.” Highlights include:

• Why repetition is key for effective communication

• The wrong and the right way to deliver bad news to your manager

• How to answer the “Tell me about yourself” question

Podcasts

2024 brought some incredible opportunities such as being invited on some amazing podcasts. Some of my favorite ones are:

• The Pragmatic Engineer’s Podcast in September - Promotions and Tooling at Google

• Refactoring with Luca Rossi - The Power of Influence

• Ethan Evans’s Community Chat - How to Influence without Authority

Intentions for 2025

2024 was amazing, but I might shift gears in 2025. I’m still deciding between entrepreneurship, a 9-5, or doubling down on coaching and teaching.

One thing’s for sure—my mantra for 2025 is “be bold.”

I’ll continue sharing leadership, influence, and personal growth topics and prioritize quality over quantity.

Thank you for being here. Cheers to a bright future!

How was your 2024, and what are your plans for 2025?

Until next time,

Irina - Your Caring Techie

Did you enjoy this article? Hit the ❤️ button or share it with a friend or coworker. 🙏🏻

Ready to grow your tech career with me? Here are 3 ways I can help:

1. Book a one-hour call where we can tackle your most pressing issues.

2. Private coaching - I am opening a handful of coaching spots to work with me 1-1, email me at thecaringtechie@gmail.com or DM me to learn more!

3. Join the next cohort of my course “Impact through Influence in Engineering Teams” where in 2 weeks of live classes you learn the mindsets, frameworks, and tools you need to build your personal brand, build relationships, get buy-in and become influential at work.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in the United States, and while I don’t come from a culture that traditionally celebrates it, I’ve adopted its spirit over the years.

As an immigrant who moved to California more than 13 years ago, I find Thanksgiving less about turkey and football and more about gratitude.

So, I figured it’s the perfect time to share some things I’m thankful for this year—and why gratitude itself is worth practicing, no matter what day it is or where you’re from.

Let’s dive in.

What is gratitude?

Gratitude can be defined as the quality of being thankful. It is acknowledging the positive things in your life, big or small, and appreciating the people, moments, or circumstances that contribute to them.

Gratitude and its impact on the brain

When you practice gratitude, your brain releases dopamine and serotonin—neurotransmitters that help you feel happy and calm. It’s like a built-in reward system that can be triggered on command whenever you focus on what’s good.

But gratitude goes deeper than momentary joy. Research shows that it strengthens neural pathways, rewiring how you see everything.

This becomes especially important in tough times, it helps you face them with a clearer, more balanced perspective.

Gratitude as a tool for building resilience

Gratitude builds emotional resilience by shifting your focus from what’s missing to what’s working. It doesn’t mean pretending everything is perfect; instead, it’s a grounding force when things get tough.

What I love most about gratitude is its symbiotic relationship with grit – practicing one helps unlock the other, which has proven to be a superpower in our industry, especially during the turbulent last few years.

When things feel overwhelming, taking a moment to appreciate what’s working—your health, a small win, or even a funny moment in a meeting—can give you the push you need to overcome your challenges.

Making gratitude a habit

Thanksgiving is once a year, but gratitude is best if practiced periodically. The more you do it, the more you’ll notice things to be grateful for.

It doesn’t have to be complicated. Sometimes, all it takes is pausing to ask yourself:

• What am I thankful for today?

• Who or what made a positive impact on me?

• What is something I usually take for granted but appreciate right now?

If you want ideas for how to express gratitude toward your team, check out the article I wrote a while ago: “How much appreciation do you show your team?”.

Who I’m grateful for this year

1. You, my readers

Every email you open, every post you read, every comment or reshare—it all matters. Writing can be a lonely endeavor at times, but knowing my words resonate with someone makes it all worthwhile.

To those who’ve opted for a paid subscription: You contribute to keeping this whole thing running. Your subscription is a vote of confidence that reminds me why I started in the first place. Thank you for being part of this journey.

2. My coaching clients and course participants

One of the most fulfilling parts of my year has been working with my coaching clients and course participants.

Helping others navigate organizational challenges, get new jobs, and see their own potential—it’s a privilege I don’t take lightly. To all of you: Thank you for trusting me with your growth. It’s an honor to be part of your journey.

3. My creator community

This year, I’ve seen incredible growth (we just hit the 50k subscribers mark!!), and it wouldn’t have been possible without my creator community.

Shoutout to , , , , , and

You’ve each helped me in your own way, and I’m endlessly thankful for your support. If you’re an online creator (whether it’s a newsletter, podcast, YouTube, or anything else), find your community. It’s a game-changer.

Final thoughts

Whether you're building resilience, strengthening relationships, or simply making your brain happier - gratitude is a powerful tool that's always available to you.

Like any skill worth developing, gratitude gets stronger with practice. And the more you practice it, the more naturally you'll spot things to be grateful for.

The science backs it up, and experience proves it: a little gratitude goes a long way.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Until next time,
Irina, Your Caring Techie

Did you enjoy this article? Hit the ❤️ button or share it with a friend or coworker. 🙏🏻

Interested in working together? Here are 3 ways I can help:

1. 1-1 coaching email me at thecaringtechie@gmail.com or DM me to learn more!

2. Book a one-hour call where we can tackle your most pressing issues.

3. Sign up for the next cohort of “Impact through Influence”

4. Interested in sponsoring this newsletter? Check the partnership options here.

Reading time: 5 minutes

Intro

In the software engineering world, “I have a bias towards action” is like a badge of honor that many proud adopters like to refer to, especially during interviews.

A “bias for action” has its merits. It signals decisiveness and initiative, all useful attributes, especially in teams that tend to get stuck in analysis paralysis and endless planning, but no action.

For software engineers, “bias for action” makes a lot of sense in many situations such as: rolling out urgent security patches, experimenting, or troubleshooting a sudden, widespread service outage.

However some situations require more analysis and strategy, and bias for action not only does not work, but it can also be very risky. In today’s article we’ll discuss:

• The origins of “Bias for action”

• The dangers of misusing “Bias for action”

• When deliberate waiting is the better choice

• When thoughtful action is the better approach

• Conclusions

Subscribe now

Where does “Bias For Action” come from

I first heard of this concept from Amazon’s leadership principles.

Bias for Action Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study. We value calculated risk taking.

Before you, my amazonian readers, jump in the comments to clarify how this principle was intended to be used, I’ll tell you right off the bat that it’s not how I’ve seen most people use—or better said misuse it— it in their day-to-day.

The way people use it today is more like how it was defined in psychology:

Action bias is the psychological phenomenon where people tend to favor action over inaction, even when there is no indication that doing so would point towards a better result. It is an automatic response, similar to a reflex or an impulse and is not based on rational thinking.

“Bias for action” is leaning into decisions quickly, favoring movement over hesitation, doing something—anything—rather than standing still or getting stuck in analysis paralysis.

Are you enjoying this article? Hit the ❤️ button or share it with a friend or coworker. 🙏🏻

Dangers of misusing “bias for action”

In theory, “bias for action” sounds great. Who doesn’t want to move fast and avoid being bogged down by endless deliberation? But if we pause and unpack the concept, it becomes clear that action for action’s sake is not always the best course.

What if you're heading in the wrong direction? What if acting quickly means making avoidable mistakes that slow things down in the long run?

Some of the common dangers of taking action for the sake of it include:

• Bypassing gathering necessary input from stakeholders may lead to poor decisions, misalignment, and resistance later on.

• Skipping proper due diligence and wasting time on building the wrong thing - see more in my “Lessons from Projects That Didn’t See the Light of Day” article

• Treating irreversible decisions as if they are reversible—some are, but some are not eg: schema changes with data loss, service migrations, replacing technology stacks, etc

• Damaging user trust by hastily implementing changes that disrupt user experience and introduce unexpected bugs

And the list can go on.

Subscribe now

So what can we do instead?

How to decide the right action depends on the problem type. More on this in an upcoming newsletter article. For now, I want to bring to your attention 2 alternatives:

• Do nothing on purpose—or deliberate waiting

• Stop, think, act—or have a bias for thoughtful action

When deliberate waiting is the better choice

“Irina, are you telling me to do nothing?” Yes, I am.

Sometimes, taking a step back is exactly what’s needed. I know inaction can feel deeply uncomfortable for some of us go-getters, but it could be the right thing to do in some situations. Here are some examples:

Example #1: You’re investigating a bug from an unfamiliar codebase.

Rushing to make changes without fully understanding the root issue is risky. In these cases, holding back—maybe collecting more logs, taking time to investigate them, and thinking through the options—is the right way forward.

Example #2: Some members of your team are having an argument

As a leader, jumping to resolve it right away might seem helpful, but giving people time to cool off and figure out a resolution on their own might be a better long-term solution. Sometimes problems do get solved on their own as mentioned in my “How to Pick Your Battles: A Simple Framework for Addressing Issues at Work” article.

When bias for thoughtful action is the better approach

Thoughtful action is not about moving fast or slow—it’s about moving with intention. It also means you intentionally pause to assess your options, evaluate your trade-offs, and don’t rush into anything.

I like this more than “bias for action” because I like to balance urgency with reflection—and act strategically with both speed and care.

Here’s what bias for thoughtful action might look like in practice:

Ask yourself if immediate action is truly needed and how much time you actually have. Take a moment to check your assumptions, confirm you’re solving the right problem, and consider your options and the associated risks. If possible, you get a second opinion from someone with more experience, gather more data, prototype a solution, and get feedback. If everything checks off, you're off to the races! If not, you should probably hold off.

Conclusion

Adopting catchy mantras like “bias toward action” without considering the nuances is easy. But not every situation calls for speed, and blindly charging ahead can lead to worse outcomes.

Doing something—even if it’s wrong—is not always better than doing nothing. Sometimes, the smartest move is to pause, think, and plan, then act.

Being deliberate about how and when we act makes all the difference. In engineering—and life—nuances matter.

So, next time someone tells you they have a bias for action, I encourage you to ask: Is it thoughtful action?

Until next time,
Irina Stanescu - Your Caring Techie

Did you enjoy this article? Hit the ❤️ button or share it with a friend or coworker. 🙏🏻

In case you missed it: