My dearest gentlest reader, welcome to the month of May, my favourite month.

May this May bring you the joy of youth, the fresh smell of your favourite flowers and the delicious aroma of your favourite beverages.

What a time to be alive! We went from sending smoke signals, pigeons, letters, and town criers to yellow pages and phone booths, to landlines, to mobile phones and the internet, to electric cars, and now we are talking about AI. Is it all great? Not in the slightest, but the art of creativity continues to grow. And we are continuously evolving. The world is changing fast; our involvement is needed now more than ever. Our participation is important because we can ensure a better future for everyone. Whether we join the action or sit on the sidelines, we remain tied to the outcome. After all, we are all accomplices in the future we build. Stay curious and informed.

Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career: as the integration of AI into the software engineering field is causing skill atrophy because developers might not be learning by doing, because the foundational tasks are being done by models, which means developers need to prepare for a high-intensity, shorter-duration career path instead of a long career of 40 years of continuous skill accumulation.

Managing a team that didn’t choose you: Instead of following the standard advice to spend the first three months listening and learning during onboarding, it is necessary to break those rules and recalibrate to address the specific needs of the team.

I’m becoming the developer I used to make fun of: true seniority in software engineering comes from recognising that code is a tool and not an end in itself.

Stop using vscode like this (it’s killing your workflow): Improve your VSCode workflow by stripping down the editor to its essentials, master built-in keyboard shortcuts to eliminate mouse dependency and audit extensions to ensure tools that are most critical remain. The more intentional and cleaner the editor is, the more it reduces cognitive load, allowing you to focus on writing code rather than managing your environment.

The engineering manager’s attention budget: Managers distribute attention to 5 core pillars: delivery, people, customers and support, technical direction and team future. Most managers fail by defaulting to only 2 or 3 of the pillars. The article emphasises that effective management is mainly an exercise in intentional resource allocation, requiring leaders to audit where their focus is going to ensure the team remains sustainable and balanced.

The 10x Developer Myth Is Quietly Burning People Out: The 10x developer created a culture that rewarded unsustainable work habits as well as hyper-individualism at the expense of team health. Instead of 10x developers, we need 10x teams because software engineering is a collaborative process, and it's more sustainable for consistent high-quality output.

AI now writes 97% of my code. Here’s what I learned: The developer’s role has shifted from writing code to reviewing intent. Developers now focus mentally on the what and the why of the project. AI amplifies the impact of a developer’s judgment-making system, making design more important.

On Being Bossy: Being called bossy is a sign of effective leadership and a willingness to take charge in the face of ambiguity. Instead of shrinking to fit societal expectations, we need to lean into the discomfort of leadership.

3 constraints before I build anything: Effective engineering leadership is built on balancing 3 pillars: clarity, capacity and capability. Clarity allows the team to work on the right things, capacity, they have time to work on the tasks, and capability, they have the skills to execute. The manager’s role is to identify and remove the blockers to these constraints.

Quantum Computers Are Coming to Break Cryptography Faster Than Anyone Expected: Q-Day, the moment quantum computers can bypass current encryption, is accelerating with breakthroughs in hardware and mathematics. Recent research from Google suggests that refined algorithms could achieve this with fewer resources. Security is no longer a distant concern, and organisations should proactively transition to quantum-resistant standards to protect data as quantum capabilities advance.

The word of the day is sciolism. Sciolism means knowing something just enough to be informed, but not deeply.

Example in a sentence:

His speech was full of sciolism, impressing only those with less knowledge

I am making my grand departure into the unknown.

Take care of yourself!

Until the next fortnight, my treasured reader, go forth, and may the odds be ever in your favour! 👏 🤖 ✊ ☠️ 🏹 🪖

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