Hey, it’s Collin. Welcome to Engineering Echelons, a newsletter full of ideas and insights to help engineers excel at management.

Here’s what I’ve got for you this week.

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Alright, let’s get into it.

Highlights:

Highlights:

For leaders, the calendar belongs to the team. The early workout belongs to you.

The time dedicated to movement is a break from Slack and email, and it’s often when the hard problems get solved.

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One of the quickest ways to put the wrong people in important roles is to lack a clear definition and set of expectations for the role.

By explicitly articulating what a role requires, you build a safeguard against two common management traps: rushing to fill a gap as fast as possible, and using promotions merely as “feel-good” rewards for past performance.

A major source of this confusion is relying on job titles that conjure different meanings.

Take the title Engineering Principal.

In some organizations, this is purely an honorific title. Something that is bestowed upon senior staff to celebrate past achievements and long industry tenure. It indicates that most of that person’s activity is in the past.

In other organizations, it’s one of the most demanding jobs in the company. They are expected to actively pursue work, showcase competency to clients every day, provide in-depth technical guidance, and connect project teams directly to operational leadership. This principal is in the thick of their highest-performing years.

When you hire or promote based on title rather than a defined scope, you risk appointing someone expecting a victory lap into a role that demands high-velocity execution.

They’re likely to fail, and they may end up resenting you as a result. And others may resent you as well for putting that person in the wrong role.

It’s much better to spend the time up front defining and communicating role expectations, rather than succumbing to present pressures.

Jason Zweig (journalist and author) on how to make money:

“There are three ways to make a living:

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Charlan Nemeth (psychologist) on differing viewpoints:

“Minority viewpoints are important, not because they tend to prevail but because they stimulate divergent attention and thought. As a result, even when they are wrong, they contribute to the detection of novel solutions and decisions that, on balance, are qualitatively better.”

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Ben Horowitz (entrepreneur and venture capitalist) on when to get things right:

“Perhaps the most important thing that I learned as an entrepreneur was to focus on what I needed to get right and stop worrying about all the things that I did wrong or might do wrong.”

Some of the most effective leaders create friction in their organization. This article delves into the source of that friction, how to harness the good of it, and how to redirect the rest.

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Looking forward to hearing from you. See you next time.

Collin