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.
New and noteworthy news
A management perspective to consider
Leadership insights to delve into
And more…
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Alright, let’s get into it.
Noteworthy Headlines
Companies are hiring top executives without even posting jobs (The Business Journals)
Highlights:
Companies are hiring senior-level executives quietly, and the candidates are people who aren’t actively looking for a job.
The current job market is tilted heavily against entry-level employees and even against mid-level workers while companies look to snag higher-level talent.
Architecture billings decline further amid weak market conditions (AIA)
Highlights:
The ABI score fell to 44.7, down from August’s score of 47.2, marking the largest share of firms reporting declining billings since May.
4Q2026 Civil Infrastructure Construction Index (FMI)
Highlights:
The CICI dropped to 49.4 in the fourth quarter from 52.3 in the third, its first reading below the neutral line since 2022.
The book-to-burn rate rose to 61.7, and backlog held above neutral at 52.8, so firms are still replacing work about as fast as they complete it.
What changed was the outlook: funded programs are winding down, the next round of work is held up in design and permitting, and there is some uncertainty tied to the upcoming elections.
Partner Message
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*Partners may compensate Engineering Echelons and/or its contributor(s) for sharing their message(s).
Management Perspective
Technical debt is the cost of additional work caused by choosing the quickest solution rather than the most effective solution.
Similar to financial debt, technical debt comes in different forms. Some can accelerate growth; others can be paralyzing.
Martin Fowler created a matrix to organize the types of technical debt based on intent and context. They are:
Deliberate and prudent: Strategic debt. You know the cost, but the trade-offs are worth it
Deliberate and reckless: Myopic debt. Time pressures force short-term compromises to the detriment of long-term health
Inadvertent and prudent: Evolution debt. Unavoidable debt discovered as the team learns and the system evolves
Inadvertent and reckless: Sloppy debt. Unintentional issues arising from a lack of experience, standards, or peer review
Does your team have technical debt? Which kind? And is it effective?
Management Insights
Alan Jacobs (author) on reading:
“To read old books is to get an education in possibility for next to nothing.”
—
Peter Bernstein (author) on risk:
“Time is the dominant factor in gambling. Risk and time are opposite sides of the same coin, for if there were no tomorrow, there would be no risk. Time transforms risk, and the nature of risk is shaped by the time horizon: the future is the playing field.”
—
Jerry Seinfeld (comedian) on how you aren’t seeing reality:
“Every artist is only showing you his best. When you watch a movie, every scene—they only show you the one take that worked. Seventeen times, they missed it. You’re only seeing the peak of it.”
Management Resource
If your team is too busy doing their ‘normal job’ to experiment with AI, you’re preparing them to be replaced (Geoffrey Huntley)
Article about the importance of using AI in software engineering. But there are parallels for many industries.
Get in Touch
Did something strike a chord? Tell me about it.
Or…
Let me know if you’ve found something worth sharing.
Let me know what challenges you’re having as a manager.
Let me know what challenges you see other managers having.
Send me an email at [email protected]
Looking forward to hearing from you. See you next time.
Collin
Engineering Echelons is a brand of Echelons, LLC
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