All of our Engineering articles

Minimum viable product

Beta Testing

Beta testing is the stage where real users test a nearly finished software product in a production environment before its official release. It’s the final checkpoint to uncover bugs, validate usability and confirm market readiness.

Engineering

Technical Debt

Technical debt is the implied cost of additional work created when a team prioritizes faster delivery over the most achievable or maintainable solution.

Engineering

Mastering the Human Side of Engineering: Lessons from Apple, Palantir and Slack

Apple engineering leader Michael Lopp gives tactical advice for managers on how to empower individual engineers — and become better leaders themselves.

Engineering

The Rotation Program That Keeps This Startup’s Engineers Learning — and Not Leaving

Checkr VP of Engineering Krista Moroder opens up about the rotation program that’s helped keep her org’s non-regrettable attrition at near-zero.

Engineering

This 90-Day Plan Turns Engineering Leaders Back into Frontline Developers

David Loftesness has deftly cycled between management and IC roles throughout his career. Here, he lays out a plan to help engineering leaders make a smooth transition back into the technical weeds.

Product

Replit’s Path to Product-Market Fit — The $1 Billion Side Project

Sometimes the signals of product-market fit are so strong, they can no longer be ignored. In the latest installment of our Paths to Product-Market Fit series, Amjad Masad takes us on Replit's unconventional journey from college side project to billion-dollar AI startup.

Podcast

Developing technical taste: A guide for next-gen engineers | Sam Schillace (Deputy CTO at Microsoft, creator of Google Docs)

Sam Schillace is the CVP and Deputy CTO at Microsoft. Before Microsoft, Sam held prominent engineering roles at Google and Box. He has also founded six startups, including Writely, which was acquired by Google and became Google Docs.

Engineering

Unexpected Anti-Patterns for Engineering Leaders — Lessons From Stripe, Uber & Carta

Will Larson, a veteran engineering leader and the CTO at Carta, holds three conventional engineering management “anti-patterns” up to the light for a closer look.

Podcast

Timeless lessons on running software companies that endure | Alyssa Henry (Square, Amazon, Microsoft)

Alyssa Henry is the former CEO of Square, a financial services company providing products and services used by over 4 million merchants. Formerly at Amazon, Alyssa led the development and growth of Simple Storage Service (S3) at AWS. Alyssa now serves as an Independent Director at Intel and Confluent. —  In

Engineering

New Engineering Managers Have a High Failure Rate — This Figma Leader is on a Mission to Fix It

Are leaders setting up new engineering managers to fail? Marcel Weekes (VP of Engineering at Figma) sure thinks so. He unpacks his playbook for supporting the tricky transition from senior engineer to people manager and tested tactics for avoiding the common traps.

Podcast

How to supercharge your engineering org | Kellan Elliott-McCrea (Adobe, Dropbox)

Kellan Elliott-McCrea is a Head of Engineering at Adobe, overseeing Frame.io, a newly acquired video review and collaboration platform. He is known for his experience and expertise as an engineering leader.

Management

How to Scale Yourself Down — Not Up — as a Leader

After a four-decade career of toggling back and forth between big and small, Lightspark SVP of Engineering James Everingham shares his playbook for scaling down your leadership as you go from an org of hundreds or thousands to a handful of direct reports.