Most change in a 200-person org needs to pass through 4 layers before it reaches teams.
By the time AI adoption trickles down, the window may already be closing. This isn’t something you delegate. See what @tobi is doing. You have to lead it. 👇open.substack.com/pub/joaoqal...
Should engineering managers become hands-on again?
If even 20% of what we’re seeing is real, productivity, speed, and cost structures will change. Leadership blind spots at inflection points are expensive. I think eng leaders can’t afford to find it out.
So I wrote about software in a post-abundance world: why cheap code reshapes teams, labor economics, where capital flows next, and why the disruption won’t come from “AI features” alone. Wanna read? newsletter.terminalprompt.com/p/software-...
🧵 Yesterday, after a discussion on Discord, and today with @sdepablos, I got inspired.
AI is not just changing how software is built. It’s changing how the industry operated for years.
The loop is: smaller teams → cheaper feature parity → margin pressure → labor shifts → capital reallocates. 👇
After reading the article on software industrialization, this is my (current) take on Software Engineering + AI. Where am I wrong?
Full post here: open.substack.com/pub/joaoqal...
“I already raised my concerns. If they chose to ignore them, that’s on them.” I heard it many times from Tech Leads.
But this is not (tech) leadership at all. So... I wrote about it. 👇
Wait... what is "operational excellence"? It is about:
* Defining what “good” means
* Knowing when to push
* Knowing when to stop and fix things
SLOs and error budgets make trade-offs visible to Tech Leads. Full article: open.substack.com/pub/joaoqal...
As a Tech Lead, “we need more speed” always comes up. Without KPIs, SLIs, and SLOs, that turns into opinions:
“I think it’s fine.” // “I think it’s risky.” This is why Operational Excellence matters. 👇
ProTip™: comfort is not a strategy. This is "war-time" for CTOs. Full post: newsletter.terminalprompt.com/p/ai-wont-b...
AI won’t break your company (yet?). It will expose slow org design, fragile delivery pipelines, and leadership habits that no longer scale.
I wrote down what actually needs to change for CTOs running 100+ engineers. 👇
Excelencia Operacional desde la lente del Tech Lead:
* definir qué significa “bueno”
* medirlo con señales útiles
* convertirlo en decisiones repetibles
Artículo completo: enespanol.joaoqalves.net/p/excelenci...
Si eres Tech Lead y tus métricas no cambian las decisiones, no te están ayudando.
KPIs, SLIs y SLOs no van de medir más. Van de dejar de discutir opiniones y empezar a operar el sistema.
Nuevo artículo 👇
🎁 I also prepared a small gift for anyone who wants to put this into practice right away. A practical plan for your first 90 days as a Tech Lead, together with my EM/TL alignment toolkit.
Read it here -> world.hey.com/joaoqalves/...
I joined mytaxi as a Tech Lead in 2018 and quickly realized something uncomfortable: having good ideas and the title did not mean people would listen.
What finally changed things was simpler. A small tool and sitting side by side with people, solving problems. Full article 👇
“Why do you blog?”
I learned most of what I know by watching great teams up close and trying to apply their habits in the real world.
Writing is my way of passing that learning forward. Happy to see a positive impact.
🎁 Además, regalo un plan práctico de 90 días para cualquier Tech Lead que quiera empezar a tener impacto mañana mismo.
open.substack.com/pub/esjoaoqa...
El otro día, un pequeño post de Félix López me inspiró. Los títulos no te dan influencia por arte de magia.
Si eres TL y tu equipo no te hace caso, no suele ser porque tu estrategia sea mala. Suele ser porque aún no existe confianza.
¿Qué me gustaría haber sabido en 2018? 👇
It’s a translation of my post in Spanish, and it also includes a short FAQ:
* What changes when EM = TL?
* How to avoid “imposing” decisions?
* How to set principles that create autonomy?
Full post here → world.hey.com/joaoqalves/...
The Tech Lead role is among the most misunderstood in engineering teams.
It’s not “the best coder”, and it should never be a bottleneck.
I wrote a post on what good Tech Leads actually do, the signals to look for, and how EMs can better support them.
Al final, ofrezco un “toolkit” de alineación entre EM y Tech Lead, con un semáforo de señales, principios operativos y ejemplos prácticos para evaluar la autonomía, la arquitectura, la calidad y el scope técnico.
👉 open.substack.com/pub/esjoaoq...
¿Qué hace realmente un Tech Lead? Y, sobre todo, ¿cómo saber si lo estás haciendo bien?
Hablo de arquitectura, calidad, alcance, principios operativos y del verdadero impacto de un TL: crear un equipo que toma mejores decisiones sin depender de él. 👇
2/2 I love the power-law analogy :) How to navigate this shift in the industry? I wrote about it here: world.hey.com/joaoqalves/...
1/2 Considering the success of my article in Spanish, I’ve translated it to English: “When software becomes fast food”
AI commoditizes code. So the bottleneck shifts and intensifies elsewhere (CI/CD, architecture, taste, judgment, etc.).
Hoy os traigo un artículo sobre algo que a veces olvidamos: no debemos enamorarnos de la tecnología, sino de nuestros usuarios. Suena fácil y obvio, pero los equipos de ingeniería se olvidan a menudo de ello.
open.substack.com/pub/esjoaoqa...
The ladder didn’t disappear. It just got steeper. If you’re an EM or staff IC aiming higher, I’d love to hear your stories as well.
world.hey.com/joaoqalves/...
Whiteboard sketch outlining three promotion mistakes: "potential" trap, competition favors proven experience, and visibility gap limiting cross-team trust.
I failed two promotion attempts even when everything “looked right” on paper.
In a post-ZIRP world, doing great work isn’t enough. You need level n+1 stories, visibility outside your team, and impact across boundaries.
Full article below.
Nueva edición de “El doble clic”
- Gestión de contexto en Claude Code, cómo Tinybird reforzó su infraestructura en entornos multi-tenant y mucho más. Aquí 👇
enespanol.joaoqalves.net/p/el-doble-...
Private Equity en tech: todo lo que siempre quisiste saber
enespanol.joaoqalves.net/p/private-eq...
Doing active/active K8s setup is hard. In many cases — unless it’s a regional service with its own database, etc — it comes with a lot of hidden complexities. @tjamet writes about our experience at Adevinta doing it. Must read: medium.com/learnings-f...
