You’re reading The Steady Beat, a weekly pulse of must-reads for anyone orchestrating teams, people, and work across the modern digital workplace – whether you’re managing sprints, driving roadmaps, leading departments, or just making sure the right work gets done. Curated by the team at Steady.
Orange Jumpsuits
When your CEO says nobody’s going to jail for something, somebody’s definitely going to jail for something. The Pragmatic Engineer digs into three stomach-turning cases where software engineers got asked to do shady – or outright illegal – things at work. At FTX, an engineering director discovered $13 billion in missing customer funds but stuck around to “fix things” (spoiler: he couldn’t). At student loan startup Frank, the CEO pressured an engineer to fake 4.2 million customers for a JP Morgan acquisition – and when that engineer flat-out refused, they dodged a bullet while the CEO ended up in federal prison. At events startup Pollen, a senior engineer ran a “bad script” that double-charged customers $3.2 million at the CEO’s request, conveniently covering payroll that month. The pattern’s clear: when someone in a position of power downplays legal risk, run. Talk to a lawyer. Become a whistleblower. Quit on the spot. Do literally anything except what these folks did. The only person who walked away clean? The Frank engineering director who said “no” and sent the real customer data instead. Sometimes the hardest conversation you’ll have is the one that keeps you out a jumpsuit.
— The Pragmatic Engineer, 8m, #ethics, #leadership, #engineering
Flow Killer
Here’s the brutal math of modern engineering management: meetings increased 13.5% post-COVID, remote meetings jumped 60%, and engineers now get exactly two one-hour focus blocks per week. Two. Meanwhile, 92% of people multitask during meetings, turning what should be deep work – like PR reviews and design docs – into shallow busywork. The kicker? Personal AI hasn’t solved this problem. It’s made it worse. Managers assume engineers can be productive in smaller chunks between AI prompts, but that’s backwards thinking. Quality prompts require deep context, and context switching costs you 15-45 minutes every single time. One standout team at Pylon operates with zero recurring meetings – no standups, no sprint planning, nothing. They trust senior engineers to merge their own code and only request reviews when genuinely needed. The prescription is simple but not easy: protect 4-5 hours of uninterrupted time daily, cluster meetings into fixed blocks (ideally 9-11am and 2-4pm when engineers peak), and use structured async loops to tame the madness. In the AI era, flow state isn’t optional – it’s the competitive advantage.
— Workweave, 6m, #deep work, #meeting culture, #engineering productivity
Cafeteria Work
The modern workplace – whether it’s an open office circus of cubicles and chatter or a fully remote Slack-a-thon – wasn’t designed for humans to actually think. One worker describes their open-plan hellscape as “doing my taxes in a high school cafeteria,” which is either brilliant metaphor or recurring nightmare. Experts confirm what you already know: these environments are garbage for focus work. The dream was spontaneous coffee-chat innovation; the reality is finishing your real work at home after hours. The solution? It’s not sexy. Manage up – ask your boss for two sacred hours in an empty conference room. Use traffic-light desk signs if you can stomach the cringe. Turn off those desktop notifications. Create guardrails around who can interrupt you (hint: just your boss and their boss). Remote workers drowning in digital pings should schedule actual phone calls like it’s 1997. The Slack VP herself admits you need boundaries, even at Slack. Bottom line: your brain wasn’t built for constant interruption, and the science backs you up. Stop waiting for management to fix the open office—carve out focus time yourself, or watch your productivity circle the drain while pretending collaboration trumps concentration.
— The New York Times 🎁, 8m, #focus, #workplace, #productivity
AI Amplifies Everything
Here’s the uncomfortable truth from Google’s 2025 DORA Report: AI won’t save your struggling team – it’ll just make them struggle faster. The research surveyed nearly 5,000 tech professionals and found that 90% now use personal AI at work, spending about two hours daily with these tools. But here’s the kicker: AI always acts as an amplifier. Strong teams with solid platforms, clear workflows, and aligned cultures are using AI to leap ahead. Meanwhile, teams already drowning in technical debt and organizational chaos are watching AI magnify every existing dysfunction. The report introduces seven team archetypes ranging from “harmonious high-achievers” to those stuck in a “legacy bottleneck,” plus a new DORA AI Capabilities Model outlining seven essential practices for success. The verdict? Over 80% report productivity gains, yet 30% still don’t trust AI-generated code. Platform engineering emerges as the critical foundation – 90% of organizations now use internal platforms, and there’s a direct correlation between platform quality and AI value. The message for leaders: Stop treating AI adoption as a tool rollout and start treating it as organizational transformation. Your platform, processes, and culture will determine whether AI becomes your competitive advantage or just expensive noise.
— Google Cloud Blog, 8m, #ai, #platforms, #performance
Async Team Coordination to Stop Drowning in “Work About Work”
Endless meetings, status updates, and context scavenger hunts are keeping your team from real work. Steady eliminates coordination chaos by delivering personalized, real-time guidance on what’s happening, what’s next, and what needs attention.
Stay in control of your team’s story while your people focus on creating and solving – not coordinating.
Learn more at runsteady.com.
