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.
Beyond the Code
The job description asks for seven programming languages, three frameworks, and five years of experience in a two-year-old technology. But here’s what they’re really looking for: engineers who make everyone around them better. Gregor Ojstersek argues that the definition of engineering excellence has fundamentally shifted from mastering specific technologies to becoming “multipliers” – professionals who amplify team productivity beyond their individual output. Ten years ago, you succeeded by mastering HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Today, the bar has moved to problem-solving ability and interpersonal skills that create organizational leverage. What do multipliers actually do? They remove friction, share knowledge systematically, raise quality standards through example, enable better decisions, and mentor others into capable engineers. As companies flatten hierarchies, they expect engineers to own the “what, why, and when” – not just the “how.” Those impossible tech stack requirements? They’re actually hunting for people who can learn resourcefully while making everyone around them more effective. Think of it like hiring a contractor: companies care about delivered results, timelines, and smooth processes – not hours worked or individual velocity metrics. The engineers who thrive aren’t just writing great code; they’re making their teams write great code faster.
— Engineering Leadership, 8m, #engineering, #leadership, #multipliers
Become the Consequence
Strategy without accountability is just expensive storytelling. Rands (Michael Lopp) cuts to the uncomfortable truth about senior leadership: if you want your strategy to stick, you need to become its visible, consistent enforcer – what he calls “becoming the consequence.” At scale, you can’t predict every change needed for strategy adoption. Teams will naturally sort themselves into Believers, Wait-and-See-ers, and Non-Believers, each with different micro-cultures and motivations. The fix isn’t micromanagement; it’s establishing clear accountability through regular check-ins that signal leadership takes this seriously. Set measurable goals with teams, not for them. Frame challenges with data, values alignment, and explicit consequences. When teams miss targets, review sessions with senior leadership aren’t punishment – they’re proof you mean it. The critical moves: listen for wisdom in disagreement and adapt strategy when team feedback improves the plan, then acknowledge those changes loudly. Consistency matters more than perfection; the process becomes habit in 18+ months. The uncomfortable part? You can’t delegate this. Being the consequence means showing up, following through, and making it clear that strategic commitments aren’t negotiable – even when it’s awkward.
— Rands in Repose, 9m, #leadership, #strategy, #accountability
Professional Distance
New managers often confuse leadership with friendship, desperately trying to connect personally with every team member and interpreting silence as hostility. Simone D’Amico calls this out with refreshing clarity: effective leadership doesn’t require personal friendships. What feels “normal” in relationships is often just culturally familiar, not universally applicable. Italian warmth differs from Northern European professionalism, and neither is inherently better for getting work done. The critical distinction: reserved colleagues aren’t necessarily hostile – they may simply prefer structured, fact-based communication over personal connection. Actual workplace problems (hostility, withheld information, conflict) require intervention; personality preferences don’t. D’Amico argues that providing agendas and clear frameworks helps reserved individuals engage more effectively than forced rapport-building ever will. The path to effective leadership isn’t making everyone like you; it’s leading with clarity on expectations, support, feedback, and respect while adapting your communication style to individual preferences. Stop interpreting silence as disinterest, recognize your own cultural biases, and remember that your job isn’t to be their friend – it’s to help them succeed.
— Lead Through Mistakes, 9m, #leadership, #culture, #communication
Work As It Happens
Gathering context is hard. You can’t assume that all meetings live on calendars or that work happens on neat schedules. Reality is messier. People miss check-ins when they’re heads-down shipping and their actual work vanishes into data gaps. Half your meeting time happens in unplanned Zoom calls that never touched a calendar. Your project management “source of truth” is lying to you, not maliciously, but structurally – because it was built for the workflow you wish existed instead of the one that actually does. Steady’s latest updates tackle this head-on by decoupling activity tracking from daily check-ins. Now when someone skips Thursday but writes an update Monday, Thursday’s work appears where it belongs instead of disappearing into the void. Meeting metrics include those ad-hoc “quick sync” calls that somehow stretch to 45 minutes, giving you an honest picture of where time actually goes. The pattern here matters beyond one product update: Steady doesn’t enforce idealized processes; it flexes around how humans actually work while still capturing the context everyone need to see.
— Steady, 3m, #coordination, #productivity, #tools
Jerks Return
The brilliant jerk is making a comeback, and engineering leaders need to decide if they’re going to let it happen. After years of “no brilliant jerks” policies becoming Silicon Valley gospel, workplace culture is shifting again – and not in a good direction. Organizations are once again tolerating problematic behavior from high performers, justified by technical contribution. But Kelli Korducki examines the hidden costs of this old playbook: accelerated turnover, reduced psychological safety, recruitment difficulty, and the slow erosion of team engagement. The question isn’t whether that 10x engineer ships code faster; it’s whether their presence makes everyone else ship slower. The accountability standard matters: does technical contribution actually justify behavioral exceptions, or are we just recreating the toxic cultures we spent a decade dismantling? Smart leaders are asking harder questions about long-term costs versus short-term gains. They’re investing in inclusive high-performance cultures instead of accommodating toxicity because they’ve learned that brilliant jerks don’t just alienate current team members – they repel the talent you need to hire next. The choice is binary: either behavioral standards apply to everyone, or they apply to no one.
— LeadDev, 5m, #culture, #leadership, #teamdynamics
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