Burnout, Trust, and Broken Rituals: Rethinking Modern Engineering
Leadership Without the Illusions
We’re all managing more complexity than ever—remote dynamics, shifting expectations, AI workflows. And when uncertainty grows, the instinct is often to grasp for control.
But real leadership means releasing that grip.
Here are the five insights from this week that have resonated the most:
1. Burnout Often Looks Like Certainty
Exhaustion isn’t always obvious. Sometimes it shows up as oversimplification, rigid thinking, and a resistance to ambiguity.
→ The antidote isn’t just rest—it’s re-engaging with complexity on purpose.
2. Stop Performing Rituals—Start Designing Workflows
Daily standups made sense in 2001. Your team in 2025 may have different needs.
→ Don’t preserve process for tradition’s sake. Optimize for current context.
3. Trust Is Your Real Remote Bandwidth
Video calls won’t fix a low-trust culture. But with high trust, even silence is productive.
→ Invest in psychological safety. Surface blockers early. Let solutions emerge organically.
4. Uncertainty Is the Real Tax
Technical debt is visible. Decision ambiguity is not—and it slows teams far more.
→ Be explicit. Update decisions out loud. Clarity beats flexibility.
5. Build Ecosystems, Not Ego Systems
Great leaders aren’t answer machines. They design environments where answers emerge.
→ Hire for signal-sharing, not brilliance-hoarding. Build systems that think for you.
This Week’s Core Message
The best engineering teams don’t need stricter rituals or louder leaders. They need more trust, clearer signals, and systems that work even when you’re not in the room.
Actionable Experiments to Try This Week
Kill one legacy ritual: If standup feels stale, try a shared async check-in with a clear format.
Run a “trust audit”: Ask your team where blockers hide, and what’s not being said.
Clarify one decision: Find a project with ambiguity and make the current path explicit—even if it might change.
Want to explore these more deeply? I’m considering a longform piece on “Rituals That Need to Die”—let me know if that’s one you’d want to read.
Fully agree on #4. Bringing clarity is a hack. At Amazon we have "a hotly debated topic" in our docs. Often, when writing out both sides (they need to be represented equally) you understand the problem from both sides and find a better solution. Debate goes away. Not always, sometime it is still either/or, but often it is an "and".