Engineering management archetypes, the road to startup success, and “silent minds”

The road to success can look very different across industries.

• Entrepreneurship – An old boss of Grey’s used to joke about how his company was “an overnight success 10 years in the making”. The journey of perseverance through those years looks different for every company, and sometimes, their success can be difficult to explain; it’s an amalgam of too many factors to count. The article shows some real stats behind companies like Hubspot that held on and became household names despite very little initial traction.
• Psychology – Most of the population experiences thought through a constant internal dialogue. The rest (5-16%, depending on sources) have a “silent mind.” A recent study coined the term “anendophasia” to describe the phenomenon and explores how this affects everyday interactions, including therapy. No matter which camp you’re in, considering how the other group thinks can be a bit jarring. It’s not black and white, though; there’s a spectrum for this and other inner thought traits like visual imagery and representational manipulation, and everyone has a different combination of them. Here’s a quiz to assess how you score in each one.
  
• Engineering – What does an engineering manager’s role look like? The EM role could take on five archetypes depending on the company’s size, stage, and current engineering priorities and challenges. Shifts in economics and the tech market have led to a shift in how companies are approaching hiring. The engineering manager role seems to be shifting towards a hands-on approach at most companies (the tech lead archetype). This reflects the power balance companies hold, with more people staying put and a competitive market for open positions.
  
• Engineering – Technical writing is a skill that most of us learn “on the job.” We approach it with trial and error, potentially getting feedback and eventually getting better. Google has an extensive free course to help you change that. Although software engineers tend to produce technical documents, courses are also recommended for engineering managers and product managers.
• Technology (📽️ Video) – There’s an international arms race to harness the power of quantum computing. It promises to break modern internet encryption and has the potential to unlock new advances in drug research, manufacturing, and other applications. This video gives an inside look at IBM’s quantum computing facility, explains some of the basics of the technology, and how it’s being developed across the world. P.S. Check out this game about qubits if you want to learn more. Fair warning: it’s highly addictive and well-produced).
  

• Artificial Intelligence – In an unusual lawsuit, TikTok’s parent company is suing an intern for over $1MM, alleging that the employee deliberately sabotaged their AI model by tampering with code and making unauthorized modifications. It’s the equivalent of giving an intern access to a production database and blaming them for mucking anything up. Still, it does raise some interesting questions about protecting AI assets and potentially monitoring interactions to prevent damage proactively.