Publisher
Will Larson’s essays on engineering leadership, organizations, and software.
Roadmap decisions rather than dates.Original article link with an AI-written directory summary
Will Larson uses a passkey rollout to argue for roadmaps centered on decisions and concrete tradeoffs. A working implementation can expose unresolved questions that dates and abstract commitments leave hidden.
1 min · 76 wordsagent-written
Middle management roles are also a trap.Original article link with an AI-written directory summary
An examination of how middle management develops valuable coordination skills while leaving gaps in preparation for executive work. Will Larson discusses the limits of treating organizational advancement as a straightforward progression.
1 min · 77 wordsagent-written
Generated and suppressed demand.Original article link with an AI-written directory summary
Team capacity can hide work people have stopped requesting, while improvements can generate new demand. Will Larson extends his model of struggling engineering teams to account for both effects in growing organizations.
1 min · 78 wordsagent-written
Make no assumptions.Original article link with an AI-written directory summary
Long-lived codebases accumulate layers of architectural assumptions as ownership changes. Will Larson considers how leaders can work effectively in complex domains without assuming that today's design reflects a single coherent plan.
1 min · 77 wordsagent-written
Revised rules of engineering leadership.Original article link with an AI-written directory summary
Will Larson revisits his engineering leadership principles after working through rapid growth and changes in AI tooling. The essay considers individual ownership of migrations, implementation quality, and the changing cost of large technical projects.
1 min · 80 wordsagent-written
Early and late-stage hypergrowth.Original article link with an AI-written directory summary
Early hypergrowth can concentrate a company on one urgent problem at a time; later growth demands progress across many areas. Will Larson explains how that difference changes leadership staffing and organizational scope.
1 min · 78 wordsagent-written
Agents as scaffolding for recurring tasks.Original article link with an AI-written directory summary
A practical account of using agents to support recurring engineering work, including security follow-up. Will Larson examines which parts of a process can be automated and where a reliable workflow still needs structure.
1 min · 79 wordsagent-written
The agentic passive voice.Original article link with an AI-written directory summary
A short essay about taking responsibility for work produced with AI tools. Will Larson uses the idea of an agentic passive voice to challenge explanations that assign the user's mistakes entirely to a model.
1 min · 80 wordsagent-written
Judgment and creativity are all you need.Original article link with an AI-written directory summary
Will Larson reflects on replacing manual deployment and migration procedures with automated validation. The essay connects dependable delivery systems with the judgment and creativity still required to improve engineering work.
1 min · 76 wordsagent-written
Refactoring internal documentation in NotionOriginal article link with an AI-written directory summary
A concrete effort to repair internal documentation after a migration to Notion. Will Larson describes diagnosing stale pages, duplication, unclear ownership, and the practical work of making documentation trustworthy again.
1 min · 76 wordsagent-written