The resources mentioned in my talk AI Made Every Developer a Tech Lead. Now what?, plus some extra.
Introduction
- The Trident Model of Career Development · Patrick Kua · the four responsibilities
- State of Tech Talent Report 2026 · SignalFire · flat orgs, the Super IC
Monday · WHAT to build
- Inspired · Marty Cagan · outcomes over outputs
- What Do Engineers Mean When We Say “Taste”? · Dave Griffith · works vs fits
Tuesday · WHICH tradeoffs
- Fundamentals of Software Architecture · Mark Richards, Neal Ford · the First Law, -ilities
Wednesday · WHERE boundaries go
- Domain-Driven Design · Eric Evans · bounded contexts
- Introducing EventStorming · Alberto Brandolini · architect as facilitator
Thursday · WHO builds it
- Staffing and Procurement for Fast Flow · Michael Plöd · build, delegate, buy
Friday · WHY it feels so hard
- Sociotechnical Architecture · Xin Yao · team and system as one
- V noční tramvaji (CZ) · Václav Havel · living in truth
Extras
These books and articles did not make it to the 25-minute talk but I enjoyed all of these as well.
- The Staff Engineer’s Path · Tanya Reilly · the job, pre-AI
- Staff Engineer · Will Larson · leading without reports
- Thinking in Systems · Donella Meadows · introduction to complexity
- Empowered · Marty Cagan · feature teams vs product
- Outcomes Over Output · Josh Seiden · the short version
- A Philosophy of Software Design · John Ousterhout · taste, made explicit
- Nebulosity · David Chapman · requirements never settle
- Software Architecture: The Hard Parts · Ford, Richards, Sadalage, Dehghani · trade-off analysis
- Your Code as a Crime Scene · Adam Tornhill · invest where code churns
- Implementing Domain-Driven Design · Vaughn Vernon · DDD in practice
- We Are All Product Engineers Now · Laurie Voss · the industry’s Monday
- Team Topologies · Matthew Skelton, Manuel Pais · cognitive load, fast flow
- A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making · Dave Snowden, Mary Boone · complex is not complicated
- Engineering Management After the Cost of Code Collapse · Karim Jedda · verification is the job
- AI Is Actually Useless · Cory Doctorow · discernment, not output
- Code Was Never the Bottleneck · Ariso · process was
- The Software Architect Elevator · Gregor Hohpe · penthouse to engine room
- The Pragmatic Programmer · David Thomas, Andrew Hunt · the first canon
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance · Robert M. Pirsig · where “quality” got lost