#16 | Sunday reads for EMs

My favourite reads of the week to make your Sunday a little more inspiring.

Sep 28, 2025

👋 Hey, it’s Stephane. This is a new series in which every Sunday I share with you my favourite reads of the week. To accelerate your growth see: 50 Notion Templates | The EM’s Field Guide | CodeCrafters | Get Hired as an EM | 1:1 Coaching

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Leading Through Ambiguity

tl;dr: The I.B.C.O. framework (Intent, Boundaries, Checkpoints, Options) gives you a concrete structure for navigating ambiguity without overpromising timelines. Separate what you’re committed to (the outcome) from what you’re testing (the method), and always put stop conditions next to success metrics to avoid sunk-cost drift.

Two Things Can Be True

tl;dr: When there is a conflict within your team force each person to find value in the other’s perspective before meeting together. That’s a nice mental model for handling your own emotional reactions to feedback too. Recognise that there’s usually legitimate substance behind even poorly delivered criticism.

My Quarterly System Health Check-in

tl;dr: The author breaks system health into dimensions (simplicity, delivery, reliability, performance, organization) with gut-check questions that go beyond metrics. The questions suggested are designed to surface problems through engineer intuition rather than just dashboard data.

Why Aren’t You a Good Fit?

tl;dr: Asking this question reveals candidates who can think critically about themselves versus those who just self-promote. The author found this became their best cultural fit filter. Worth trying if you’re tired of generic interview responses and want to spot the over-thinkers vs. the overconfident.

Useful Engineering Management Artifacts

tl;dr: A collection of document templates for growing teams, from career development plans to post-mortem formats.

Reminds me of the Notion templates I have created for Engineering Managers.

Things I Believe

tl;dr: Engineering principles from Lee Robinson (ex-VP of Developer Experience at Vercel). A few gems stand out: “landings > launches” (adoption matters more than shipping), “maximize your exposure hours” and his hiring philosophy of “hell yes or no”.