Matt Watson's Linkedin Analytics

It’s easy to measure story points. It’s easy to track velocity. It’s much harder to tell if the team is solving the right problems. Harder to know if they’re building the right thing, in the right way. Harder to see if they’re learning, collaborating, and growing. Velocity feels objective. You get a chart. A number. A clean trend line. Something to point at in a meeting. But real team performance is subjective. It’s messy. It lives in conversations, tradeoffs, and trust. It shows up in how people think and how they work together. And that’s harder to measure. Which makes it easier to avoid. So instead of leading the team, we start managing the metric. We convince ourselves the team is doing well because the numbers are up. But progress on paper isn’t the same as progress in reality. That’s what’s missing in most engineering orgs. Not better KPIs. Better leadership. Metrics can inform you. But they cannot manage for you. That part is still your job.

You can’t scale your startup if you don’t scale yourself. At some point, raw effort stops working. You can’t write every line of code. You can’t join every meeting. You can’t keep it all in your head. If you’re the builder who became the CTO—or the founder who used to ship it all—this is where everything starts to change. Because now the job isn’t just shipping. It’s deciding what to build. It’s connecting dots. It’s scaling clarity across the team. Here's how to shift from doer to decider.

The "overnight success" myth... I was talking with Corey House recently about how he built his consulting business, and something struck me. When his first Pluralsight course hit #1, it looked like sudden success from the outside. But in reality, it was years of consistent work before anyone was paying attention. This pattern is everywhere in tech: ➡️ The developer who "suddenly" lands their dream job (after 3 years of side projects) ➡️ The founder who "suddenly" raises funding (after 18 months of bootstrapping) ➡️ The tech leader who "suddenly" becomes a thought leader (after 5 years of writing to an empty room) Success in tech isn't about talent or luck. It's about showing up day after day when there's no external validation. It's about playing the long game when everyone else wants quick wins. What "overnight success" are you working toward that no one sees yet?

The team’s shipping. Velocity’s solid. Every dashboard says you’re “on track.” But deep down, something feels off. If you’ve ever stood in the middle of “success” and thought: “Why does it still feel this hard?” “Why am I still in the middle of everything?” “Why doesn’t this feel like it’s working?” I wrote this for you.

“My team is shipping faster than ever… but somehow, we’re still not delivering what matters.” Yeah. I’ve felt that too. You’re closing tickets. Velocity’s up. Sprint burndown looks great. But the product? Still missing the mark. That’s why I’m writing Product Driven. A playbook for building engineering teams that think like owners—not order-takers. 👉 If you’ve felt that frustration— this is the book I wish I had back then. Tomorrow, I’m shipping the first preview to the waitlist. Want early access? 👇 Comment CHAPTERS below, and I’ll send them to you.

Potential new way to measure the productivity of software engineers: Tabs accepted Tracking how much they actually use AI. The developer on our team who gets the most work done also has the most tabs accepted. Interesting funny insight we noticed looking at Cursor usage by the team. But how many defects did he create?? 😂

What happens when your engineers have no idea what your users actually go through? In this week’s Product Driven, I talked to Anton Zaides—an engineering manager building drone tech for ag operations—about a challenge most B2B teams face but rarely solve: 👉 How do you build empathy on teams that never meet the user? His answer? Let’s just say it involved flying $30,000 drones and a trip to Kansas. It completely changed how his team built software—and how they thought about their work. If you lead a technical team (especially in complex industries), you’ll want to hear this one.

Want to level up your tech career? On a recent episode of Product Driven with Corey House, he shared how he went from in-house developer to booked-out consultant. Here are 5 key principles that apply whether you're running a dev team, building a tech company, or working as an engineer: 1. Redefine your relationship with risk - Most career decisions are two-way doors you can walk back through. As Tim Ferriss says, "Risk is the chance of an irreversible bad outcome." 2. Diversify your value - Working with 75+ companies taught Corey that multiple skills provide stability, varied experiences enhance problem-solving, and relationships are currency in tech. 3. The power of specialization - When Corey switched from marketing generic skills to specialized expertise (React), his opportunities jumped from 2 to 50 in a year. Focus creates demand. 4. Build authority through content - Creating valuable content demonstrates expertise, builds professional reputation, and opens doors to new opportunities. 5. Adapt to industry cycles - Technology popularity is cyclical. Stay relevant by recognizing when to pivot and continuously evaluating your expertise. What career principle resonates most with you?

Engineering in 2025: "I was about to say I was adding this to the backlog, but I just sent in a prompt, and it was done before I finished eating my salad."

Sometimes things should be expensive. It forces you to consider if it is worth it. It's easy to ask employees to do stuff that keeps them busy. But if you had to pay $5000, or basically their salary for it, you wouldn't actually do it. We need to look at everything based on the real cost. It's a great filter.

The PERFECT time to be an engineering manager is RIGHT NOW. Had a fascinating chat with Anton Zaides about why engineering managers are uniquely positioned in today's AI-driven world. As AI supercharges development speed, we need leaders who understand both tech AND business context to manage this explosive productivity. The old world: Engineers code what PMs dictate The new world: Everyone needs product thinking skills Engineering managers sit at this perfect intersection - part technical expert, part product strategist. What do you think? Is this the golden age for technical leaders who can bridge these worlds? Full episode: https://buff.ly/jiYqsFn

"You do not build the plane after jumping off the cliff." Corey House shared that after his talks about independent consulting, he regularly gets messages that terrify him: "Hey, I just quit my job! I'm really excited to be independent... I was wondering if you could give me advice on how to get clients?" This backwards approach isn't just a freelancing problem - it's a pattern I see across tech careers: - Developers who quit before securing their next role - Tech leaders who announce major changes before planning implementation - Startups that launch products before validating demand The most successful tech professionals I know do the opposite: ✅ They build their reputations ✅ They develop valuable skills before they need them ✅ They create safety nets ✅ They validate demand before building products Whether you're contemplating freelancing, switching roles, or launching a new initiative, remember Corey's wisdom: Get the plane ready first. It's not glamorous advice. But it's the difference between a successful transition and a financial emergency.

Wow! They just sold a fork of another app with an AI wrapper for $3 billion!! OpenAI entering the dev tools space is interesting. It will be an interesting battle between Microsoft, JetBrains, and others.

If it can be null, it will be null. Or NaN. It's the number one problem in software and yet we keep making it. Why don't software engineers validate data?!? Assume everything is always wrong!

Designing software engineering teams so that only one person tells the entire team what to do, creates an obvious problem. But, that is how most teams work. The real solution is to give the team the vision for the project and leave space for them to co-create the solution. When you allow people to contribute to the plan, it creates a different sense of pride and ownership in the work. That's the only way to scale an engineering team. Not everyone on the team can do this, but you need people on the team that can, or you will never scale. Otherwise, you will always have one person who is micromanaging the team. What happens when that person leaves?

What if we stopped telling software engineers what to do and started asking them what we should do? It sounds simple. But it would change everything.

You never know how someone is going to use your product. That is why you have to talk to customers. You also have to realize your product isn't for everyone. The people building cribs probably didn't design them for the beach. It's a balance of having a product vision and getting customer feedback. Believe it or not, I took this photo myself in the Philippines. Luckily there weren't any waves...

"You can ship to production without QA and find 7 bugs or if you have QA, you still find 5." Quote from a CTO yesterday who understands the real world. QA helps. But what's even more important is being able to quickly find and fix bugs. Zero bugs isn't a thing. The big challenge is figuring out how much QA to do to exhaustively find problems. That was the struggle for this CTO. How do you find the balance?

My wife just asked me what I was doing today at work. My response? "Arguing with AI" Does anyone else feel like that is a huge part of their job now?