Leadership on Kianoosh's Blog

Being a good leader: Static definition or a moving target?

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In this blog post, Will Larson shares his retrospective on how the definition of a good leader has evolved over his time in the industry. He categorizes his observations into three eras:

#️⃣ Late 2000s: Leaders were straightforward. They didn’t organize regular 1:1 meetings but focused on identifying and removing obstacles for their teams.

#️⃣ 2010s: With business budgets essentially unlimited, companies focused on hiring as many engineers as possible. The main goal was to attract and retain top engineering talent. Engineering managers were expected to stop coding from day one and instead focus entirely on recruitment, retention, and motivation.

The Long Game: Surviving the Forty-Year Career

Tue, 30 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Sprint vs. The Marathon

In our industry, it is easy to get caught up in the immediate: the “IPO hunt,” the constant job-hopping for a salary bump, or the rush to ship the next feature. We optimize for the next two years, often at the expense of the next twenty.

I’ve been reflecting on Will Larson’s concept of “The Forty-Year Career.” His argument is a necessary counter-narrative: instead of burning out for short-term wins, we should focus on compounding gains over decades.

The Human System: Applying Engineering to Leadership

Fri, 26 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Transfer of Fundamentals

In a recent article, Mallika Rao (Engineering Manager at Netflix) revisits a familiar friction point in our industry: the transition from maker to manager. She argues that when engineers move into leadership roles, they often stop applying the systems thinking they developed through years of hands-on engineering.

This is a massive missed opportunity.

We spend years learning how to optimize throughput, manage load, and debug complex interactions. Yet, when we step into management, we often treat the team as something entirely different, governed by vague intuition rather than structural logic. Rao suggests that systems thinking isn’t just for code—it is an essential toolkit for leadership.

Discipline Under Pressure: Shipping Without Messing Up

Wed, 20 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Reality of Urgency in Startups

It’s crucial for every senior software engineer, technical leader, or anyone accountable for delivering technical solutions to know how to handle urgent tasks wisely. Let’s call this person a leader — and today, that’s you.

In some industries, or at certain stages of a company’s lifecycle, urgent requirements hit technical teams constantly. I currently work as a technical lead at a startup (Done), where the rules of the game seem to change every other week.