5 Things I Stopped Doing as a Lead

I led a small engineering team for two years. We shipped on time, the code was clean, and the standups were short. By every metric I cared about, the team looked fine.

Key Takeaways

1. I shipped a working team again, and the difference was not subtle.

2. They would submit a PR and wait to be told what was wrong with it.

3. “Why did you pick a debounce here instead of a throttle?” “What happens if this service is down for 30 seconds?” “Walk me through the failure mode at 100x current load.” Those questions are about engineering judgment, not about whether to use a map or a for loop.

Bottom Line

5 Things I Stopped Doing as a Lead is a signal worth watching in 2026. If you're building or securing infrastructure, keep an eye on this trend.

Read the full analysis on Susiloharjo.