Engineering Leadership Newsletter in 2025

Overview of 2025, most popular articles, collaborations, videos, and more + some plans for 2026!

Gregor Ojstersek

Dec 28, 2025

This week’s newsletter is sponsored by z.ai.

Z.ai recently released their new flagship model called GLM-4.7, featuring upgrades in two key areas:

Enhanced programming capabilities
More stable multi-step reasoning/execution

They’ve been kind enough to give 20 free 1-month Lite plans to the GLM Coding Plan for the Engineering Leadership readers.

If you’d like to get it, just create a free account and submit the ID of your account here. First 20 submissions will receive the free 1-month Lite plan.

Get a free 1-month Lite plan

Thanks to z.ai for sponsoring this newsletter. Let’s get back to this week’s thought!

Intro

In today’s busy world, we rarely take the time to look back and see how far we have come. In this article, I am doing exactly that!

In this article, I am doing an overview of the Engineering Leadership newsletter in 2025 and some of the most important things that marked my year 2025.

I am going through the most popular articles, my personal favorite ones, collaborations, videos, and so much more!

Let’s start with the top 10 articles!

My Personal Favorite Articles in 2025

I really like the articles where I ask engineers and engineering leaders to share their insights from their real-world experience.

Of course, this takes a lot of time for me to get all the insights and structure them consistently, but it’s totally worth it in my opinion!

These articles are:

And I also really enjoyed going through the industry reports and sharing my thoughts on the data. It gives me good insights into what’s happening in the industry and what kind of trends we might expect in the future.

These articles are:

Newsletter Collaborations in 2025

This year, there were 42 collaborations (up from 19 in 2024) with experienced professionals in the engineering industry who are a part of various kinds of companies, from Big Tech all the way to Startups.

All shared a LOT of amazing insights, and it was a real pleasure working with all of them!

Here are all the collaboration articles:

5 Skills to Develop to Grow From Senior to Staff Engineer (collaboration with Arpit Bhayani)
How to Create a Culture of Ownership in Your Engineering Team (collaboration with Taha Hussain)
5 Learnings When Building and Scaling a Service-Based Tech Company (collaboration with Ales Cadez)
How I Was Able to Get Promoted While Constant Reorganization (collaboration with Junaid Effendi)
How to Develop EQ as an Engineer or a Manager (collaboration with Patricia Juarez @ AWS)
From Engineer to Principal Solutions Architect at AWS with Prasad Rao (collaboration with Prasad Rao)
15 Lessons From 15 Years in Tech (collaboration with Owain Lewis)
5 Mindset Shifts Needed to Grow From Engineer to Leader (collaboration with Gábor Till)
5 Lessons Learned Setting Up a Global Engineering Org at Google (collaboration with Chaitali Narla)
From Invisible to In-Demand: LinkedIn For Engineers and Managers Part 1 (collaboration with John Crickett)
From Invisible to In-Demand: LinkedIn For Engineers and Managers Part 2 (collaboration with John Crickett)
How to Use Cursor AI to Build Side Projects (collaboration with Jordan Cutler and Sidwyn Koh)
How Can Engineers and PMs Collaborate Effectively? (collaboration with Yue Zhao)
5 AI Tools to Build to Be a Better Engineering Leader in 2025 (collaboration with Gilad Naor)
Top AI Coding Tools for Engineering Teams in 2025 (collaboration with Jeff Morhous)
How HelloBetter Designed Their Interview Process Against AI Cheating (collaboration with Anna J McDougall)
Setting Effective Targets for Developer Productivity Metrics in the Age of Gen AI (collaboration with Laura Tacho)
15 Productivity Hacks Every Engineer & Manager Should Know (collaboration with Ales Zehelj)
How to Ace Engineering Manager Interviews (collaboration with Alex Kliotzkin)
Guide to Prompt Engineering (collaboration with Miqdad Jaffer)
How to Measure AI Impact in Engineering Teams (collaboration with Laura Tacho)
AI Evals: How To Systematically Improve and Evaluate AI (collaboration with Hamel Husain)
How Engineering Leaders Stay Calm and Effective When It Gets Personal (collaboration with Djordje Mladenovic)
Biggest Mistakes Engineering Leaders Make With AI (collaboration with Hamel Husain)
Your Engineering Team Should be Looking to Solve Customer Problems (collaboration with Matt Watson)
Become an Engineering Leader Everyone Wants to Work With (collaboration with David Weiss)
Engineer to Leader: 10 Insights to Get You Started (collaboration with Omar Halabieh)
From Shy Engineer to Director at Oracle and a Skilled Communicator (collaboration with Pramoda Vyasarao)
Guide to Rapidly Improving AI Products Part 1 (collaboration with Hamel Husain)
A Fake Tech Company Scam: Here’s How I Caught It in Time (collaboration with Kjartan Manvelyan)
Guide to Rapidly Improving AI Products Part 2 (collaboration with Hamel Husain)
LLMs: Common Terms Explained, Simply (collaboration with Dr. Ashish Bamania)
OpenAI’s Product Leader Reveals: AI Product Strategy for Engineering Leaders (collaboration with Miqdad Jaffer)
7 Must-Have Engineering Manager Stories That Will Land You the Offer (collaboration with Alex Kliotzkin)
Stuck at Senior Engineer - How to Break Through and Reach the Next Level (collaboration with Pramoda Vyasarao)
How to Use AI to Improve Teamwork in Engineering Teams (collaboration with Henry Poydar)
How to Stay Relevant as an Engineering Leader While Empowering Others (collaboration with Djordje Mladenovic)
How to Use AI to Help With Software Engineering Tasks (collaboration with Steven Levey)
Engineering Leader’s Guide: How to Become a Great Coach and Mentor (collaboration with Andy Skipper)
How to Use AI to Help With Planning Engineering Projects (collaboration with Steven Levey)
How to Give Constructive Feedback with Confidence as an Engineering Leader (collaboration with Ali Merchant)
Essential Skills for Engineers to Thrive in the AI Era (collaboration with John Crickett)

Videos in 2025

From March, I started creating videos with the goal to help everyone be better engineers or managers, have more opportunities, grow in their careers, and be great leaders.

As of today, there are:

38 videos available
500+ minutes of watch time
various formats → from quick 5-minute tips to full presentations at conferences

Here are all the videos:

Public Speaking Events and Conferences

Coordination Crisis Summit, University of Maryland, US (April, 2025) - Workshop to improve efficiency in modern tech work.

Infoshare Gdansk, PL (May, 2025) - Talk - Future Proof Your Career as an Engineer in Gen AI World.

TechLead Conference, Online (September, 2025) - Talk - How AI Is Impacting Engineering Leadership

Codemotion, Milan, Italy (October, 2025) - Talk - Tech Lead Rotation in Your Engineering Team

TechLead Conference, London, UK (November, 2025) - Talk - How AI Is Impacting Engineering Leadership

Live Events and Podcasts

Learn how to grow beyond Senior Software Engineer and thrive in an engineering leadership role - Coding Chats podcast with John Crickett
Become an Engineering Leader Everyone Wants to Work With - Lightning lesson with David Weiss
How Engineers Build and Lead in the Age of AI - Glasp podcast with Kei Watanabe and Kazuki Nakayashiki
Leadership lessons: QA with Gregor Ojstersek - Conversation with Alex Howes
Pushing your Tech Org towards AI – or not? - Conversation with Adrian Stanek

Overview of Guides and Templates

There are a total of 29 guides, templates, and infographics available to paid subscribers (12 new ones added in 2025).

If you are a paid subscriber, you can get them all here: 🎁 Products for paid subscribers.

Here is the full list:

Guides and Templates

1. Engineering Career Path Guide
If you are asking yourself which is the right engineering career path for you.
You can find my personal recommendation and insights in this guide.

2. Behavioral Interview List of Questions
You can find 50+ questions and follow-ups in the list.

3. Notion Template: Technical Specification
Use this template to define a great technical plan for your next functionality.
Great planning, often leads to great success.

4. Notion Template: Incident Retrospective
Use this template to note everything down when the incident occurs.
That’s the best way to have a complete overview of the problem and how to resolve it.

5. Notion Template: Job Brief
Use this template for every new position you need to fill.
This will help you with creating a smooth hiring process.

6. Notion Template: 1:1 Meeting
Use this template for every 1:1 meeting that you have.
This will help you with organization and preparation for your next 1:1!

7. Notion Template: Checklist for Great Engineering Organization
Use this template for creating a great engineering organization. You can also use this just for a specific team that is part of the bigger organization as well.

8. Notion Template: Hiring Board
Use this board to ensure to have notes and history for the candidates. This will help you to have a well organized process that will result in hiring great candidates.

9. Notion Template: Technical Strategy
Use this template when defining your technical strategy. This can be either for your team or the whole organization.

10. Notion Template: List of questions to ask before making a technical decision
Use this template when making your next technical decision. This will help you to make an informed decision and build the RIGHT things.

11. Notion Template: List of Achievements
Use this template to note down all of your achievements. This will ensure that you are ready if someone asks you and that you stay motivated!

12. Notion Template: Become a go-to person
Use this template to list down your projects, domains and technologies. This will help you to choose on what you can become a go-to person.

13. Notion Template: Tell your manager about your goals and aspirations
Use this template to help you define your pitch to share your goals and aspirations with your manager.

14. Notion Template: Career Growth Plan
Use this template to define a plan for your career. This will help you to clearly understand what you need to do and where you can improve.

15. Notion Template: Become a credible engineer
Use this template to help you define the key points where you can improve your credibility.

16. Notion Template: Engineering Guild Space
Use this template to create an engineering guild space. This will help you to have all the notes and decisions in one place.

17. Notion Template: Buy vs Build
Use this template to assess different options regarding buying vs building. This will help you to make an informed decision.

18. Notion Template: Be a proactive engineer
Use this template to help you define the key points where you can improve your proactivity.

19. Notion Template: RACI Chart for a Tech Project
Use this template to help you define the correct responsibilities of a project.

20. Notion Template: Decide Your Career Path
Use this template to help you decide on what’s the best career path for you.

21. Notion Template: AI Communication Cheat Sheet
Use this template to understand common AI terms in simple language.

22. Board: Great Engineering Organization
Use this board to put all the notes down when starting a new role as an engineering leader.

Infographics

1. Infographic: How to Build Credibility in The Engineering Industry
Use this infographic to help you improve your credibility and get more opportunities in your career.

2. Infographic: How to Propose an Impactful Improvement to the Codebase and Own the Implementation
Use this infographic to know how you can propose an impactful improvement and own it. Do this successfully and you will get more opportunities.

3. Infographic: How to Build Good Relationships
Use this infographic to know how you can build good relationships inside and outside your engineering team.

4. Infographic: 8 Signs That You Have a Good Manager
Use this infographic to get to know what makes a good manager. I’ve shared my perspective both as an IC and a manager.

5. Infographic: Traits For Engineer’s Career Success
Use this infographic to learn about the 3 core traits that I look for when assessing the potential in engineers.

6. Infographic: How to Be Productive
Use this infographic to learn about the 4 biggest productivity killers in the engineering industry and what to do to be more productive.

7. Infographic: How to Be a Reliable Engineer
Use this infographic to learn how to be a reliable engineer, from which you’ll build a great reputation, which will then get you more opportunities.

Interesting Statistics in 2025

You can’t write an engineering-focused newsletter without sharing some statistics :) So, let me share some of the most interesting ones.

Here are some interesting statistics of the newsletter in 2025:

177k+ subscribers (up from 100k~ at the end of 2024)

1633 paid subscribers (up from 951 at the end of 2024)
5M+ views in 2025 (up from 3.5M~ views in 2024) → main sources: email, Substack app, LinkedIn, Reddit, Google)

795k views in the last 30 days (up from 521k in the last 30 days of 2024)

427 other newsletters on Substack recommending Engineering Leadership (up from 242 in 2024)
200 different countries (subscriber countries) are reading the newsletter (up from 193 in 2024)
104 articles in 2025 (2x per week → Wednesday’s article for paid subscribers and Sunday’s article for everyone)

It Was a Great Year For the Course Senior Engineer to Lead: Grow and Thrive in the Role

We had 4 cohorts and 1 lightning lesson, which reached 1137 students, located in 38 different cities and 14 countries.

The average rating was 4.8/5, and top companies include: Eneco, Adobe, Amazon, Google, and Settle.

If you wish to join the next cohort of the course, we start on January 20!

Many people already reported promotions from Senior to Lead roles, or they got the instructions needed to thrive in a Lead role.

Since it's the holiday season, I am happy to give you 25% off, and you can join here:

Join the course with 25% off!

Plans for 2026

I’ll keep on looking for ways to improve the newsletter anyway possible :) With every year, there are additional things that I add or make improvements to the newsletter.
I am writing a book with O’Reilly → you are now the first one to know, outside of my close friends and family :) The plan is to publish it in 2026, and I’ll be making an announcement about it soon. Excited to share more details about it!
Do a pre-recorded video course of the Senior Engineer to Lead: Grow and Thrive in the Role course. Stay tuned for that!
I have many other initiatives in mind, including a possibility of additional course, more podcast-type style videos, and I would like to do a live conference/event someday as well.
Keep on attending and speaking at conferences, as I enjoy them a lot!

Last words

If you came to the end of this article, I wish you a great rest of the holidays and an amazing start to the new year!

Thank you very much for your continuous support and your readership 🙏

May the next year be the most amazing year for you!

Liked this article? Make sure to 💙 click the like button.

Feedback or addition? Make sure to 💬 comment.

Know someone that would find this helpful? Make sure to 🔁 share this post.

Whenever you are ready, here is how I can help you further

Join the Cohort course Senior Engineer to Lead: Grow and thrive in the role here.
Interested in sponsoring this newsletter? Check the sponsorship options here.
Take a look at the cool swag in the Engineering Leadership Store here.
Want to work with me? You can see all the options here.

Get in touch

You can find me on LinkedIn, X, YouTube, Bluesky, Instagram or Threads.

If you wish to make a request on particular topic you would like to read, you can send me an email to info@gregorojstersek.com.

This newsletter is funded by paid subscriptions from readers like yourself.

If you aren’t already, consider becoming a paid subscriber to receive the full experience!

Check the benefits of the paid plan

You are more than welcome to find whatever interests you here and try it out in your particular case. Let me know how it went! Topics are normally about all things engineering related, leadership, management, developing scalable products, building teams etc.