InfoQ - Leadership

Podcast: Founders, Friction, and Focus: Building Engineering Teams at Early-Stage Startups

David Gudeman — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMT

In this podcast, Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to David Gudeman about the unique culture of early-stage startup engineering, how founder personality quirks and premature process impositions can derail teams, and how engineers can build influence and make deliberate career choices without formal power.

By David Gudeman

Article: Comprehension as an Architectural Characteristic: A System That Is Not Understood Cannot Evolve Safely

Jacobus Meintjes, Narayana Rengaswamy, Paul Katsande, Sureshbabu Bikki — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 11:00:00 GMT

As AI commoditizes code output, system comprehension silently decays, creating cognitive debt that threatens safe architectural evolution. This article explores why human understanding must be treated as an essential architectural characteristic, offering actionable strategies, socio-technical metrics, and design checkpoints to preserve intent across modern engineering teams.

By Jacobus Meintjes, Narayana Rengaswamy, Paul Katsande, Sureshbabu Bikki

Podcast: Culture & Methods Trends 2026: The Human Side of AI Engineering

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMT

This is the Engineering Culture Trends Report for 2026. Featuring a panel of QCon speakers and InfoQ contributors, they discussed AI adoption maturity and risk, the transformation of engineering team structures and roles, and the human dimensions of software development that must not be lost in 2026.

By Ben Linders, Rafiq Gemmail, Craig Smith, Vanessa Formicola, Shawna Martell, Phillip Mortimer, Yinka Omole

From Projects to Products: Turning Platforms into Products People Use

Ben Linders — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 11:59:00 GMT

Having a platform is not enough; the real challenge is ensuring that it is understandable, usable, and actually adopted by its users. A capability is done when it can be reliably used by others. To evaluate progress, you can ask yourself “Is this being used?” and “Does it reduce friction for users?” This can help align development work with actual user value rather than delivery.

By Ben Linders