From early 2014 through late 2020, I was working in hypergrowth environments,
which are challenging, but also educational. The most valuable feature of hypergrowth is that
your mistakes reveal themselves next month rather than next year, because things go wrong very loudly when you’re moving fast.
I’ve been thinking a lot about hypergrowth recently, because Imprint’s business is growing quickly and we did a large batch
of hiring last year, but also because the AI-tooling shift has changed the pace at which it’s possible to work.

Lethain, authored by Will Larson, offers a unique perspective on engineering management, leadership, and organizational dynamics. Developers and engineering leaders can explore topics such as team building, career growth, and organizational design, gaining insights into building high-impact engineering organizations. With thoughtful reflections and actionable advice, Lethain serves as a resource for those navigating the complexities of engineering leadership.

Irrational Exuberance

A CTO at Imprint shares revised engineering leadership principles shaped by hypergrowth and the AI tooling shift. Five core rules emerge: complex migrations can now be owned by one or two people in a fraction of prior time; working code quality still depends on your development harness (tests, CI/CD, validation); most process base-cases can be fully automated with agents; durable, domain-context-rich teams matter more than ever despite AI; and fast, binding decision-making is a prerequisite to actually benefiting from AI speed. Concrete examples include going from 6 to 200-400 deploys per week, achieving 100% Claude Code/Cursor adoption without mandates, migrating to a frontend monorepo in a month driven by one engineer, and automating customer issue triage and first-pass code review with agents.

Revised rules of engineering leadership.