How are devs at #AI startups and in Big Tech using AI tools, and what do they think of them? A broad overview of the state of play in tooling...

@gergelyorosz #LDX3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EO3_qN_Ynsk

Reflecting on an incredible experience speaking at @TheLeadDev's #LDX3 conference last week! Very grateful to have been accepted as a speaker and for the amazing support throughout.

I enjoyed discussing challenges growing teams in the era of layoffs, and hopeful that my talk can provide some inspiration by treating teaching as a core engineering skill, applying lessons from pedagogy. Slides here 👉🏻 https://speakerdeck.com/alismith/creating-the-next-generation-of-senior-engineers

#LeadDev #EngineeringLeadership

What stuck with me after two days at #LDX3 earlier this week?

★ AI isn’t a shortcut
★ Metrics need context
★ Leaders should build trust, not dashboards

Here are my 10 top takeaways:
https://sijobling.com/blog/10-takeaways-from-ldx3-2025/

Which one resonates most with you and your team right now?

#conference #techindustry #leadership

So many speakers at #LeadDev #LDX3 shared links to look into later, and I've found many more when I started following those up.

This post should be handy for me to keep track of them all, and for anyone else who might like to see if anything grabs them. Enjoy!

https://neil-vass.com/lots-of-links-from-leaddevs-ldx3/

What an incredible second day of #LDX3!

Saw some really great talks, including the absolutely fantastic @hazelweakly 🎉

When #LDX3 had a talk on why the performance curve (stack ranking) is bad i had to go see how advanced the thinking was. spoiler: not very.. but worthy nevertheless.

Why do employers do this practice that is inefficient and counter-productive? "FOMO" apparently. The sort of hand waving you have to reach for without a Marxist analysis of the pressure on employers to exploit labor. Still it was quite gratifying to see an engineering manager advocate for unionising.

Have been to several #LDX3 sessions focussed on staff engineers. Many feel isolated, but they're also pretty aligned. "lots of miro diagramming to help teams communicate" got the most vigorous nod of consensus from other staff engineers. Once again many spoke of responsibilities that seem likely to filter down to all engineers wrangling LLMs
- you can't know everything any more
- facts stop working. you need to sell what you want.
- identify the level at which you engage with problems

Surprisingly anti-work management software, anti-dashboards stance from this speaker from an outsourcing company at #LDX3 this morning. I wonder what the overlap is between LLM agent effective spend tools and employee surveillance tools.

We are wrapping up day 1 of LeadDev London #LDX3 at the Intercontinental O2!
If you've not come to see us yet - we are still here for another day tomorrow with some great swag and even greater conversation!

Come find us in the Solutions Zone!

There was a community round table of trans engineering managers and first I didn't know about it, then my brain needed to reboot and when I was able to communicate with coherence again, it was over :blobcatpensive: #LDX3

My 2nd workshop at #LDX3 was on technical leadership with @claresudbery (pretty sure i first saw her present at #AgileLondon 15+ years ago). It was a lot of confidence building around letting go of deep technical knowledge (in favour of broad knowledge) and why that is necessary for leadership positions. Arguably this shift is coming across the organisation. GenAI promotes superficial understanding of more subjects. How long before we're all asking, "But do i need to know why?" about everything.

Raccoons!!!!
#ldx3

I somewhat selfishly signed up for as many of the limited seat workshops at #LDX3 as I could. First up was "Mastering mentoring, managing and coaching" with Suzan Bond. Best takeaway was her advice to try and avoid ever asking "why?" in a 1:1. It elicits emotional responses. reframing as "what..."  is usually possible and often engages people more with the problem. for example, "What's the smallest change you could make that would help?" Still not an easy question, but less accusatory.

Comped a free ticket to "The LeadDev Conference" so expect a few #LDX3 tagged posts over the next two days. Kicking things off was @gergelyorosz of pragmatic engineer fame doing a "State of the GenAI" overview. A few takeaways,
- Google SREs are preparing for a 10x increase in code output from their devs
- Generally devs are only reporting 4-5hrs saved per week. Interesting mis-match.
- Claude Code has a very large fanbase given it launched a month ago.

big up for the monzo pals on stage at #LDX3 #LeadDev ✨

This week Tailscale is attending LeadDev London #LDX3 at the Intercontinental O2! 👩‍💻

Come find us in the sponsor hall to talk all things Tailscale!

i’ve been hibernating lately, but am at #LDX3 today, so if any pals are here pls come say hi! 👋🏼

So tomorrow and Tuesday I'll be at the #LDX3 conference in London.

If you see me, please say hi. I'm partially face-blind so it takes me some time to recognize people.

We’re just days away from #LDX3 in London where you'll find Cloudflare at booth 31 📍

What's in store 👇
- Live demos: building and deploying full stack and AI applications rapidly
- Discuss with our engineers how to modernise your applications
- Competitions, SWAG and more!