Pointer engineering newsletter

October 9th, 2026 | Read online Friday 9th October issue is presented by Larridin Know Your Engineering Performance. Stop Guessing AI changed how software ships. Most engineering metrics didn't keep up. Larridin built the AI-native standard for engineering performance, measuring velocity, code quality, and production reliability. Engineering Output weighted by complexity and quality AI Output Share and AI Slop Index Code Durability and change failure rate Measure Your Team’s Results The State Of The Tech Industry In 2026 — Gergely Orosz tl;dr: “I spent weeks identifying and recording trends that didn’t exist a year ago – or were much more nascent back then – and also things that are currently broken, and others that remain unchanged. Today, we cover: (1) Speed of change. (2) What’s changed. (3) What’s broken. (4) What’s still the same. (5) What comes next?” Leadership Management IndustryTrends The Missing Instructor — Mike Fisher tl;dr: “Two people, who did not collaborate, built the same tool within a few months. I take that as a sign that the economics changed underneath both of them. The cost of a competent observer collapsed.” Mike discusses how managers can evolve through feedback like never before. Management Feedback AI Know Your Engineering Performance. Stop Guessing tl;dr: AI changed how software ships. Most engineering metrics didn't keep up. Larridin built the AI-native standard for engineering performance, measuring velocity, code quality, and production reliability. (1) Engineering Output weighted by complexity and quality. (2) AI Output Share and AI Slop Index. (3) Code Durability and change failure rate. Promoted by Larridin DevEx AI Security Influence Without Authority — Gabriel Valdivia tl;dr: “Individual contributors can develop influence by giving people reasons to trust their judgment, then finding ways for that judgment to travel beyond the things they personally make.” Leadership Influence Staff+ "Everyone admires the bold; no one admires the timid." — Robert Greene How To Read Code — Sean Goedecke tl;dr: “Reading code in a large program is thus a process of compromise: of deciding which parts to thoroughly grasp and which parts to gloss over; or of portioning out your finite mental capacity across the codebase.” Career Learning CodeQuality How To Hire Engineers When AI Makes Everyone’s Code Look Good — Luka Biber tl;dr: Everyone’s code looks good now. The engineers who matter are the ones who know why it works, and can tell when it doesn’t. Now more than ever, hiring comes down to finding people who understand the why behind what they built and why it was the best solution. Here’s how to find them. Promoted by Remgu Management Hiring AI Anti-Patterns In Software Blogging — Michael Lynch tl;dr: "In software development, we collect anti-patterns to recognize common traits that lead to poor outcomes in our software. I thought it would be helpful to do the same for software blogging, so I’ve catalogued the most frequent mistakes I see from beginner bloggers.” Writing Tips Building an Internal Company Agent: 5 Things We Got Right And 5 I Would Do Differently — Orestis Ioannou tl;dr: “This is not a universal guide to building agents. It is a practical retrospective from building one inside a real company: five things we got right and five I would approach differently today.” CaseStudy AI Agents Developer Survey 2026 tl;dr: “For the sixteenth year, we’ve asked developers and technologists about everything from how they’re using AI to how happy they are at work to where they’re learning new skills. This year’s survey boils down to one question: How are you doing?” AI Survey IndustryTrends Null Pointer Modern Stack Hand-drawn by Manu. View the Null Pointer series. Most Popular From Last Issue How I Have Time For Everything - Steve Huynh Notable Links Destroy Any Website: Type an address, break everything. Jevgrep: Find code by asking what it does. MicroLLM Lab