Which habits does David Fowler say hurt engineers trying to lead at scale?

David Fowler argues that some traits that get engineers to senior and even principal hurt them beyond that: being a control freak and insisting work gets done in one specific way. At the scale of a thousand engineers he says you have to inspire others through one-on-ones, setting an example and other techniques, and let people fail rather than prevent every failure.

• Fowler says letting people fail was one of the hardest things for him to accept.
• Treating everything as equally urgent was the mistake he names most directly.

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on Ryan Peterman (2026-10-21). Read the whole episode summary →

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