Yusuf Aytas's Blog, page 2

Climbing No More

Engineers have been reaching a common ceiling in their careers for decades. The pattern goes like this: an individual contributor gets promoted to a senior software engineer, and their career trajectory levels off. Likewise, an IC who transitions to an Engineering Manager often hits a similar wall, wondering if they’ll ever advance to a senior manager or director. In the tech industry…

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The Weekly Win

If you happen to work for a large organization, you’ve probably heard of quarterly check-ins or some similar corporate buzzword to describe what you’ve done and what you could have done better for the quarter. That’s fine, but both we as leaders and our direct reports always get caught off guard. I personally would scroll through Jira, Slack, and Confluence, trying to piece together what my team…

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Mevlana Candy

When I was a child, Rumi wasn’t a philosopher or a poet for me. He was candy. Every once in a while, a relative from Konya would visit and bring Mevlana şekeri. The rock sugar associated with Rumi. Sweet, shiny, and simple. How couldn’t I like him? For me, Rumi meant sugar, not wisdom. As I grew older, I started noticing Rumi’s words in books, in conversations…

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Brewing Turkish Tea

I love Turkish tea. If I go too long without it, especially while traveling, I start to miss it badly. It’s an addiction I have no intention of fixing. When I talk to non-Turkish friends or colleagues about tea, they usually assume it’s the same as any other black tea. To some extent it is, but not really. Turkish tea isn’t just dropping a few leaves in hot water and waiting three minutes.

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Onboarding Your Engineering Manager

Bringing on a new leader to your organization is always tricky. It starts with hiring. Then comes the real part. Onboarding! I always think bringing in a new leader without context is like starting construction without a blueprint. You’ll get noise and activity, but not stability. Perhaps, a few things are done, but in the wrong order. Walls before foundations. Progress on paper…

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Technical Deep Dives

When someone asks for a technical deep dive, they don’t care if you can detect a cycle in a linked list. They want proof that you actually understand the beast you’ve built. Can you walk me through the system like you own it, explain why you made the calls you did, and show me how it held up when reality punched back? That’s the game. In the world of engineering manager interviews…

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Yapay Zekâ Çağında Bilgisayar Mühendisliği

Son aylarda, ister posta kutumdan, ister web sitem üzerinden, isterse tanıdıklar aracılığıyla olsun, hep aynı soruya cevap veriyorum: “2025’te bilgisayar bilimi okumak hâlâ mantıklı mı?” Ekonomi yavaşlamışken, yapay zekâ neredeyse her sektöre uzanmışken ve işe alımlar daralmışken, bu soru hem öğrencileri hem de kariyer değiştirmeyi düşünenleri haklı olarak endişelendiriyor.

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Building Remote Teams

You’ve probably heard stories of big tech companies cutting thousands of jobs in US and hiring double that number in India, blaming AI for the shift. Everyone’s first thought is likely cheap labor. While cost is certainly part of the equation, it’s not the whole picture. Many other factors are at play, including follow the sun models, talent density, and government incentives. As you know…

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From Idea to Launch in 2 Weeks

Everyone’s been talking about LLMs. I didn’t want to be too late to the party. When everyone’s talking about doomsdays scenarios, I just wanted to see for myself. As an engineering leader, I spend a lot of time thinking about productivity, tooling, and how engineers work best. But it’s easy to lose touch with the day-to-day of building. So I rolled up my sleeves and built a few things.

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Reflecting on Software Engineering Handbook

One year. May 2024. Back then, we were riding high, celebrating the launch of this Software Engineering Handbook with an amazing trip to Iceland. Five days of glaciers and waterfalls, finally enjoying the fact that we finished up a two year project. We thought we’d cracked it, pouring our hard won experience into a guide for anyone navigating the software engineering business. Our book was born…

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