Topic · 15 essays

Teams & Culture

Developer experience, team topologies, on-call, and the human side of engineering leadership.

The "AI Tax" Report: How Much Slower/Faster Teams Ship With Copilots

AI coding assistants help and hurt velocity in ways the headline numbers hide. Here's what the data and my own observations actually show — and where teams go wrong.

MGMohamed Ghassen BrahimJune 6, 20269 min read

CTO LeadershipdiagramNew

Why Your "Senior" Engineers Can't Make Decisions (And Whose Fault It Is)

Decision paralysis in senior engineers is almost always a leadership failure, not a talent one. Here's what's actually happening and how to fix it.

MGMohamed Ghassen BrahimMay 14, 20268 min read

CTO LeadershipdiagramNew

Your "10x Engineer" Is a Single Point of Failure

The hero engineer who knows everything is the biggest bus-factor risk on your cap table. Here's how to identify it, price it, and fix it before it blows up.

MGMohamed Ghassen BrahimMay 5, 20268 min read

Architecture & PlatformNew

Developer Experience (DevEx): The Metrics That Matter

Developer experience directly impacts retention, productivity, and software quality. Here's how to measure it, improve it, and make the business case — using the SPACE framework and practical metrics.

MGMohamed Ghassen BrahimMay 2, 202610 min read

Architecture & PlatformNew

Internal Developer Platform: How to Build One That Teams Actually Use

Most internal developer platforms fail because they're built for the platform team, not the developers. Here's how to build an IDP that teams actually adopt — from architecture to adoption strategy.

MGMohamed Ghassen BrahimMay 2, 202610 min read

Architecture & PlatformdiagramNew

The Internal Developer Platform a 30-Person Team Can Actually Maintain

You do not need a platform team of fifteen to get most of the benefits of an internal developer platform. Here's what a 30-person engineering org can build and sustain.

MGMohamed Ghassen BrahimApril 22, 202610 min read

AI & Machine Learning

AI Copilot Development: Building Internal AI Assistants

Enterprise AI copilots go beyond generic chatbots — they integrate with your systems, understand your domain, and multiply your team's productivity. Here's how to build one that actually gets adopted.

MGMohamed Ghassen BrahimApril 18, 202610 min read

Cloud, Azure & Costdiagram

The On-Call Rotation That Stopped My Best People From Quitting

On-call is where good engineers quietly decide to leave. It doesn't have to be. Here's the rotation redesign that changed the calculus for the teams I've led.

MGMohamed Ghassen BrahimApril 13, 20268 min read

CTO Leadership

The Engineering Metric That Quietly Destroys Teams (And What to Track Instead)

One popular productivity metric does more damage than the problem it claims to measure. Here's what it is, why it's corrosive, and what to track instead.

MGMohamed Ghassen BrahimMarch 18, 20268 min read

CTO Leadership

How to Fire Your First Engineering Hire Without Breaking the Team

Letting go of an early engineer is one of the hardest, highest-stakes decisions a young engineering org makes. Here's how to do it without losing the team's trust.

MGMohamed Ghassen BrahimMarch 12, 20268 min read

CTO Leadershipdiagram

The Reorg That Broke Our Best Team (Conway's Law, Learned the Hard Way)

We reorganised for the org chart and shipped the org chart. The product paid for it — in velocity, in quality, and eventually in people walking out the door.

MGMohamed Ghassen BrahimFebruary 23, 20269 min read

CTO Leadershipdiagram

Developer Experience Is a Retention Strategy, Not a Perk. The Metrics That Prove It.

DX is not foosball tables. It is the single most under-rated retention lever you have — and the metrics exist to prove it to any CFO.

MGMohamed Ghassen BrahimFebruary 17, 20268 min read

CTO Leadershipdiagram

Team Topologies for a 20-Person Org (Without the Consultant Theater)

You can apply Team Topologies at twenty engineers without a transformation programme. Here's the practical version — what to take, what to ignore, and how to start Monday.

MGMohamed Ghassen BrahimFebruary 11, 20268 min read

CTO Leadershipdiagram

Time-to-First-Commit, Time-to-Prod: Onboarding Benchmarks Nobody Publishes

How long until a new engineer ships? The honest numbers are worse — and more fixable — than you think. Real benchmarks from 30+ engineering organisations.

MGMohamed Ghassen BrahimFebruary 2, 20268 min read

Architecture & Platform

The "Data-Driven Culture" Lie: Most Teams Have Dashboards, Not Decisions

Having dashboards is not the same as making decisions with data. Most teams confuse the two — here's how to tell the difference and fix it.

MGMohamed Ghassen BrahimJanuary 16, 20268 min read

Working on teams & culture?

I help founders and executives with the exact challenges in these essays. Book a free discovery call.

Book a Free Call