April 02, 2026
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
Key takeaways:
- Engineering leaders should think like shopkeepers! Regularly scan people, work, and signals – not just tasks.
- A shopkeeper mentality in leadership means treating the business as your own.
- Awareness doesn’t happen by accident, you need to schedule it.
Ask any software engineering leader what their job is, and they’ll give you a version of the same answer: delivering projects, developing people, and driving strategy.
Ask them how they actually spend their time each day and you might notice a paradox between what they believe their job to be and what they’re actually doing.
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April 02, 2026
