Engineering

Structuring Efficient Tech Orgs

A practical, science-backed course for engineering org-design leaders on maximising efficiency while minimising cognitive load and burnout — covering sociotechnical systems, team topologies, cognitive load on teams, bounded rationality, psychological safety, hiring and team composition, career ladders, compensation, DEI, goals and strategy deployment, async writing and meeting design, sustainable pace and on-call, and org failure and change.

13 modules

Your Org Is a System — Not a Chart

Why technical and organizational decisions cannot be separated, and what that means for every design choice you make

Cognitive Load and Team Design

Why working memory limits are an org design problem, not a people problem

Team Topologies and Interaction Modes

A pattern language for org design: how to name your teams, wire their relationships, and let Conway's Law work for you instead of against you

Bounded Rationality and Decision Design

Why leaders are satisficers, not optimizers — and how to build org structure around that truth

Psychological Safety and Learning Culture

What the construct actually means, why your culture type predicts your DORA numbers, and the specific leader behaviors that build or destroy it

Hiring for Team Composition

Structured assessment, bias elimination, and the process levers that build cognitively diverse, high-functioning engineering teams

Career Ladders and Growth Design

How to build dual-track systems that actually work — from level definitions to compensation parity to cross-team visibility

Compensation and Incentive Design

How pay systems shape behavior, equity, and who stays — and what the law now requires you to document

DEI, Belonging, and Inclusion

What the evidence actually shows — and which org-design levers move the needle

Goals, OKRs, and Strategy Deployment

Goal systems as attention allocation mechanisms — and why most OKR implementations create reporting theater instead of decision clarity

Async Writing and Meeting Design

How to turn communication infrastructure into a load-management intervention

Sustainable Pace, Alert Fatigue, and On-Call Design

Engineering depletion is an organizational failure mode. Here is how to diagnose it, measure it, and fix it at the structural level.

When Orgs Fail, How They Change, and What You Build Next

A capstone on failure modes, high-reliability principles, knowledge-transfer architecture, and your own intervention map

How this plan was made

Each plan on learnings is built by a hand-crafted agentic pipeline: research agents gather primary sources, a claim reviewer verifies facts against them, and a sequencer orders modules for how people actually learn. The curation — topic selection, framing, editorial standards — is Nicolas's. The research and writing is AI-assembled.