In this episode of The Agile Engineering Deep Dive, Alessandro Guida explores why recurring 1 to 1s are one of the most important - and most misunderstood - practices in engineering leadership.

While most managers agree that 1 to 1s matter, they often drift into polite status meetings focused on tasks, tickets, and delivery details. This may feel efficient, but it frequently leaves motivation, growth, and trust unspoken.

This episode reflects on a simple, experience-based way of structuring 1 to 1s around four human dimensions to motivation, achievement, power, and belonging. Not as an HR model or framework, but as a practical approach shaped by years of leadership and thousands of conversations.

The goal is not to turn 1 to 1s into performance reviews or therapy sessions, but to show how consistent, well-structured conversations help small issues surface early, build trust over time, and support long-term team health.

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In this episode of The Agile Engineering Deep Dive, Alessandro Guida revisits the SOLID principles and explores why they still matter in modern software engineering.

In a world of microservices, cloud platforms, and AI-assisted development, SOLID is sometimes seen as outdated or overly focused on code-level concerns. Yet the underlying challenges of software engineering have not changed: managing complexity, reducing coupling, and enabling systems to evolve safely over time.

This episode reflects on how principles like Single Responsibility, Open/Closed, Liskov Substitution, Interface Segregation, and Dependency Inversion extend far beyond classes and objects - shaping APIs, services, architecture, and organizational resilience.

The goal is not to promote dogma or rigid rules, but to show how timeless design principles help teams build software that remains understandable, testable, and adaptable long after tools, frameworks, and original developers have changed.

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In this episode of The Agile Engineering Deep Dive, Alessandro Guida explores why hiring should be treated as a long-term leadership investment rather than a short-term operational task.

Many organizations focus on speed, cost, and visible output when hiring engineers. But these signals often hide the real risks: poor role definition, mismatched expectations, underinvestment in onboarding, and decisions that optimize for the next quarter rather than the next decade.

This episode reflects on how different problems require different hiring strategies, why the number of applicants is a misleading success metric, and how leadership choices during hiring quietly shape culture, capability, and resilience over time.

The goal is not to slow organizations down, but to make hiring decisions more deliberate, responsible, and sustainable - especially in engineering environments where long-term value depends on people, not just processes or tools.

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