Software laws, 1-hour APIs & EM pipelines 👀

This week’s bytes:

• Software laws you should never forget

• How to build an engineering management path

• An important battle in the AI vs. AI security arms race

Worth reading

🧠 13 software laws every engineer should tattoo on their brain

8-minute read by Anton Zaides

From Parkinson’s and Hofstadter’s to Zawinski’s and Hyrum’s, this list compiles the most painfully accurate laws that govern software teams. Learn how these mental models expose estimation fallacies, organizational bottlenecks, tech debt traps, and productivity illusions, with examples, comics, and tactical insights.

⚡From zero to live API in under an hour—with Spring Boot, Maven, and ChatGPT

7-minute read by John Vester

API building has changed. John Vester walks you through building a production-ready REST API using Java 17, Spring Boot 3, and Maven—generated via ChatGPT, deployed via Heroku, and defined via OpenAPI. Includes full setup, code structure, deployment scripts, and even testing endpoints with curl. No Gradle needed.

🕵🏽 OpenAI just funded a startup that fakes your CTO’s voice

2-minute read by Charles Rollet

OpenAI’s first cybersecurity investment goes to Adaptive Security, a startup simulating AI-driven hacks—voice, text, and email spoofs—to train employees against deepfakes and social engineering. The $43M Series A (co-led with a16z) marks a major move in the AI vs. AI security arms race.

🧨 Your 3-person IT team has no excuse: this school runs enterprise-grade backups

9-minute read by Erik van Klinken

Ichthus College proves you don’t need a big team to build bulletproof infrastructure. With Synology’s Super NAS, RAID 6, off-site redundancy, and license-free Microsoft 365 backups, they’re running a zero-failure, ransomware-ready setup. This article shows how small orgs can out-secure enterprises, and why disaster recovery is more about planning than headcount.

🪜Creating managers without a path? That’s how you break your best engineers

10-minute read by Jennifer Riggins

This guide breaks down how to build a structured engineering manager career path—whether you’re promoting from within or hiring externally. It covers onboarding, reversibility, performance metrics, and four key EM focus areas: people, culture, delivery, and tech. Learn why most companies fail EMs, and how to avoid burning out your top ICs in the process.

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