X-Team

The best leaders know growth never stops. As Bala Muthiah, director of engineering at Lyft, puts it: “If you really want to stay fresh, really want to stay curious, leadership is the place to be because you are going to learn a lot.”

For Justin Kerestes, SVP of Engineering at Fanatics leadership starts with pride in your work. “Code review is the smallest atomic habit of leadership,” he says. “It’s the mechanism for giving feedback on the craft we put in every day.”

In this week's newsletter, we're featuring our latest podcast episode with Mike Gibson. He joins our new host Gemma E. Versace to share what it really takes to lead with empathy at scale and why great engineering cultures depend on it. Give it a listen and help us celebrate Gemma’s debut and thank Caleb Brown for an incredible year of hosting.

Ayesha Mahmood, VP of software engineering at Zscaler believes leadership means recognizing that everyone — including leaders — is still learning. “We recognize that we are all learners and we will make mistakes, but as long as we're learning from them and we're not repeating them, it should be OK,” she says.

We’re proud to announce that Gemma E. Versace, Global Chief Customer Officer at X-Team, will take the stage at the Customer Success Collective #CCOSummit on December 2 in London. Gemma will be joining an exceptional panel of customer leaders to unpack how AI is being used not just to automate, but to transform—from predictive intelligence and hyper-personalized engagement to driving loyalty, efficiency, and measurable outcomes at scale. As always, she’ll be bringing real-world perspective from the frontlines of customer success at X-Team, where people-first, AI-augmented strategies are driving the future of service and experience. 

Leadership isn’t about showing off what you can do. It’s about celebrating what your team achieves. Bala Arjunan Muthiah, director of engineering at Lyft, says the most gratification is from team accomplishments. “You will feel a great sense of accomplishment even though the work is not done by you.” Great leaders make their team’s wins their own.

“The most concerning business risk of AI are employees making decisions based on incomplete or hallucinated AI-generated information that erroneously impacts other people, the company, or their customers,”  –Mitch Berk, chairman of the Omnissa AI Council

Every few weeks, another headline warns that AI is coming for developers’ jobs.  Inside real engineering teams, though, a more nuanced story is unfolding, Marilyn Wilkinson writes. Yes, workflows are changing and certain types of output are accelerating. But new questions are emerging about quality, accountability, and what it actually means to be a “developer” when a paid Cursor seat starts at $20. "I don’t think we’ll ever have fewer engineers on the planet than we have today, partly because I think that the definition of what an engineer is will change," says X-Team's Jono Bell. Check out this week's Keep Moving Forward newsletter and tell us what you're seeing!

In today’s ultra-competitive hiring landscape, engineering leaders know that how you hire matters just as much as who you hire. Here are 5 pitfalls to avoid when sourcing your tech talent.

Most hiring models break when priorities shift. X-Team’s flexible scaling model means you always have the right talent—whether you’re ramping up, shifting direction, or rebuilding from scratch. Stay in control — book a call.