Andrew Wegner Engineering leader · Mentor · ArchitectBuilding the teams that build the systems.
I lead, grow and mentor engineering organizations across telecom, logistics and SaaS. Currently VP Product, Strategic Software at Zayo. I write about what I've learned running distributed teams, managing technical debt, and hiring engineers in the age of AI.
Currently VP Product, Strategic Software
Previously VP Software Engineering · Director Engineering
Industries Telecommunications, Software Development, Transportation Logistics, Manufacturing, HRIS
By the numbers
Download résumé (PDF) →- 50+
- Engineers in largest organization led
- 17+
- Years shipping software end-to-end
- 6
- Continents where engineers I've led live (every continent except Antarctica)
- 8
- Weeks to achieve SOC 2 attestation
Latest
The 3 most recent posts Red flags in engineering organizations that only show up after week two Week one is onboarding theater. Everyone's on their best behavior and nothing's under stress, so the flags that matter stay invisible until something finally goes under load. Here's a field guide to what an established engineering organization hides during onboarding, and the week-two moments when it shows. Read essay → Management Debt: When Leadership Patterns Rot Review of Claude Code for Python Developers from Real Python
Four ideas that shape how I run engineering organizations.
Drawn from years building teams across telecom, logistics, hiring and manufacturing. Read my article on each principle.
Distance doesn't diminish performance. Distributed teams outperform co-located ones when the operating model is designed for async decisions, written context, and clear ownership. Not transplanted from the office. Read essay → Hire for what actually predicts the job. Most technical interviews measure test-taking under a stopwatch. I rebuild hiring around problem framing, trade-off articulation, and shipped evidence: the signals that correlate with on-the-job success. Read essay → Technical debt is a leadership problem. Every team has debt. The ones that keep moving treat it as a portfolio (with explicit cost, interest, and a payback schedule), instead of a cleanup someone will get to someday. Read essay → Grow engineers as the product. Mentorship and career ladders aren't HR overhead. They're the compounding investment. The output of an engineering organization is the engineers it produces as much as the software it ships. Read essay →
Selected writing
Red flags in engineering organizations that only show up after week two Week one is onboarding theater. Everyone's on their best behavior and nothing's under stress, so the flags that matter stay invisible until something finally goes under load. Here's a field guide to what an established engineering organization hides during onboarding, and the week-two moments when it shows. Read essay → Management Debt: When Leadership Patterns Rot Technical debt has a sibling that gets less airtime and, in my experience, does at least as much damage. Decision rights that drift, skip-levels that quietly fall off the calendar, review meetings that turn into status updates. Let's talk about how I clean them up once I notice they've gone bad. Read essay → I Proved AI Could Beat Our Technical Interviews. Then I Had to Fix Them. After proving AI could beat most technical assessments, I had to rebuild how I hire engineers. Here's the process I've developed; focused on what actually predicts success on the job. Read essay → The Remote Engineering Leadership Playbook: Why Distance Doesn't Diminish Performance Proven processes transform distributed teams from liability into competitive advantage. This talks about why I think that is and how to ensure your team is successful when they are remote. Read essay → Junior Engineer Crisis: How AI Code Generation is Reshaping Engineering Teams An analysis of how artificial intelligence is transforming software development careers, team structures, and how engineers build expertise. Read essay → Technical Debt Management: A Strategic Approach After navigating technical leadership roles across startups and established corporations, I've come to view technical debt as both inevitable and manageable. It's the leadership approach to this debt that often determines whether a company can maintain momentum or finds itself grinding to a halt. Read essay → Scaling Engineering Teams: From 5 to 50+ Without Losing Your Culture Scaling engineering teams is about much more than just adding headcount. It's about creating sustainable growth that preserves the core elements of your culture while evolving systems to support a larger organization. Here are a few of my thoughts about the topic. Read essay →
Archive index
Showing 7 of 72025
- 22 Aug The Remote Engineering Leadership Playbook: Why Distance Doesn't Diminish Performance
- 18 Aug Junior Engineer Crisis: How AI Code Generation is Reshaping Engineering Teams
- 22 Jul Python Gotcha: Reusing Generators Returns Nothing
- 14 Jul Python Gotcha: Logging an uncaught exception
- 06 Jul How to fix GitLab 18 error regarding git_data_dirs
- 17 Jun Python Gotcha: Identity vs Equality - When 'is' Fails Unexpectedly