🔗 I stopped needing to spend three hours a day finding things out

Engineering leaders often spend extensive time unearthing information before meetings, which detracts from more impactful tasks. Rafe Hatfield shares his experience of leveraging an AI system he created, named Sage, to streamline this process. By integrating across tools like GitHub, Jira, and Slack, Sage synthesizes critical information quickly, allowing leaders to focus on strategy, growth, and effective coaching, rather than administrative overhead. Hatfield emphasizes that the true value of Sage lies not in its technology, but in regaining precious time to engage more meaningfully with team members. With Sage, he found that coaching opportunities surfaced naturally, and operational awareness could remain in the background, shifting his role from merely catching up to being a present and pivotal leader.

He encourages other leaders to consider building similar tools tailored around their unique challenges, highlighting that the path to improved leadership lies in understanding and addressing personal gaps in their processes.