How to handle disagreements?

First, reframe disagreements away from individuals and toward clarity of direction. Most conflicts in engineering stem from unclear standards or priorities rather than technical incompetence.

Remove emotion by asking each engineer to articulate tradeoffs. We evaluate performance impact, maintainability, risk, and delivery cost.

Then, anchor the decision to team standards or documented principles. If there is no standard, that’s a signal to create one.

If multiple options are valid, optimize for consistency. A consistent codebase reduces long-term cognitive load.

Finally, document the decision so we don’t re-argue the same point later.

Simple, straightforward, fair.