<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="yes"?><rss version="2.0" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"><channel><title>Leverage on Girish Shekhar</title><link>https://blog.girishshekhar.com/tags/leverage/</link><description>Recent content in Leverage on Girish Shekhar</description><generator>Hugo -- 0.163.3</generator><language>en-us</language><lastBuildDate>Sun, 12 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://blog.girishshekhar.com/tags/leverage/index.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><item><title>Writing Is the Most Underused Leverage a Principal Engineer Has</title><link>https://blog.girishshekhar.com/posts/scaling-as-a-pe/3-writing-is-the-most-under-used-leverage/</link><pubDate>Sun, 12 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://blog.girishshekhar.com/posts/scaling-as-a-pe/3-writing-is-the-most-under-used-leverage/</guid><description>Most Principal Engineers treat writing as documentation—a secondary activity that happens after the real work. But writing is the highest-leverage mechanism available at staff-plus scope. It scales mentorship, compounds over time, creates artifacts that outlive individual conversations, and builds the connective tissue for relationships you can&amp;rsquo;t maintain through meetings alone. This post covers why PEs underinvest in writing, what changes when they stop, and how imperfect artifacts often create more value than perfect silence.</description></item><item><title>The Leverage Playbook: How Principal Engineers Multiply Impact Through Mechanisms</title><link>https://blog.girishshekhar.com/posts/scaling-as-a-pe/2-multiply-impact-through-mechanisms/</link><pubDate>Sun, 05 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://blog.girishshekhar.com/posts/scaling-as-a-pe/2-multiply-impact-through-mechanisms/</guid><description>Principal Engineers often default to technical authority as their primary lever. But at staff-plus scope, the PEs who scale effectively are the ones who build mechanisms—borrowed from managers and TPMs—that carry their judgment into rooms they&amp;rsquo;ll never enter. This post covers how to identify, build, and deploy those mechanisms without waiting for permission.</description></item></channel></rss>