How We Get More Done with Fewer Engineers
Beyond Coding26 Marras 2025

How We Get More Done with Fewer Engineers

What if you could build a multi-million dollar software company where only 10% of your employees are developers? AFAS, a company with hundreds of millions in revenue, does exactly that with a lean team of just 70 engineers. In this episode, Engineering Manager Michiel Overeem pulls back the curtain on their unconventional strategies for achieving massive productivity with a surprisingly small team.


In this episode, we cover:

  • Why standardization is their secret weapon for efficiency.
  • How they thrive without traditional Scrum ceremonies.
  • The two distinct types of engineers they hire for success.
  • The surprising details of their 4-day work week (paid for 5).

This video is for engineering leaders and software developers who want to learn proven, counter-intuitive strategies to build hyper-effective teams and get more done, regardless of team size.


Connect with Michiel:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/movereem


Timestamps:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:01:22 - The "10% Engineering" Paradox at a €100M+ Company

00:03:20 - How Standardization Allows a Small Team to Do More

00:04:27 - The Two Types of Engineers Every Successful Company Needs

00:06:46 - Why Feeling Responsible is More Powerful Than Being Responsible

00:09:33 - The Secret Sauce of High-Performing Engineering Teams

00:11:52 - A Simple Method to Keep Engineers Connected to Customers

00:14:22 - What We Look For When Hiring New Engineers

00:17:09 - The #1 Red Flag That Will Get You Rejected in an Interview

00:19:33 - Why We Don't Use Scrum (And What We Do Instead)

00:22:51 - The Power of Strong, Decisive Leadership

00:24:13 - How Our 4-Day Work Week Actually Works

00:26:55 - Our Approach to Adopting AI Tools like Copilot

00:28:19 - Final Advice: The Best Way to Grow Your Career


#EngineeringCulture #Productivity #SoftwareDevelopment

Jaksot(242)

Uber Engineering Manager on Scaling Systems, Career Trade-offs, and Why Clarity Beats Seniority

Uber Engineering Manager on Scaling Systems, Career Trade-offs, and Why Clarity Beats Seniority

Sendil Nellaiyapen, Engineering Manager at Uber, has built systems that scale to millions of users. In this episode he shares what most engineers get wrong about both system design and the move into e...

11 Maalis 44min

Lead Software Engineer: Why You Can Write the Code in a Day but Ship in a Month

Lead Software Engineer: Why You Can Write the Code in a Day but Ship in a Month

Are you over-engineering for a future that might never come? In this episode, we explore why "future-proofing" often leads to wasted time and sunk costs, and how shifting your mindset from opinions to...

4 Maalis 39min

How Senior Software Engineers Balance Speed and Quality (Scale-Up Lessons)

How Senior Software Engineers Balance Speed and Quality (Scale-Up Lessons)

The difference between a junior and a senior engineer isn't coding speed, it's knowing when to say "no.""The best code you can write is the code you don't write." In this episode, I sit down with Ales...

25 Helmi 47min

How to Think About Software Engineering (CTO's Perspective)

How to Think About Software Engineering (CTO's Perspective)

We are at a unique point in history where there is finally an alternative to human coding. If AI can write the code effectively, what is left for the software engineer?In this episode, Joris Conijn (A...

18 Helmi 46min

How to Build the Best Platforms for Software Engineers

How to Build the Best Platforms for Software Engineers

Is your internal developer platform actually improving velocity, or is it a bottleneck? We discuss why platform teams building "cool" abstractions is a red flag, and you should aim to create the best ...

11 Helmi 43min

Career Advice I'd Give Every Software Engineer Right Now

Career Advice I'd Give Every Software Engineer Right Now

Engineering hasn't become easier, writing code has just become faster. Time to stop fighting symptoms and start thinking in systems. In this Q&A, I break down the career advice I'd give to any enginee...

4 Helmi 1h 1min

The Skills That Matter When AI Writes Your Code

The Skills That Matter When AI Writes Your Code

The software engineering landscape is shifting rapidly. Coding is becoming "cheap" because of tools like Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, Cursor etc. Interviews are evolving to focus on system design over ...

28 Tammi 41min

Google & AWS Veteran: How To Become a Great Architect

Google & AWS Veteran: How To Become a Great Architect

"Architects shouldn't try to be the smartest people in the room, they should make everybody else smarter."In this episode, Gregor Hohpe (ex-Google & AWS, author of "The Software Architect Elevator") b...

21 Tammi 1h 4min