Musings on the Never-Ending Sequence
Observations on what compounds: teams, culture, and the small stuff that matters.
The Engineering Leader's Guide to AI Adoption: What Actually Works
84% of developers now use AI tools, but organizational productivity often stays flat. A practical framework for where AI actually helps your team and where it creates noise.
Read more →The Real Reason Your AI Initiatives Fail (It's Not the Technology)
Most AI projects fail not due to technical limitations but organizational ones. AI literacy gaps, misaligned expectations, and poor problem selection kill promising initiatives.
Read more →Building Your AI Literacy: A Non-Technical Guide for Business Leaders
You don't need to understand transformers to make smart AI decisions. What business leaders actually need to know about AI capabilities, limitations, and trajectory.
Read more →AI Won't Replace Your Engineers (But Engineers Using AI Will Replace Those Who Don't)
The realistic view of AI's impact on software engineering. What skills become more valuable, what becomes automated, and how to position your team for the future.
Read more →Engineering Metrics That Actually Matter (And the Vanity Metrics to Ignore)
Most engineering metrics are vanity metrics. DORA, velocity, deployment frequency: which ones actually predict team health and business outcomes?
Read more →Why Your Engineering Team Feels Slow (And It's Probably Not Lazy People)
Developers spend only 16% of their time coding. If your team feels slow, the problem isn't effort. It's the system.
Read more →Speed vs. Quality: The False Dichotomy Killing Your Engineering Team
Why "move fast and break things" creates more problems than it solves, and how to build systems where speed and quality reinforce each other.
Read more →The Fibonacci Principle: How Small Investments Compound in Engineering Teams
A framework for identifying which small improvements create compounding returns. Why investing in developer experience often beats big architectural rewrites.
Read more →Lean Engineering: Delivering Value Without the Agile Theater
Why most "agile" implementations create overhead without value. A return to lean principles: reduce waste, shorten feedback loops, and focus on customer value.
Read more →How to Run Effective Engineering Retrospectives
Retrospectives are either the most valuable meeting or a waste of time. How to structure retros that drive actual improvement rather than venting sessions.
Read more →Why Work in Progress Limits Actually Work
Most teams resist WIP limits because they feel counterintuitive. How can doing less help you deliver more? An explanation backed by queuing theory and real-world results.
Read more →Hiring Your First 10 Engineers vs. Your Next 100: Different Games Entirely
The playbook that works at 5 engineers breaks at 50. How recruiting, interviewing, and onboarding need to evolve as you scale.
Read more →Building a Generative Engineering Culture: Trust Over Control
What separates high-performing engineering cultures from bureaucratic ones? A practical guide to building psychological safety, experimentation, and accountability without micromanagement.
Read more →The Engineering Leader's Guide to Working with Product
Engineering and product alignment is where most startups struggle. Building effective partnerships, managing competing priorities, and creating shared ownership.
Read more →Remote Engineering Teams: What Actually Works After Years of Distributed Work
The post-pandemic lessons on distributed engineering. Communication patterns, meeting cadences, async work, and maintaining culture across timezones.
Read more →Scaling Engineering Interview Processes Without Losing Quality
When you're hiring 5 people a month, you need a different process than hiring 5 a year. Building scalable, fair, and effective engineering interviews.
Read more →Technical Due Diligence Red Flags: What Investors Miss and Founders Hide
An insider's view of what technical due diligence actually reveals. Common red flags in architecture, team composition, technical debt, and scalability.
Read more →How to Run Technical Due Diligence (From Both Sides of the Table)
Whether you're raising or investing, understanding what makes technical DD effective. What to prepare, what to ask, and how to interpret the findings.
Read more →The Hidden Costs of Over-Engineering (And How to Avoid Them)
When premature abstraction, excessive microservices, and "future-proofing" actually slow you down. A guide to building just enough architecture for your current scale.
Read more →Raising Your Series A/B/C: What Engineering Leaders Need to Know
Engineering due diligence at each funding stage differs dramatically. What investors look for technically at different stages and how to prepare your engineering org.
Read more →Building Platform Teams: When, Why, and How to Invest in Developer Experience
Platform engineering is hot, but not every company needs one. How to evaluate if you're ready, what to build first, and how to measure platform team success.
Read more →When to Pay Down Technical Debt (And When to Live with It)
A framework for technical debt prioritization. Not all debt is created equal. How to identify debt that's actively hurting you vs. debt that's just ugly.
Read more →The Case for Boring Technology at Startups
Why choosing mature, well-understood technology stacks usually beats cutting-edge options. Innovation should be in your product, not your infrastructure.
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