Here are a few engineering principles I aim to instill in every team I join. Lead or not.
- PRs are work, not a favor. The velocity of your code review is a leading indicator of software delivery.
- Get us over the water, not build us a bridge. Focus on solving user needs, not on building features. Involve engineers early.
- You're done when your code's in production.
- The team is done when user needs are met.
- Deploy at least every day.
- INVEST – independent, negotiable, verifiable, estimable, testable. That's a good story.
- Kick the can. Make it exist first, then make it good.
- Discuss architecture before you start coding. Code review is for the small things.
- Never ask for 2 big changes in the same PR. Better is good.
- Approve with comment – don't block progress for anything less than production blowing up.
- Everyone owns their system. No throwing code over to QA, fix your own bugs. If you say it's good and it breaks at 3am, we know your phone number.
- You need observability more than tests. Save automated testing for core business logic and gnarly edge cases.
- Focus on architectural complexity. Organize your code into modules by business domain, put effort into interfaces, don't worry about implementation details.
- Smart core, thin interfaces – share your business logic, repeat your interface. An API should hit the same code as a React server action, a NextJS/Rails/Flask view, React Server Component, or internal function call.
And a bonus principle: If you're building a reusable generic thing and don't have at least 2 distinct use-cases right now, you're not building a reusable generic thing. Make it great for the current use-case first.
Cheers,
~Swizec
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