Mindset

The one thing every experienced engineer gets wrong

In the last few months every engineer I hired stumbled in exactly the same way: Project management. They learned quickly, but that first big project has become a rite of passage.

Just fix their PR

You know what's better than a code review comment? A fix.

"But if AI does it all, what's *my* job?"

On AI, mental load, and delegation

Just Read the Paper

Read more papers. You can learn the latest and greatest in your field in one chill afternoon.

Watch people work

We talk a lot about outcomes over outputs and how engineers are supposed to get us over the water, not blindly build a bridge because someone asked for a bridge. But how do you do that in practice?

Frustration Driven Development

Frustration is your greatest engineering asset. What do you do the 5th time someone asks for the same damn thing yet again?

Software engineer interviews for the age of AI

Maybe AI will replace engineers, I don't know. Self-driving cars were just around the corner for 50 years. Until then we've got shit to do and engineers to hire.

The best engineers just get shit done, sometimes with AI

The best engineers I know never talk about their AI setup. The worst engineers I know only talk about their AI setup.

Taming chaos is a learnable skill

How you approach software engineering makes it harder or easier to handle interruptions and other chaos. Writing a behavioral interview made me realize this is a learnable skill!

Put scope on your resume

Your resume titles don't matter. Just tell me what did you do.

Probably the realest thing I ever wrote

Users buy your service, not your code

You might enjoy this podcast episode. Sylvain and I talked about owning production in a world where AI writes the code.

GeLLMan amnesia

AI will automate every job except the ones I'm deeply familiar with

The 3 curves that make a scalable business

You want users and revenue to grow exponentially. Bugs per day to grow linearly. Support work to grow logarithmically. Your goal is to make this happen.

Are you playing games you want to win?

As we enter the funny week-without-time between Christmas and New Year, it's a great time to reflect. Here's a framework I like to use.

How to lead a project

you were asked to lead or own a project. Now what? Here are a few practical steps to help you succeed.

*People* detangle a ball of mud

Ball of mud is the world's most popular software architecture. The one we all use at work. But it sucks to work with. So what do you do?

The unreasonable effectiveness of stack ranking

Stakeholders are silly people. Everything feels important and urgent. Stack ranking helps

Chesterton's true lesson

Too many engineers cry chestertons fence and never check why the code exists

The job behind the job [of a high level IC]

Advancing big goals while you stay on top of operational day-to-day fires _is the job_. This is hard. Here are a few tips I've found helpful.

Make sure it works first

Explore the importance of functionality over elegance in Swizec's latest piece. Learn from his experience of tripling an engineering team's size within a year.

Feedback is a strange thing

Performance oscillates around your mean. Your average is what matters.

The grind won't get you there

Don't grind on something the company doesn't value. Hard work is not rewarded. **_Outcomes_** are rewarded.

How to be witty and off-the-cuff as a slow deep thinker

Deep thinking is the super power of wit

Should you join an AI startup right now?

Beyond income there's 2 reasons to take any specific job: Invest in yourself or invest in the company. Both is best.

What makes a senior engineer

The base expectation for engineers is that you don't just build whatever you're asked.

A few more thoughts on mentoring

Wanted to share a few more thoughts on my mentoring philosophy and answer questions that readers asked

Cursor background agents in Slack changed my workflow

a couple weeks ago Cursor launched a Slack integration and ... wow. First time I can say AI *changed* my workflow

My mentoring philosophy

Yesterday I had lunch with a newly promoted lead and realized I have opinions on mentoring engineers. Here they are.

You're a business

Quick thought from a conversation with friends