Ship fast without breaking things
Every team slows down as it grows. More people, more code, more meetings, less shipping. It doesn't have to be that way.
These essays dig into velocity, teamwork, and taming complexity — the engineering side and the people side. They're the thinking behind Scaling Fast, my book on software engineering through hypergrowth.
Essays on shipping fast
5 articles from May 2025 · show all
Software architecture IS Conway's Law
Can you even have architecture before there's a team?
Common abstraction traps
Here's a few common abstraction traps that suck you in, look like they improve your code, then turn into bad ideas as your system grows.
DRY – a common source of bad abstractions
The worst and hardest to maintain code that I've seen or written has been in pursuit of DRY
Stateless decision making
Do you ever feel like your brain is full and there's so much going on you can barely keep up? Me too.
How do you find time for cleanup work
A reader asks how do you find time for technical cleanup work. If OKRs and bugs take priority, when will you make improvements?