When You’re Choking on Meetings, Stop Eating Donuts 🍩💼
When meetings stop yielding results, the instinct shouldn’t be to add more — it should be to ask *why*. More meetings don’t solve the problem; they just make it harder to breathe.
Peter Cepeda
Maximum Impact, Minimum Effort: The Art of Productive Laziness
The best engineers are “lazy”—they automate everything, use AI to the fullest, and refuse to overcomplicate. They’re not cutting corners—they’re cutting waste.
Severance and the Pandemic Workplace: We Were All Innies for a While
The pandemic didn’t just give us remote work — it gave us our “outie” selves back. So why are companies so desperate to put us back in the office? Maybe it’s not about collaboration. Maybe it’s about control.
👨💻 Truths for Engineers in Their 40s (That I Wish I Knew Sooner)
Turning 40 makes you reflect—on career, burnout, balance, and why you’re still doing this in the first place. Here’s what I’ve learned about building a sustainable life in tech without losing yourself.
⚔️ The Raid Leader’s Guide to Engineering Teams
When the Demogorgon shows up, you’d better have the right party. In Part 2 of my RPG series, I share how to balance your engineering team like a pro — from role gaps to flex builds to knowing when your party’s become a guild.
🎭 Role-Playing Archetypes of Engineers (Stranger Things Have Happened)
Engineering teams are like RPG parties: tanks, mages, rogues, and healers all working together. Here’s how I think about engineer archetypes — and why I lead like a Raid Leader, not the hero. 🎮✨
The Many Faces of Power: A Field Guide to Leaders Who Rise, Rule, and Ruin
Watching today’s world stage made me reflect on the leaders I’ve worked with up close. Not emperors or generals, but executives, managers, and founders. Different scale, same patterns. This is a field guide to leadership archetypes that rise in uncertainty and what they quietly cost us.