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.
Latest
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.
Why I Love Pull Requests (and How You Can Too) 📝💬
Pull requests aren’t just for catching bugs — they’re for leveling up your team. Here’s how to make the most of them (and avoid common PR pitfalls).
Faith, Frameworks, and Finding Purpose 🙏💻✨
In the spirit of the season 🎄—a playful look at how programming languages and frameworks evolve like religions, and why staying open-minded will make you a better engineer.
📚 Pitfalls & Anti-Patterns: A Glossary for Engineers, Managers, and Product People
A friendly glossary of common traps, anti-patterns, and bad habits that creep into engineering, product, and management work—so you can spot them (and avoid them!) next time they show up.
Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls 🌊
We all agree waterfall is broken.
Somehow, we keep rebuilding it every 90 days and calling it progress.
This is a critique of quarterly planning, control culture, and the illusion that you can schedule flow.
Your Code Isn’t a Masterpiece — It’s Just Design
Some engineers treat their code like art — striving for perfect form, debating aesthetics, and nitpicking endlessly. But code is design, not art. Its value comes from function, not form. Here’s why adopting the right mindset helps your team ship better software — faster.
The Blessing and Curse of Being a Truth-Teller 🤫
Being a truth-teller sounds noble in theory. In practice—at work and in life—it often sucks. Here’s what I’ve learned about the pros and cons of pushing for honesty.
The Traditions We Keep (Even When They Don’t Work Anymore) 🦃
A reflection on workplace traditions: why we keep doing them, when to let them go, and how to tell the difference between helpful rituals and outdated routines — just in time for the holidays.