Writing
Notes on engineering leadership, platforms, and building teams.
Short, opinionated, and drawn from twenty years of doing the work.
- Apr 12, 2026
· 1 min readThe Most Expensive Meeting You're Running BadlyThe 1:1 is the most expensive meeting most engineering managers run badly. Not because they skip it, but because they run it as a status update with eye contact.Read more - Apr 10, 2026
· 1 min readShift-Left Security Is Mostly a Rebranding ExerciseYou moved the same security review four weeks earlier in the sprint. You still have one team approving and another team building. You just renamed the tollgate.Read more - Apr 7, 2026
· 1 min readDeleting Code Is a Senior Engineering SkillThe PR that removes 3,000 lines of dead weight and makes the system legible again gets a quiet merge and no mention in the sprint demo. The PR that introduces a clever new pattern gets the celebration. So engineers learn what gets rewarded.Read more - Apr 2, 2026
· 1 min readYour Developer Platform Failed Before Anyone Logged InMost Internal Developer Platforms fail before a single engineer logs in. The architecture was not wrong, and the portal framework was not the problem. The team building it never treated it as a product.Read more