When speed becomes strategy đź’¨
When constant speed and firefighting stop being healthy in founder-led startups: how to tell what actually matters when everything feels urgent, how to spot the warning signs early, and when to reconsider staying.
People
Writing on the human side of building software: engineering management, hiring and recruitment, onboarding, delegation, conflict, and staying productive without burning out.
A pint with Jimothy: on fear, ego, and hiring smarter
A reconstructed conversation with an engineering manager who hesitates to hire a candidate sharper than himself, on the fear and ego behind hiring calls, and why hiring people stronger than you is the smarter move.
When Slack starts to feel like a DDoS attack
Borrowing “exponential back-off” from networking to handle communication overload as an engineering lead: how to triage the constant stream of Slack pings, reviews, and requests with informal priority classes and respond with intention.
AI for Engineering managers: adapt now or trail behind
How AI is reshaping engineering management: tracking impact instead of story points, budgeting for capacity instead of headcount, hiring abstraction thinkers, cutting dead process, and a 90-day pivot plan to stay relevant.
Impostor syndrome: kicking self-doubt to the curb
Recognizing and handling impostor syndrome in the moments it hits hardest, drawing on Aviv Ben-Yosef’s “The Tech Executive Operating System”, with techniques like asking yourself Socratic questions.
The unboring NIST SP 800-190
Practical, non-boring takeaways from NIST SP 800-190 for container security: image scanning and vulnerability management, controlled image provenance, least-privilege runtime restrictions, network segmentation, runtime threat detection, and host-OS hardening.
Too many tabs open? Why real multitasking is hard
Why real human multitasking is hard: unlike computers, we lack an internal “orchestrator” to queue tasks, so things fall through the cracks, and how to restore that orchestrator given our finite mental RAM.
Before you lead: honest questions for aspiring managers
Three honest questions every individual contributor should answer before moving into engineering management: are you ready to work with people over computers, to let go of control, and to be driven by interruptions instead of a plan?
Managing time as an Engineering manager
What a day as an engineering manager actually looks like, where the time goes, the challenges of 2024, and the time-management framework from Aviv Ben-Yosef’s “The Tech Executive Operating System” that helped.
Getting it right: security awareness program on a budget
How to build a security-awareness program on a budget when the security team is new: getting leadership buy-in, defining the audience and topics, scheduling sessions, tracking attendance, and collecting feedback.