Writing is clarifying - Writing on leadership and technology

New: one-on-one coaching for tech professionals working through hard leadership problems—whether you manage a team or the whitespace between them.

12 Sep 2026

Tripwires

Everyone is making the same argument: code is no longer the bottleneck, and the bottleneck has shifted to the phases …

21 Aug 2026

The Elephant in the Brownfield

In recent weeks, I met several talented, driven, experienced engineers and leaders working hard to bootstrap their ideas …

28 Jul 2026

Two Bars, Spreading Apart

This is the first of a few essays I’m writing as a freshly minted builder, building new things in the greenfield rather …

03 Jun 2026

A Lesson From the Feedlot

A recent wildly popular post argued that a $5,000 token budget per engineer per month is optimal, and that anything less …

08 May 2026

A Lesson From the Cockpit

The tech industry has declared that AI will increase developer productivity. Task-level productivity feels obvious, …

22 Apr 2026

The Hold

I have spent nearly a decade asking a few simple questions. Why do people like Mahatma Gandhi, Desmond Tutu, and the …

11 Apr 2026

The Authentic Mountain

It is time to dig deep to tear apart the romantic idea that authenticity is showing up as yourself. Nobody knows what …

04 Apr 2026

Two Mountains

I know a software developer, call her A. B is the manager of another team, handling a critical project with plenty of …

29 Mar 2026

The Mountain and the Clouds

Take a typical work situation. Something was expected of my team. But it was not met. The other party calls for a …

21 Mar 2026

Sandcastles and the Mountain

I vividly remember how it felt in my stomach - a mixture of bitterness, hurt, and shame. It was years ago. I had to walk …