Lalit Maganti
@lalitm.com
Senior Staff Software Engineer at Google, working on https://perfetto.dev. Passionate about performance and open-source, interested in AI/LLMs especially their effect on the software engineering, writing about all of this at https://lalitm.com
I’ve been reading a lot of Staff+ advice that says you need to be "fungible," chase executive priorities, and move fast.
As a Senior Staff engineer in infra/devtools, I found that advice is a recipe for burnout.
As a Senior Staff engineer in infra/devtools, I found that advice is a recipe for burnout.
Why I Ignore The Spotlight as a Staff Engineer
Lately I’ve been reading Sean Goedecke’s essays on being a Staff+ engineer. His work (particularly Software engineering under the spotlight and It’s Not Your Codebase) is razor-sharp and feels painful...
lalitm.com
December 4, 2025 at 2:27 AM
I’ve been reading a lot of Staff+ advice that says you need to be "fungible," chase executive priorities, and move fast.
As a Senior Staff engineer in infra/devtools, I found that advice is a recipe for burnout.
As a Senior Staff engineer in infra/devtools, I found that advice is a recipe for burnout.
Every quarter, our 45-person eng team stops ALL roadmap work for an entire week. No new features. No meetings. Just fixing the small stuff that's been annoying us and our users.
We stopped roadmap work for a week and fixed 189 bugs
It’s Friday at 4pm. I’ve just closed my 12th bug of the week. My brain is completely fried. And I’m staring at the bug leaderboard, genuinely sad that Monday means going back to regular work. Which is...
lalitm.com
November 23, 2025 at 9:57 PM
Every quarter, our 45-person eng team stops ALL roadmap work for an entire week. No new features. No meetings. Just fixing the small stuff that's been annoying us and our users.
I'm a bit ashamed to say it's only today I learned what the number in Linux man page titles (e.g. the "3" in `sleep(3)`) is: lalitm.com/til-number-i...
TIL: Number in man page titles (e.g. sleep(3))
If you do Linux systems programming, you will have likely pored over man pages, either on the command line or, my personal preference, using the excellent man7.org or linux.die.net. I’ve always seen t...
lalitm.com
November 17, 2025 at 11:24 PM
I'm a bit ashamed to say it's only today I learned what the number in Linux man page titles (e.g. the "3" in `sleep(3)`) is: lalitm.com/til-number-i...
Just sent my latest newsletter rounding up the last week of posts to my blog: lalitm.substack.com/p/when-good-...
When Good Technical Writing Isn't Enough
A response to "Don't Build an Audience"
lalitm.substack.com
November 16, 2025 at 7:36 PM
Just sent my latest newsletter rounding up the last week of posts to my blog: lalitm.substack.com/p/when-good-...
After reading a fascinating article called "Don't Build An Audience", I've been doing a lot of soul searching about the type of technical writing I like and how to get people to see it. Wrote down my thoughts in a new post: lalitm.com/on-why-i-wri...
When Good Technical Writing Isn't Enough
Last week, I came across Don’t Build an Audience. It’s a fascinating post and has been occupying a lot of my “free thinking” time. I strongly suggest reading it as it’s well written and excellently ar...
lalitm.com
November 13, 2025 at 10:53 AM
After reading a fascinating article called "Don't Build An Audience", I've been doing a lot of soul searching about the type of technical writing I like and how to get people to see it. Wrote down my thoughts in a new post: lalitm.com/on-why-i-wri...
Just sent my latest newsletter rounding up the last week of posts to my blog: lalitm.substack.com/p/castx-as-s...
CAST(x AS STRING) casts to integer in SQLite
Plus TIL: Diátaxis: Systematic technical documentation
lalitm.substack.com
November 12, 2025 at 12:15 AM
Just sent my latest newsletter rounding up the last week of posts to my blog: lalitm.substack.com/p/castx-as-s...
After the nth time of explaining to someone why in SQLite `CAST(x as STRING)` casts to an integer, I decided to write something explaining why so I can just point people to it: lalitm.com/cast-x-as-st...
CAST(x AS STRING) casts to integer in SQLite
As an “SQLite consultant” for my local area of Google, I often have people come to me having written SQL like:
SELECT CAST(bar AS STRING) AS baz FROM foo and ask me “Why is baz always an integer?! Hav...
lalitm.com
November 3, 2025 at 1:46 PM
After the nth time of explaining to someone why in SQLite `CAST(x as STRING)` casts to an integer, I decided to write something explaining why so I can just point people to it: lalitm.com/cast-x-as-st...
Wrote up a new discovery I made of Diátaxis (diataxis.fr). It, and it's precursor, the Documentation System, have revolutionized how I think about techinical documentation
lalitm.com/til-diataxis...
lalitm.com/til-diataxis...
TIL: Diátaxis: Systematic technical documentation
A few weeks ago, I wrote about “The Documentation System” and how valuable I found it. As I dug deeper into researching how best to apply the principles outlined there, I came across Diátaxis. Written...
lalitm.com
November 3, 2025 at 1:09 AM
Wrote up a new discovery I made of Diátaxis (diataxis.fr). It, and it's precursor, the Documentation System, have revolutionized how I think about techinical documentation
lalitm.com/til-diataxis...
lalitm.com/til-diataxis...