If your standup is 30 minutes and your incident review is 10, you’re optimizing the wrong meeting.
November 13, 2025 at 7:50 PM
If your standup is 30 minutes and your incident review is 10, you’re optimizing the wrong meeting.
Most performance problems are product problems wearing a profiler.
November 13, 2025 at 6:56 PM
Most performance problems are product problems wearing a profiler.
I love reading, but never have time.
So I either listen to audiobooks while running,
or read on a Kindle before bed — to protect my eyes from blue light.
Since I’m cheap and don’t want to pay twice for the same book,
the best way to guarantee I never read it is to buy the hardcover
So I either listen to audiobooks while running,
or read on a Kindle before bed — to protect my eyes from blue light.
Since I’m cheap and don’t want to pay twice for the same book,
the best way to guarantee I never read it is to buy the hardcover
November 12, 2025 at 8:26 PM
I love reading, but never have time.
So I either listen to audiobooks while running,
or read on a Kindle before bed — to protect my eyes from blue light.
Since I’m cheap and don’t want to pay twice for the same book,
the best way to guarantee I never read it is to buy the hardcover
So I either listen to audiobooks while running,
or read on a Kindle before bed — to protect my eyes from blue light.
Since I’m cheap and don’t want to pay twice for the same book,
the best way to guarantee I never read it is to buy the hardcover
Microservices are great until your feature spans six repos and three release trains.
November 12, 2025 at 7:52 PM
Microservices are great until your feature spans six repos and three release trains.
Hiring signal: candidates who ask ‘what hurts today?’ beat candidates who ask ‘what stack?’
November 11, 2025 at 6:07 PM
Hiring signal: candidates who ask ‘what hurts today?’ beat candidates who ask ‘what stack?’
Culture isn’t what you write in Notion. It’s what survives during incidents.
November 11, 2025 at 5:39 PM
Culture isn’t what you write in Notion. It’s what survives during incidents.
The pain of microblogging:
I try to write short, sharp posts — provoke a bit, cut the fluff.
Then I get frustrated when people miss the nuance and take it literally.
Maybe I’m just not built for a format that rewards being loud over being precise.
I try to write short, sharp posts — provoke a bit, cut the fluff.
Then I get frustrated when people miss the nuance and take it literally.
Maybe I’m just not built for a format that rewards being loud over being precise.
November 10, 2025 at 6:05 PM
The pain of microblogging:
I try to write short, sharp posts — provoke a bit, cut the fluff.
Then I get frustrated when people miss the nuance and take it literally.
Maybe I’m just not built for a format that rewards being loud over being precise.
I try to write short, sharp posts — provoke a bit, cut the fluff.
Then I get frustrated when people miss the nuance and take it literally.
Maybe I’m just not built for a format that rewards being loud over being precise.
Posting here is my way of fighting imposter syndrome.
I can’t tell if I’m a grown man and a CTO of a successful startup —
or just a kid who still needs the approval of his peers and teachers more than anything else.
I can’t tell if I’m a grown man and a CTO of a successful startup —
or just a kid who still needs the approval of his peers and teachers more than anything else.
November 10, 2025 at 5:19 PM
Posting here is my way of fighting imposter syndrome.
I can’t tell if I’m a grown man and a CTO of a successful startup —
or just a kid who still needs the approval of his peers and teachers more than anything else.
I can’t tell if I’m a grown man and a CTO of a successful startup —
or just a kid who still needs the approval of his peers and teachers more than anything else.
I play a fun game with our hiring managers.
I tell them great engineers can pick up Spring fast, even without experience.
They nod in agreement — and then hire only people who’ve already used Spring.
I tell them great engineers can pick up Spring fast, even without experience.
They nod in agreement — and then hire only people who’ve already used Spring.
November 9, 2025 at 9:48 AM
I play a fun game with our hiring managers.
I tell them great engineers can pick up Spring fast, even without experience.
They nod in agreement — and then hire only people who’ve already used Spring.
I tell them great engineers can pick up Spring fast, even without experience.
They nod in agreement — and then hire only people who’ve already used Spring.
Every quick hotfix is like putting tech debt on a credit card.
It accrues interest at 28% APR.
It accrues interest at 28% APR.
November 9, 2025 at 8:40 AM
Every quick hotfix is like putting tech debt on a credit card.
It accrues interest at 28% APR.
It accrues interest at 28% APR.
Reliability tip: make recovery inevitable. Prevention is optional.
November 8, 2025 at 8:08 AM
Reliability tip: make recovery inevitable. Prevention is optional.
GenAI is amazing at getting you to 90%. The remaining 10% is the part your users notice.
November 8, 2025 at 7:58 AM
GenAI is amazing at getting you to 90%. The remaining 10% is the part your users notice.
If your cloud bill is below $10k/month, you probably shouldn’t be using AWS in the first place.
November 7, 2025 at 8:26 PM
If your cloud bill is below $10k/month, you probably shouldn’t be using AWS in the first place.
There are two wolves fighting in me:
One says we made our lives harder by starting with microservices.
The other says we’d never have had time to split the monolith once hypergrowth hit.
One says we made our lives harder by starting with microservices.
The other says we’d never have had time to split the monolith once hypergrowth hit.
November 7, 2025 at 7:53 PM
There are two wolves fighting in me:
One says we made our lives harder by starting with microservices.
The other says we’d never have had time to split the monolith once hypergrowth hit.
One says we made our lives harder by starting with microservices.
The other says we’d never have had time to split the monolith once hypergrowth hit.
If your OKRs don’t change how people spend their week, they’re just seasonal wall art.
November 6, 2025 at 7:50 PM
If your OKRs don’t change how people spend their week, they’re just seasonal wall art.
Most architecture debates aren’t about technology. They’re about who has to wake up at 3 a.m.
November 6, 2025 at 6:56 PM
Most architecture debates aren’t about technology. They’re about who has to wake up at 3 a.m.
Still can’t believe someone decided that declaring dependencies as >= 3.1.2 was a good idea — and half of the industry went, ‘yeah, that seems fine.’
November 3, 2025 at 6:05 PM
Still can’t believe someone decided that declaring dependencies as >= 3.1.2 was a good idea — and half of the industry went, ‘yeah, that seems fine.’
I love Hamburg — lived there for 5 years and always happy to visit.
But I’ll never understand how Hamburgers manage to be happier than most Germans while surviving a negative number of sunny days for six months straight.
www.skl-gluecksatlas.de/artikel/glue...
But I’ll never understand how Hamburgers manage to be happier than most Germans while surviving a negative number of sunny days for six months straight.
www.skl-gluecksatlas.de/artikel/glue...
Auf dem Zufriedenheitsplateau
Die Lebenszufriedenheit in Deutschland legt 2025 eine Verschnaufpause ein: Sie stagniert nahezu und liegt mit 7,09 Punkten auf dem soliden Niveau vor der Pandemie. Während die Menschen mit Arbeit,…
www.skl-gluecksatlas.de
November 3, 2025 at 5:19 PM
I love Hamburg — lived there for 5 years and always happy to visit.
But I’ll never understand how Hamburgers manage to be happier than most Germans while surviving a negative number of sunny days for six months straight.
www.skl-gluecksatlas.de/artikel/glue...
But I’ll never understand how Hamburgers manage to be happier than most Germans while surviving a negative number of sunny days for six months straight.
www.skl-gluecksatlas.de/artikel/glue...
Correlation or causation?
The engineers most eager to hire QAs always seem to work on the codebase with the lowest test coverage.
The engineers most eager to hire QAs always seem to work on the codebase with the lowest test coverage.
October 31, 2025 at 8:26 PM
Correlation or causation?
The engineers most eager to hire QAs always seem to work on the codebase with the lowest test coverage.
The engineers most eager to hire QAs always seem to work on the codebase with the lowest test coverage.
Every 6 months, someone suggests replacing on of our Postgres DBs with Elasticsearch because ‘the DB is heavy with search queries.’
I ask: ‘What can Elasticsearch do here that Postgres can’t?’
Five years later — still no Elasticsearch.
I ask: ‘What can Elasticsearch do here that Postgres can’t?’
Five years later — still no Elasticsearch.
October 31, 2025 at 7:53 PM
Every 6 months, someone suggests replacing on of our Postgres DBs with Elasticsearch because ‘the DB is heavy with search queries.’
I ask: ‘What can Elasticsearch do here that Postgres can’t?’
Five years later — still no Elasticsearch.
I ask: ‘What can Elasticsearch do here that Postgres can’t?’
Five years later — still no Elasticsearch.
Somehow society quietly agreed that GenAI-generated code is acceptable, but GenAI-generated images and videos are not.
Maybe it’s because code feels utilitarian — a means to an end — while art feels personal, expressive.
Maybe it’s because code feels utilitarian — a means to an end — while art feels personal, expressive.
October 30, 2025 at 6:56 PM
Somehow society quietly agreed that GenAI-generated code is acceptable, but GenAI-generated images and videos are not.
Maybe it’s because code feels utilitarian — a means to an end — while art feels personal, expressive.
Maybe it’s because code feels utilitarian — a means to an end — while art feels personal, expressive.
It’s crazy how quickly we adapt to new technology.
Not long ago, Claude Code felt like magic — pure amazement.
Now I catch myself getting annoyed when it’s wrong, saying things like,
‘Why are you so stupid, you piece of metal?’
Not long ago, Claude Code felt like magic — pure amazement.
Now I catch myself getting annoyed when it’s wrong, saying things like,
‘Why are you so stupid, you piece of metal?’
October 29, 2025 at 7:52 PM
It’s crazy how quickly we adapt to new technology.
Not long ago, Claude Code felt like magic — pure amazement.
Now I catch myself getting annoyed when it’s wrong, saying things like,
‘Why are you so stupid, you piece of metal?’
Not long ago, Claude Code felt like magic — pure amazement.
Now I catch myself getting annoyed when it’s wrong, saying things like,
‘Why are you so stupid, you piece of metal?’
Discovered The Finals last weekend, Arc Raiders the weekend before.
I thought I was too old, slow, and half-blind for competitive PvP shooters.
Turns out I am — but they’re still a blast.
I thought I was too old, slow, and half-blind for competitive PvP shooters.
Turns out I am — but they’re still a blast.
October 28, 2025 at 5:39 PM
Discovered The Finals last weekend, Arc Raiders the weekend before.
I thought I was too old, slow, and half-blind for competitive PvP shooters.
Turns out I am — but they’re still a blast.
I thought I was too old, slow, and half-blind for competitive PvP shooters.
Turns out I am — but they’re still a blast.
The AWS outage this week — like most big incidents — is a great reminder of the law of truly large numbers.
Several rare things happened at once.
Individually improbable, collectively inevitable.
At scale, even unlikely events happen often enough to matter.
Several rare things happened at once.
Individually improbable, collectively inevitable.
At scale, even unlikely events happen often enough to matter.
October 26, 2025 at 8:40 AM
The AWS outage this week — like most big incidents — is a great reminder of the law of truly large numbers.
Several rare things happened at once.
Individually improbable, collectively inevitable.
At scale, even unlikely events happen often enough to matter.
Several rare things happened at once.
Individually improbable, collectively inevitable.
At scale, even unlikely events happen often enough to matter.
It’s hard to explain what a CTO actually does.
The role keeps changing as the company grows — every year brings new challenges.
But my job still comes down to two things:
1. Hire the best engineers.
2. Make sure nothing stands in their way.
Everything else is noise.
The role keeps changing as the company grows — every year brings new challenges.
But my job still comes down to two things:
1. Hire the best engineers.
2. Make sure nothing stands in their way.
Everything else is noise.
October 25, 2025 at 7:08 AM
It’s hard to explain what a CTO actually does.
The role keeps changing as the company grows — every year brings new challenges.
But my job still comes down to two things:
1. Hire the best engineers.
2. Make sure nothing stands in their way.
Everything else is noise.
The role keeps changing as the company grows — every year brings new challenges.
But my job still comes down to two things:
1. Hire the best engineers.
2. Make sure nothing stands in their way.
Everything else is noise.