Writing
Essays
Longer thinking on how software organizations actually work — and how to change them without breaking them.
- Unwritten Rules
A short list of things that are okay — declining meetings, protecting deep work, disagreeing with leaders — that healthy teams eventually say out loud.
- Thoughts on Technical Debt and Managing Legacy Tech
Avoid referring to technical debt as a thing, especially to business partners and stakeholders. We evolve technology; we don't rebuild and rearchitect without solving a specific customer problem.
- Elevated Privileges for Just-In-Time Access
A novel approach for granting engineering teams just-in-time access to production database environments — shipped in days, with a slash command.
- Culture Change and Embracing Progress
Part of a note I sent to my team near the end of 2017 to thank them for the progress we'd made during the most challenging transition the business had seen in years.