#engineering
16 posts
- The 10-Minute AI POC That Becomes a 10-Month Nightmare
Five lines of Python and an API key produce a working demo. The gap between that demo and a production system contains failure modes the prototype...
- OCode: Why I Built My Own Claude Code (and Why You Might Too)
OCode: Why I Built My Own Claude Code (and Why You Might Too): A few nights ago, I opened my Anthropic invoice.
- The Optimization Trap: Why Technical Founders Self-Sabotage
For every startup that dies from technical debt, ten more die from trying to prevent it too early.
- Agent Infrastructure Starts With Identity, Policy, and Audit
Autonomous agents need a control plane: identity, policy, secrets, and audit trails that make delegated work governable.
- Engineering Recognition Through Evals: My Technical Journey Building Shout
Building an LLM-powered evaluation system to measure whether engineering recognition is specific, accurate, and connected to impact.
- Chrome Extension for Jira Titles: A Developer's Journey
I kept writing terrible JIRA titles during customer calls. So I built a Chrome extension to fix it.
- Engineering and Product Collaboration: Breaking Down Silos
'This isn't what we asked for.' Five words that strike dread into every engineering team. Five words that signal a fundamental breakdown in the...
- Keep Your Hands Dirty: Why Executives Who Stop Doing The Work Destroy Companies
The Executive Trap I've seen it happen a dozen times: A brilliant engineer becomes CTO and suddenly decides their job is 'managing the engineering...
- The Homelab That Replaced My Cloud Bill
I spent $2,000 on hardware that now handles workloads that would cost $500/month on AWS. The cloud is a tax on people who cannot be bothered to learn...
- The Security Tool Comparison Problem
Every security tool comparison site is funded by the vendors being evaluated. This creates a specific, structural problem for security teams making...
- The Perfection Paralysis: Why Moving Too Carefully Kills Startups
The most valuable code I've ever written was messy, quick, and written in response to an immediate customer need.
- The Abstraction Trap: When Clean Code Goes Wrong
The most insidious form of technical debt does not come from rushed code or tight deadlines - it comes from overly clever abstractions built too early.
- Quality: The Foundation of Sustainable Growth
Quality in the wrong places will kill your startup faster than no quality at all. The question is not how much quality, but quality where.
- Your Security Team Cannot Keep Up With AI
Security review cycles designed for deterministic software are blocking AI adoption. The teams that survive will automate guardrails instead of...
- Tech Debt Velocity: Measuring the True Cost of Shortcuts
The most expensive software I've ever written was code I wrote 'quickly.' Not because it was complex, but because I wrote it with the intention of...
- The Integration Tax: What Nobody Tells You About Building Modern Software
Every integration you add is a long-term commitment you're not budgeting for. The technical implementation is the easy part.