I spent six months writing code that I thought was good. My process: Build a feature Test it locally Ship it to production Move on to the next feature What I never did: Get feedback on the quality of my code. The result: I got very good at writing bad code quickly. Then my company hired Elena, a senior engineer. Her first week, she instituted a new rule: “No code gets merged without a code review from someone senior.” ...
Software engineers love design patterns. Factory, Observer, Strategy-we have names for recurring solutions to recurring problems. Management has patterns too. Not organizational structures or methodologies, but specific, repeatable practices that work across different contexts. Here are patterns I’ve seen work in startups, scale-ups, and enterprises. Pattern 1: The Written Decision Record Intent: Make decisions visible, reversible, and learnable. Context: Teams waste time relitigating old decisions, or worse, making decisions without knowing why previous choices were made. ...
For six months, I wrote every SQL query like this: SELECT * FROM users WHERE id = 123; SELECT star. Get all the columns. Always. My reasoning: “I might need all the data. Better to have it than query again.” This worked fine for my bootcamp projects. Tables had 5 columns. Performance didn’t matter. Then I joined a company with real production data. My first code review: Senior Engineer: “Why are you selecting all columns?” ...
I had just learned about microservices. They were amazing. Scalable. Independent. Deployable separately. The future of architecture. So naturally, I rewrote my side project as microservices. The project: A simple todo app. Maybe 100 users. What I built: 7 separate services Docker containers for each Kubernetes for orchestration API gateway Service mesh Distributed logging Service discovery Time to build: 3 weeks Time to build as a monolith: 2 days My manager saw it and laughed. ...
I wanted to get better at writing. My plan: “I’ll write every day.” What happened: Day 1: Wrote 500 words. Felt great. Day 2: Forgot to write until 11 PM. Rushed 200 words. Day 3: Too tired. Skipped. Day 4: “I’ll write tomorrow.” Day 7: Hadn’t written since Day 2. The problem: I relied on willpower and memory. Willpower is finite. Memory is unreliable. Then I built a system. The system: ...
I spent three hours last night replaying a conversation from five years ago. The conversation: A technical decision I made that turned out to be wrong. What I was doing: “I should have seen this coming. Why didn’t I research more? Everyone probably thinks I’m incompetent. What if I make a similar mistake again? Am I even good at this?” Three hours. No answers. Just anxiety. This wasn’t reflection. This was rumination. ...
Three years into my career, I had an identity crisis. The specialist path: “Master React. Become the React expert everyone comes to.” The generalist path: “Learn everything. Frontend, backend, DevOps, design, product.” Everyone had advice: Senior Dev A: “Specialize. Companies pay for deep expertise.” Senior Dev B: “Be a generalist. Adaptability is the future.” Recruiter: “Be T-shaped. Deep in one area, broad across many.” Me: “What the hell does T-shaped actually mean?” ...
I spent my first year as a developer learning from the wrong people. Not bad people. Just the wrong people for where I was and where I wanted to go. My learning sources: YouTube tutorials from people who’d been coding for 6 months Reddit advice from anonymous strangers A bootcamp instructor who’d switched careers 18 months prior Other junior developers at my skill level What I learned: How to copy-paste solutions. How to feel productive while making minimal progress. How to stay stuck in tutorial hell. ...
The Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server represents a paradigm shift in how AI systems interact with tools and data sources. As we move deeper into the age of AI-powered development, understanding MCP and its implications is crucial for developers, architects, and technology leaders. What is MCP Server? MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open protocol developed by Anthropic that standardizes how AI assistants connect to and interact with external tools, data sources, and services. Think of it as the USB standard for AI-a universal way for AI models to plug into any tool or service without needing custom integrations for each combination. ...
You don’t need venture capital to steal good ideas. Here are battle-tested practices from exceptional companies that you can implement tomorrow, regardless of your team size or industry. From Amazon: The Narrative Memo What They Do: Amazon banned PowerPoint in 2004. Every meeting for important decisions starts with 20 minutes of silence, reading a six-page memo written in full sentences. What to Steal: You don’t need six pages. Start with one page. The format: ...