Is It Time To Version Observability? (Signs Point To Yes)

Recently we learned that Google spent $2.7 billion to re-hire a single AI researcher who had left to start his own company. As Charlie Brown would say: “Good grief.” 🙄 This is an (incredibly!) extreme example. But back in the halcyon days of the zero interest rate phenomenon (ZIRP), smaller versions of this tale played […]

Every year or so, some tech CEO does something massively stupid, like declaring “No politics at work!”, or “Trump voters are oppressed and live in fear!”, and we all get a good pained laugh over how out of touch and lacking in self-awareness they are. We hear a lot about the howlers, and much less […]

I recently joined a startup to run an engineering org of about 40 engineers. My title is VP Engineering. However, I have been having lots of ongoing conflict with the CEO (a former engineer) around whether or not I am allowed to have or hire any dedicated engineering managers. Right now, the engineers are clustered […]

Original title: “Why Should You (Or Anyone) Become An Engineering Manager?” The first piece I ever wrote about engineering management, The Engineer/Manager Pendulum, was written as a love letter to a friend of mine who was unhappy at work. He was an engineering director at a large and fast-growing startup, where he had substantially built […]

This is based on an internal quip doc I wrote up about careful communication in the context of rebuilding trust. I got a couple requests to turn it into a blog post for sharing purposes; here you go.🌈✨🥂 In this doc I mention Christine, my wonderful, brilliant cofounder and CEO, and the time (years ago) […]