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Essays

Longer form reflections on leadership, career, and the parts of work nobody really prepares you for.

The Job Market Is Rough Right Now. Here's How to Not Let It Break You.

Applications go into a void. Roles get pulled mid-process. Recruiters ghost you after three rounds. If you're in a job search right now, the market is genuinely hard. Taking every rejection personally will break you before it gets better.

When You've Hit the Ceiling and You Know It

There's a specific kind of frustration that doesn't come from bad work or a bad team. Everything looks fine on paper. But something is off. Here's how to recognize when you've genuinely hit a growth ceiling at your company, and what to do about it.

You Already Know What to Do

Over-consulting on decisions isn't collaboration. It's a leader quietly outsourcing their job to a group chat. Here's how to tell the difference between needing information and needing courage, and why your team can already tell which one it is.

Why the Better Engineer Did Not Get the Promotion

The engineers who keep getting promoted aren't always the best coders in the room. They're the ones who can walk into a meeting with three competing opinions and a skeptical VP and walk out with a decision everyone can live with. Most engineers treat that like a skill that belongs to someone else.

The Role Won

The traits that earn someone a promotion are often the ones the new role quietly punishes. Organizations pull people toward the center. If you don't design the role to preserve what made someone exceptional, the role will reshape them into someone safer and less effective.

Good Work Doesn't Speak for Itself

Glue work keeps teams functional but rarely makes it into promotion conversations. The engineers who advance aren't always the best coders. They're the ones who learned how to make their actual impact visible before the committee meets.

Most IT Management Advice Was Written by People Who Have Never Lost a Senior Engineer

Most IT management advice was written by people who've never been in the room when a principal engineer says they're leaving. The gap between that advice and reality is where most technical management falls apart.

Your Engineers Are Scared of AI. Here Is What to Do About It.

Your engineers are not just worried about AI. They are worried about what it means for their future. Ignoring that fear will not make it disappear. Leaders need to talk about it openly and help teams adapt.

Every Yes Has A Cost

Most tech leads do not have a capacity problem. They have a yes problem. Every new priority has a cost, and teams that never say no eventually stop shipping meaningful work.

The Calendar is Not Neutral

Most leadership burnout does not come from hard decisions. It comes from constant fragmentation. Meetings, Slack, escalations, and endless context switching slowly dismantle your ability to think deeply enough to lead well.