Observations from building software and companies, plus the occasional life experiences.
To my friends and colleagues, I’m known for staying calm under pressure. Stress hardly seems to faze me, and I carry an air of confidence that sometimes borders on cockiness (though no one’s ever said I’ve crossed that line). But beneath this composed exterior is a whirlwind of thoughts and emotions that I’ve learned to process internally. In the coming months, I’ll be embarking on a journey I’ve…
In my sophomore year at university, I was introduced to test-driven development (TDD). This approach was mentioned frequently throughout my studies and was encouraged in various classes. During my career at Microsoft, I was one of the few engineers in my organization who regularly used TDD. Interestingly, another was my officemate, Bill. Despite this, I wasn't particularly strict about it.…
When I joined Brex, I didn't expect to stay for more than a couple of years. Best case, I thought I'd last 2-3 years before the company outgrew my abilities and brought in someone from a Magnificent Seven (née FAANG) company who really knew what they were doing. Yet, nearly six years later, I handed the engineering reins to my dear friend James . Senior-level transitions aren't often discussed.…
I’m pretty happy with how this site turned out, considering I'm far from a frontend wizard, or even much of a developer these days. Most of my commits in recent years were during Brex's annual hackathon, Brexathon. My last production pull request was a simple change in April 2022, and the last time I actually shipped anything substantial was in October 2019, when we were all hustling to launch…
Seattle is a city full of terrific restaurants with amazing food. And after living there for four years, I'm pretty happy that I probably ate at ~80% of them. But that means that there's still probably over a dozen places that are really tasty which I didn't try out. Even in my last few weeks living there, I was finding little gems, in the form of lunch trucks around the city or small places in…
This week was my first week at Stripe , and so far it's been a thrilling experience, even though my mind is still coping with the overload of information it's been subjected to. The people have been extremely friendly and welcoming. The office is both great and in a great location. The food is tasty and the beer selection is spectacular. I wanted to outline some of the details of my on-boarding…
Back in high school and college I used to write. Sometimes quite a lot. Sometimes only for myself and sometimes I would publish them publicly. The things I wrote were varied: thoughts, ideas, speeches, articles, reviews, technology etc. After I joined Microsoft I wasn't writing as much. I stopped doing public speaking, so that dropped off completely. Thoughts and ideas were the first to go. And…