Recent content in Index on Dylan Fitzgerald
I dislike and distrust Substack. It’s centralized, funded by people I distrust, has an unmitigated history of giving a pass (and profiting from) to some pretty hateful content , and could very well end up another Twitter in short order. It’s also where some of my favorite sort of nerds are, particularly around the World Machines project . RSS won’t suffice; I want to be a participant. We all…
Burnout is a slippery beast. I hit burnout somewhere in early April of 2025. Maybe late March. It looked different than how we usually talk about it. I was still showing up for work. I was not putting in fewer hours. I was putting in all the hours. Some of that happened way early on, not so much the result of burning out as the removal of protective factors. I stopped going to the gym. This…
This was once a good idea: you and your colleagues would set up an optional time to collaborate or just connect over something lighter. An ad-hoc game hour, or a lecture or an industry topic, or a happy hour, or a standing mastermind. If something came up, you could scrub. Folks appreciated the chance to decompress a bit before heading home for the weekend. We should’ve caught on to this…
Download PDF version Dylan Fitzgerald dylan@dylanfitzgerald.net • Denver, CO, USA Staff Software Consulting Engineer. Design, build, upgrade, and transform well-documented and maintainable systems while facilitating effective collaboration and strategic decisionmaking among technical teams and leadership. Accolades “Giving Dylan your money is a good idea, and you can put that in a Google…
At least, for right now. You can learn anything, but you can’t learn everything . Career-adjacent learning can be one of the most compelling ways to spend your time and energy. It promises open doors and Possibility, new abilities that you can use to build grand new dreams and advance yourself, and the sheer enjoyment of gaining knowledge. It’s also bottomless and neverending. If you start…
It’s pretty easy to dismiss our own thoughts and observations as obvious. Why bother telling everyone else? It’s clear enough; they can see it for themselves. To actually voice it or write it would be pithy at best. Then, when we do open our mouths or pick up a pen, the feedback comes quickly: that was novel! or brilliant! or different! or any number of things that make it clear that,…
Willful self-injury Peace Corps volunteers returning from parts of West Africa are given the Liver Bomb, and strict instruction: continue malaria prevention, abstain from alcohol completely for weeks, and follow the protocol exactly. This potentially harmful medication is administered presumptively, without any presenting symptoms. Why? The risk is high: these volunteers spend years in rural areas…
The first time, when you spent the money to acquire it. The second time, when you spent the time to learn to use it. The third time, when you spent your team’s time getting trained to confidence. The fourth time, when you patched over the problems and inconsistencies with more money and time and attention. Was there a fifth? A sixth, a seventh? And then you paid for it one last time as you…
You can’t reinvent the universe. If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. Carl Sagan, Cosmos All of us live and work within systems, and each of those systems operates within further systems, and those within systems further yet, and so on until stardust, spirituality, and semantics. Even just a few hierarchical steps represents fractal complexity.…
It’s booking the recurring 1:1 with your new hire, or your new manager. It’s git init . or mix phx.new the_next_big_thing --live or rails new my_greatest_work . It’s picking up the phone and dialing the number of one person in the market you want to serve. It’s writing a throwaway sentence or three just to get your pen moving. More than what you’re actually…