You know that you need better visibility into your organization. Now it's time to build the system to make it real. This extended worksheet walks you through self-guided exercises to map your Signals, Conversations & Chats, and Judgment, identify your biggest visibility gaps, and design a weekly review practice you can start this week. Includes a 30-day implementation path, bonus deep-dives on…
You've built observability for your software. But how well can you actually see what's going on in your organization? Most engineering leaders are monitoring their orgs (reacting when something breaks) rather than observing them (having systems that surface what you need to know). The OO11y framework gives you a practical system for organizational observability: three pillars (Signals,…
"We Were Meant to Be" is about the state of the tech industry, how we arrived here, and how to be human, and a human in tech, in these times of change and uncertainty - and where to go from here. In this post, you’ll find the books, poems, and other sources I mentioned. This keynote was presented at a software engineering conference in May 2026.
It's been a little while I wrote anything to you here. Berlin, my home, is finally coming out of what felt like an extra-long winter, and everything is looking alive again. (Including me.) I'm sharing some notes below about what I'm hearing is bugging tech people & leaders right now. I would love to hear from you: What's bugging you? And how do you cope?
I'm preparing a keynote about the crisis that the tech industry and humanity at large are in, and how to navigate the uncertainty that comes with it. In this post, I’m trying something new: Documenting the whole messy, nonlinear process as I go, including my work log, books and other resources, and all. Pull up a chair if you'd like to watch.
GenAI tools are changing what software engineers do day to day—but not in the ways most executives think. In this co-authored piece with Teal Bauer, we cut through the hype to examine what's actually happening: where these tools genuinely help, what humans still do better, and why many engineers are experiencing an identity crisis. Plus, tactical advice for engineering leaders navigating this…
You've got a great idea for a tech talk, but your submissions keep getting rejected. The problem is (in most cases) not your topic—it's how you're representing it in your abstract. After reviewing thousands of talk abstracts during Calls for Papers (CfPs) as a program committee member and getting 60+ of my own talks accepted at conferences worldwide, I've seen the same patterns over and over…
In our work as engineering leaders, there aren't a lot of places where the way that we lead becomes super widely visible to a lot of people. Maybe you give a presentation at some point to your entire company or at a conference. A while ago, though, I was able to watch someone lead who made me really curious about how he does it. He leads in a very public way. I watched a conductor leading an…
We've all been there - That moment when you know it's time to have that conversation you've been dreading. The one that makes your stomach clench. The one you would rather run away from. So, how do you handle these conversations? How do you keep it from becoming such a big thing in the first place? This episode is a deep dive into what makes some conversations feel difficult: being torn between…
