Nobody likes being micromanaged. In an ideal world, people would trust you to deliver, and you’d be left in peace to do your work. But in reality, software development is a black box for many. To them, engineers look like magicians, and the magic seems slow and expensive. Founders

In the early days, technical co-founders were used to shipping fast. It meant SSH’ing into the production server and pushing straight to production. It got them to product-market fit. But now there’s a team in place, and suddenly everything feels slower. So they revert to old habits. Skip

By now, product teams understand the importance of user research. We know we need to talk to users, understand their problems, and avoid falling into the trap of “build it and they will come.” But even with sound research and a solid understanding of the problem, solutioning can get clouded,

When founders come to me frustrated by the slow pace of development, the first thing I look at is the number of tasks they have in progress. Creating focus for your development team is the first thing you should do if you feel the team is not delivering. Set a

This won’t take weeks, I know a library that can do this. I’ll have it implemented by tomorrow. It’s a familiar line. Engineers say it often, especially when speaking to founders looking for speed. It’s appealing: efficient, pragmatic, and backed by the logic that there’s

In complex products involving multiple teams or vendors, troubleshooting often turns into a delicate dance. Everyone has their priorities. When something breaks, the first instinct is to react defensively and protect your domain. There were occasions where we asked a third party whether there was an issue on their end,

Have you ever had a plumber come to your house, take one look at the pipes, and say, “What on earth did the last guy do?” Software engineers often have the same reaction when looking at an unfamiliar codebase. And all too often, their next move is: “This needs a

Too often, I see founders outsourcing their software development to a freelancer or an agency—only to let them create infrastructure on their accounts. At the start, it seems convenient. But down the road, it can be a painful mistake. It doesn’t matter if you’re using AWS, Azure,

My default approach to meetings is to shield engineers from them. Engineers hate interruptions that break their flow. However, having engineers present in one type of meeting can save development time. In smaller teams I work with, we write feature passports with the client to keep meetings minimal. The idea