blog
Blog
Writing on scaling teams, AI adoption, and engineering leadership.
2026
- Why Most Companies Can’t Answer “Is AI Working?”
Most companies can tell you how many AI licenses they bought. Far fewer can tell you what changed because of them.
- Your AI-Built MVP Works. Now What?
Three things to add before you hire your first engineer
- Your First Engineering Hire Will Make or Break You
Why your first engineering hire matters more than your next funding round
- Are You Supposed to Have a Career in Tech in 2026?
Two engineers asked me the same question last week: is a tech career still worth it in 2026? Here is how I answered.
2025
- Tiny Teams Aren’t New. We Just Forgot.
Everyone talks about AI and the rise of small teams as if it’s a brand-new thing. It’s not.
- The Only Metric That Matters When Everything Else Goes to Hell
A quick guide to heartbeat metrics (and why your dashboards won’t save you)
- AI Strategy for CTOs: A Practical Guide to Getting Started
Hosted models, clean data, clear goals. The practical AI strategy that doesn't need a research team or a roadmap deck.
- Balancing Intuition and Data in Product Decision-Making
Data is not always smarter than experienced judgment. Three rules for knowing which to trust on a given product decision.
- Continuous Discovery for Developers
Developers shouldn't wait for product to hand them specs. How engineers can be part of discovery without becoming product managers.
2024
- Are you planning your next year SaaS strategy?
A good place to start? Use the Eisenhower Matrix. This framework helps you categorize tasks and initiatives based on urgency and importance, making it easier to prioritize, delegate, or eliminate them
- Why keep estimating software development?
Estimates set a clear focus. Without them, teams can fall into the trap of endless tweaks and refinements.
- Buy vs Build: How to Make the Right Choice for Your Business
When your company needs new software or to replace an existing one, this framework will help you make the right decision.
- How I Built a Slack App Using ChatGPT – all without writing a single line of code.
I built a working Slack bot that detects PII in messages without writing any code. The prompts, the steps, and what AI-assisted shipping actually looks like.
- Documenting Decisions Through RFCs
When your engineering team grows past 15 people, technical decisions stop happening in the room. RFCs are how you keep them visible without slowing them down.
- Sustainable Software Architecture: 3 Quick Wins
Why companies are quietly moving back out of the cloud, and three architectural decisions that make your bill predictable enough to plan around.
- Continuous Delivery is not a technical aspect
Continuous delivery is a business call, not an engineering one. Your team's release frequency is set by leadership's appetite for risk, not by your CI pipeline.
- Simplifying the Complex: The Secret to a Small/Mid-Size Startup Data Warehouse
Skip Redshift. Skip the data mesh. The serverless setup that gets a small startup to real analytics without three months of platform work.
- 3 Key Indicators for Better Planning: Impact, Effort, and Risk as Pillars of Shared Understanding
A simple impact/effort/risk matrix to decide what your engineering team should build next, and what to say no to.
- Building an Engineering Career Path in Startups: My Take on It
How to build career levels at a startup that don't feel like big-company levels in disguise. Pillars, principles, and the trap of copying a corporate framework.
2023
- The Human Element in Organizational Success
Nada Kalo Ćukalović on why 'just be more open' is the wrong instruction for teams that don't feel safe, and what to do instead.
- Your Team Hits Every Sprint Goal and Nothing Moves Forward
OKRs die in the spreadsheet between the kickoff and the review. Three lightweight check-in patterns that catch off-track key results in week four, not week twelve.
- The First 90 Days in a New Role
Monica, Head of Engineering at Beyond, on how she runs the first 90 days in a new company. The framework, the diagnostic, and the mistake she stopped making.
- Improving Team Collaboration with Strengths Mapping
CliftonStrengths and a 15-minute exercise to find out how your teammates actually want to be managed. Useful for any team that has hit the 'why don't they just talk to each other' wall.
- Coaching: is now the perfect moment to take that first step?
Stephan, an executive coach with 25 years in tech, on when career coaching is worth the time and when it is not.
- The Nine-Box Grid for Talent Management
How to evaluate engineers on more than one axis. The nine-box framework for matching development plans to where someone actually is in their career.
- What “doing a good job” really means as a Leader?
Your team is shipping every week and you still don't know if you're doing a good job. The difference between efficiency and effectiveness, and which one matters for leaders.