Insights on Strategy, Culture, and Technology
Welcome to my collection of insights on building better products, teams, and technology. The posts here are guided by a core philosophy: the most effective solutions are found by understanding the first principles that govern how systems—both human and digital—truly work.
My goal is to provide clear, actionable analysis that cuts through the noise and helps leaders solve their most pressing challenges. Here are a few of my most comprehensive posts to get you started.
Foundational Posts
A Leader's Guide to Cognitive Biases in Product Design
A breakdown of 10 key cognitive biases and how understanding them is a strategic advantage for building empathetic and successful products.
Read More →The V1 Stack Gets You Started. It Won't Get You to Scale.
The simple tech stack that launched your product will eventually become a liability. A look at the expanded toolset required to build a resilient, scalable system.
Read More →Agile's Principles Are Timeless. Its Ceremonies Aren't.
Why the core principles of Agile are more important than ever, but the rigid ceremonies of Scrum often need to evolve for modern engineering teams.
Read More →All Insights by Category
Culture
- The High Cost of Low Trust: Moving Beyond Fear-Based Procedures
- Efficiency Isn't Effectiveness: Why 100% Capacity Creates Brittle Teams
- The Hidden Costs of "Heroics" in Engineering Teams
- The Unseen Engine: Why Patience is a Tech Leader's Most Powerful (Yet Underrated) Trait
- Transparency & Alignment: Why Silos Kill Strategy and Values Matter
- If You Can't Deploy on a Friday, You Have a Systems Problem
- The Failure is Never With the Person, It's With the System
- The High Cost of False Urgency
- The Goal Isn't to Do Agile. It's to Be Agile.
- Collaborators, Not Contractors: The True Definition of a Team
- The Expert's Paradox: Why Knowing What You Don't Know is a Superpower
- The Two Executive Mindsets That Silently Break Engineering Teams
- To Scale Quality, Build Systems, Not Silos
- The Compounding Debt of a 'Quick Fix' Culture
- Metrics as a Flashlight, Not a Hammer
- Engineers Are Your Allies, Not Your Adversaries
- The High Cost of 'Not Invented Here'
- The Values on the Wall vs. The Actions in the Hall
Strategy
- From User Story to User *Problem*: The Power of Team Communication
- The Scaling Trap: Evolving Beyond the MVP Mindset
- Beyond Tooltips: Asking "Why?" to Solve User Learning Challenges
- Move Fast and Build Things: A Modern Strategy for Innovation
- Analysis Over Comfort: Challenging the 'Old Isn't Bad' Defense
- Your Product Is Your Org Chart: Seeing Silos Through Your Customer's Eyes
- The Brutal Honesty of Mobile Development: Why You Can't Stand Still
- The Rendering Ping Pong Match: Choosing the Right Tool for the Job
- Sitting Still is Not a Strategy
- The Real Engineering Work: Evolving a Successful Product
- Your Budget Is Your Strategy
- If It's Important Enough to Do Fast, It's Important Enough to Do Well
- The 'One More Feature' Playbook
- Your AI Bill is a Tax on Inexperience
- Halloween, Levers, and Observability
- Your Goal is to Be Forgotten: Designing for User Efficiency
- The Unexpected ROI of a Curious Mind
- Are You Building Features, or Just Adding Buttons?
- The Project That Never Starts
- The Pathfinder's Burden: Why Being First Isn't Always Best
- The Echo of Hype: What Smart Speakers Taught Us About AI Interfaces
Technology
- Accessibility Isn't a Feature, It's a Mindset (and Good Design)
- Scaling Check: Don't Assume the Tech Fundamentals Are Covered
- One Productivity Boost of AI in Engineering (It's Not Just Code Generation)
- UI Performance is Often a Series of Clever Illusions (and That's OK!)
- First Look: Testing Google's AI Development Agent, Jules
- AI is Not a Magic Wand for Broken Systems
- Every Developer Gets an Assistant: The Real Impact of AI on Engineers
- Accessibility Now Means AI-Optimized
- Your Backend is Fast, Your App is Slow. Here's Why.
- Innovation in the Age of 'Vibes'
- The Breakthrough Is Never 'More of the Same'
- AI and the Policy of Most Privilege
- Design Patterns Are a History Book, Not a Rule Book
- The 350kB Question: A Litmus Test for Frontend Performance
- The V1 Stack Gets You Started. It Won't Get You to Scale.
- The Chatbot Fallacy: Don't Replace Your Forms with Conversations
- The Unseen Work of a Humble Button: Creativity vs. Accessibility
- When a Report Kills Your Revenue: The Case for Decoupling
- Engineering Isn't Vibes: The AI Accuracy Problem
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