For a week I was unstoppable. I'd describe what I wanted, the code appeared, everything worked. The pace was absurd. The feedback loop so tight it almost didn't feel real. Then it didn't. The code got messy. The system got harder to reason about.
I wrote recently about how AI turned me into a bad manager. This is the why behind it. And the way out. The cost of trying dropped to zero. That's the trap. There used to be a filter between idea and action. It was called effort. When building
All these AI tools make it feel like you can do anything. Not "ship a little faster" anything. More like "spawn 10 agents and have a swarm doing everything" anything. Debugging. Refactoring. Tests. Docs. Research. All of it, in parallel. And that power is real. But
One of the quieter struggles of leading engineering teams is that the time to practice the craft shrinks. You're in meetings. You're reviewing designs. You're hiring, mentoring, unblocking. When you get home, there's family. The long, uninterrupted sessions you had earlier in
A year ago, I wrote about skiing with my 9-year-old (now 10) and how the experience mirrored so much of what I see in the workplace. The fearless kid. The cautious adult. The tension between "just go" and "learn the basics first." A year
I am so jealous of modern web development. Back in the day, when we coded by hand with just a text editor. We solved problems by thinking. Trial and error, not just Googling. As the web became more in use and people started sharing, and we were lucky if we
Ever been dealt a "fantasy" product design and thought, "What planet did this come from?" Yep, me too. I used to be that engineer, scrambling to meet insane deadlines with caffeine as my co-pilot. Frustrated, I began to push back, offering alternative routes and questioning
Almost two years ago, Aereo (a company I was proud to be part of) suffered a very public defeat at the highest federal court in the United states. So when Chet Kanojia, someone I view as somewhat a mentor, asked me to join Starry with the same core team, it
Empathetic engineering leader driving digital innovation through user-first thinking. Adaptable, curious, and obsessed with building what matters.
One of the quieter struggles of leading engineering teams is that the time to practice the craft shrinks. You're in meetings. You're reviewing designs. You're hiring, mentoring, unblocking. When you get home, there's family. The long, uninterrupted sessions you had earlier in
A year ago, I wrote about skiing with my 9-year-old (now 10) and how the experience mirrored so much of what I see in the workplace. The fearless kid. The cautious adult. The tension between "just go" and "learn the basics first." A year
Most AI agents are trained to agree: same dataset, same goals, same outputs. But humans don't work like that. We grow by encountering disagreement, adapting, and evolving our perspectives. I'm working on a new approach I've coined: Dialectic Agent Networks (or D.A.N.
Do We Still Need Human-Readable Code in an AI Future? For 70+ years we’ve climbed the readability ladder—from raw opcodes to assembly, to C, to Python and TypeScript. Every step was a concession to human limits: short-term memory, syntax fatigue, cognitive load. But what happens when
AI made it easy. Tasks that once took hours (writing code, drafting content, even debugging) now take minutes. But here's the uncomfortable question: Did we use that time to get better? Or just to do the same things faster? As someone who started programming with books, print statements,
Are younger generations too focused on fun? Or did they just learn from watching older generations burn out? Growing up, they saw hustle glorified at the expense of health. So they chose something different—intuition, flexibility, and boundaries. But sometimes, that intuition overlooks the depth that experience brings. On the
Remember your first time. That moment when you can finally tell someone else what to do. At first, it feels great. A happy moment. But it quickly turns. You delegate a task you know you could finish in minutes. You remind yourself, it is about learning. You tear yourself away
On this Masters Friday, I can't help but share my excitement. The Masters is my favorite tournament, and it always reignites my passion to get out on the course. Golf has beaten me up over the years, and for someone who likes winning as much as I do,
I have been asked how I motivate engineers. And before I answer, there is one thing that is a bigger motivator: what we are building. If engineers can have empathy for the customer, can walk in their shoes, understand their pain, and how they can help, I will already have
Today I spent 4 hours taking out a memory card from a trip 3 years ago that I deemed the trip that would "resurrect my DSLR" and get me back into photography. In 3 years, I could not find the time... absurd. But it's true, kinda
This year, my 9-year-old and I set out on a skiing journey. We wanted to brave the cold, spend quality time together, and challenge ourselves. Over 20 years ago, I was a decent snowboarder, so I thought, “How hard could skiing be?” Besides, I had tried it before.
I am so jealous of modern web development. Back in the day, when we coded by hand with just a text editor. We solved problems by thinking. Trial and error, not just Googling. As the web became more in use and people started sharing, and we were lucky if we
