Notes on engineering leadership, AI products, and lessons from building teams.
I built a tracker that reads my inbox and calendar, so this is my first month of the job search from data, not memory: 11 companies got to a call, 4 processes open, and a clear answer to which channel works best.
Most managers don't even offer growth. My rule: I set the bar and I offer the path. The difference between the two, three engineers, and who decides when the risk is real.
I needed one answer: what is my CV's ATS score? I spent half a day on 20+ tools, built a local one in an hour and a web version in a couple of evenings. Free, no sign-up, no backend, nothing leaves your browser.
In 2008 Google set out to learn what makes a great manager, and technical skills came last of eight. What that does and doesn't mean when the 2026 data points the other way, and what the job looked like across two companies and four products.
After two years of lecturing at an engineering school, the most common feedback was not about theory. It was: show us a real PDP. Here it is — the template, real examples per level, and the loop that keeps it alive.
About 15 coffee chats in my first month, around 30 by the end of probation, more than 60 by the time I left. Why that habit did more for me than any onboarding doc, and why it matters even more outside your company.
Product engineer is not a different profession. It is an engineer who asks a different question. Here is the four-stage path I have watched work, and the checklist that trains it.
A weekly changelog template helps engineers capture impact while it is fresh, build better self-review notes, and walk into performance reviews with evidence.