Reflections
Selected essays
Writing on technology, product judgment, design, coordination, and the systems beneath modern work.
Product-fit vs Pricing-fit in a tough market
Built a product people said they would use but would not pay for. Product fit without pricing fit.
Shifting up the AI workflow gears
Skilled programmers use AI agents differently than non-technical folks. It comes down to what gear you are running in.
Human Centered Software Engineering
A paper from design school on why software engineering should take more from HCI when thinking about users.
Archive
Pricing 402 services for agents
Once agents can pay over 402, the harder problem is figuring out what to charge them.
The speed of money
Why does sending money internationally still take a week, and what stablecoins change about that.
Meta-content for the short attention span
On TBPN and ESLCS, and how the content around the content sometimes works better than the main event.
APIs vs Forward Deployed Engineers
APIs as a product never made full sense to me. The upside is in understanding how customers actually use them.
Programming changed this year
Cursor and Claude changed how I write code this year. Great at the small stuff, still weak on systems thinking.
Wrap or be wrapped
NFT royalties were optional on the standard, and wrapping tokens let traders bypass every rule built into them.
10x community member
The 10x engineer idea shows up in web3 communities too, and the rewards rarely match who actually did the work.
Ideas vs Credentials
In web3 you often only know someone by their ideas, not their background. That has upsides and downsides.
FIFA and the elite division
What reaching elite division in FIFA taught me about the habits at the top of a very popular game.
Cheaters buy skins too
On why game studios struggle to ban cheaters when cheaters are also some of their biggest spenders.
Freedom
On leaving my job, giving up the H1B, and choosing freedom over the path of least resistance.
Decline of Academia
On whether the most interesting work still happens in academia, or if that shifted to people building in industry.
Watching Layoffs
Watching layoffs happen at Expedia and how large orgs cut by team rather than by talent.
Testing Ideas Globally
Testing traveller UX across cultures when pricing and product details are coded differently in each market.
On Teamwork
Building software is more like a team sport than a rockstar solo act.
My Design Philosophy
An attempt to articulate what design means to me and how I approach it as a practice.
To Design is to Choose
I believe to design is to choose, and what you design reflects every choice along the way.
Ideas
Ideas in design projects come in bunches, dry up for a while and then reappear.
Protocols in Meetings
No one says that meetings were the best part of a project. They are not, the act of doing and creating is. Meetings should be short and high-intensity
Flavors of Design
Design is like an ice cream shop - everyone has their own flavor, and that diversity in perspective is what makes great design teams
Beyond the Wall
The complexities of any project only surface when there is a contextual study of their users
Limits to Imagination
Why do some computer programmers develop amazing software or new concepts, while some are stuck with basic programming work?
What is programming really about?
On what programming is really about, through a Mark Zuckerberg swimming pool interview question.