Thoughtful writing for developers
A minimalistic blog platform featuring articles on programming, technology, productivity, and career growth for modern developers.

The War Story Tangent That Lost Me a Staff Engineer Offer
I've watched senior engineers bomb system design interviews for 2 years. Your production experience might actually be the problem. Here's why.

I Kept Failing System Design Interviews After 8 Years of Experience. Here's Why.
8 years of building distributed systems didn't help me pass interviews. I was answering from habit, not strategy. Here's the RADAR method that fixed it.

I Got Rejected for Staff Twice. Here's What Finally Worked.
Got rejected for staff engineer twice before figuring out what committees actually evaluate. Here's the 18-month timeline and packet strategy that worked.

I Built Production Systems for a Decade and Still Froze at the Whiteboard
After 10 years building production systems, I kept freezing in interviews. Here's the 7-phase framework that finally fixed my whiteboard panic.

How I Got My Staff Engineer Promotion in 90 Days (After Stalling for 2 Years)
I stalled at senior for 2 years before treating my promotion like a 90-day project. Here's the exact audit, evidence, and sponsor strategy that worked.

Why I Switched from Notion to Obsidian (And What I Miss)
I tested 7 PKM tools for coding work. Obsidian won for its local Markdown files and Git support, but Notion still does one thing better.

What 11 PM Debugging Sessions Taught Me About Taking Notes
After months testing PKM tools during real debugging sessions, here's what actually works for engineers (and it's not about pretty pages).

We Keep Arguing About Cursor vs Copilot. So I Actually Measured It.
I tracked 100 PRs over 90 days. Copilot won on acceptance rate, but Cursor's code needed fewer rewrites. Here's what the numbers actually showed.

I Was Already Doing Staff-Level Work. Why I Still Failed the Interview.
I'd been doing staff-level work for months but bombed my first interview. Here's the 90-day prep system I built after sitting on promotion committees.
