Happy 2026, and thank you for reading the newsletter! I’ve been thinking a lot about prioritization lately. I work To that end, I put together this list of prioritization anti-patterns and traps to watch out for. If we can detect and filter out a meaningful percentage of the duds and traps, it can make a big difference. “I know none of this is strategic, but if we don’t deal with it right now customers are going to feel it. Let’s just get through this sprint and we’ll talk about the bigger stuf...
Apple will finally adopt RCS in iOS 18, effectively ending a yearslong fight for feature parity between iMessage and Android. But the announcement wasn’t a celebration — you could’ve blinked and missed it. Instead of showing how RCS will make things better, Apple softly announced support for the standard and focused on all the great features coming to iMessage users — not RCS ones. Apple didn’t go over how RCS adoption will finally let iPhone and Android users send each other high-resolution pic...
In his book Ever since reading this, I’ve been seeing “friction” everywhere in software development: This list is non-exhaustive and it’s not possible to catalogue all possible sources of friction. Friction matters more over large time horizons and large scopes, simply because more things can go wrong. Friction compounds with itself: two setbacks are more than twice as bad as one setback. This is because most systems are at least (This is a factor in the controversial idea of “don’t deploy on ...
March 10, 2024 4-minute read I have been very fortunate to have both worked alongside some incredible engineering leaders, as well as lead engineering teams myself. These experiences have primarily been in the context of startups that are growing rapidly in terms of both customers and employees. The longer I have worked in these environments, the more convinced I have become that there is a singular skill that ultimately decides the success of a leader, and thus their team: As an However, when...
• 5 min read Slack works best as a collaborative workspace when everyone in a company uses it to have transparent, informative But let’s be honest, many teams rely far too often on direct messages—mostly for quick questions and answers. This creates two issues: Thankfully, there are a few basic steps every team can take to reduce notifications while keeping communication open. Here’s a quick win: You can start a DM with “hey” or with a 👋, but make it the first line of your entire message. Ge...