Hello Reader, A few months ago, I spoke with an engineer who described a design review he could not stop thinking about. It was a standard meeting. A dozen people on the call, a couple of senior voices leading the conversation and a solution that already felt decided before anyone joined. Halfway through, he noticed a scaling issue that would only show up during edge cases. He thought about bringing it up then he looked at the room. A senior engineer had already said it looked good. The...
9 days ago • 2 min read
Hello Reader, I spoke with an old friend last week. He told me he spent 4 years as a senior engineer watching less experienced engineers get to the next level ahead of him. His designs were cleaner. His solutions were faster. His technical reviews were thorough. But he kept getting the same feedback: "You need to be more visible and strategic" He thought that meant talking more in meetings. He was wrong. What he lacked was influence at work The Real Problem Here’s what actually happens when...
17 days ago • 1 min read
Hello Reader, Understanding this distinction would have saved me years of frustration in my engineering career. Every organization has two kinds of engineers. There are functional engineers and there are vital engineers. Most people never realize this, and it keeps them stuck far longer than necessary. I learned this the hard way, after confusing output with outcome for a long time. At first glance, functional engineers look impressive. They deliver tickets, close incidents, follow processes...
24 days ago • 2 min read
I’ve spent the last few years studying how influence actually works inside organizations, especially among engineers, ICs, and systems thinkers. Not the loud kind. Not the political kind. Not the manipulative kind. The kind that compounds quietly. Below are 26 influence rules I’m following going into 2026 and beyond. Principles for building credibility, trust, and authority without losing yourself in the process. Avoid unforced credibility errors. Most influence is lost through small,...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
The Five Ls: A Better Way to Plan Your Year 2025 is officially coming to a close. While most people are dusting off their tired list of New Year’s resolutions (lose weight, save money, read more books), I want to share something far more powerful with you. It’s called The Five Ls I first learned about this framework from Dominic Price, a work futurist at Atlassian, through leadership expert Andrea Clarke. After running it myself, I can confidently say this beats traditional goal-setting by a...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Hello Reader, In the hive system, worker bees leave the hive to explore the surrounding environment, searching for nectar and pollen from flowers. Once they locate a good source, they return to the hive and communicate the distance and location to other bees through what’s known as the waggle dance. But not all bees take notice. Scientists discovered that about 20 per cent of bees ignore the waggle dance; they dismiss the directions and go off at random, which doesn’t make any sense, because...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
30 Short Lessons on Adaptability Adaptability is a strange thing. It determines how far we rise in times of change, yet almost none of us are taught how to adapt. We’re rewarded for knowing the right answers but rarely for asking the right questions. We’re encouraged to stay the course but rarely to examine whether the course still makes sense. For most of my life, I thought adaptability meant being quick. Quick to respond, quick to pivot, quick to act. It turns out, that’s only a fraction of...
about 2 months ago • 5 min read
When network engineering gets hard (and it always does), most engineers retreat into one of two worlds Naive Optimism: The world where you tell yourself “AI won’t affect my role,” where every automation trend is overhyped and where the future feels safe because the past felt familiar. This mindset avoids the uncomfortable truth and clings to blind confidence. Hopeless Realism: The world where every advancement in AI feels like a threat, where every new automation tool signals your eventual...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
The Tree Chopping Trap I’ve been thinking a lot about how network engineers spend their time, and I keep coming back to this metaphor that perfectly captures what I see happening across the industry. Most of us are stuck chopping down trees. Let me explain what I mean. Your day looks something like this: alerts flooding your monitoring system. A switch that’s reached end-of-life but still works fine. Other teams ask why their application is slow. Your inbox has 247 unread messages. Your Slack...
2 months ago • 3 min read