War Stories &
Unsolicited Opinions
Lessons from the front lines of product delivery. No frameworks. No acronyms. Just what actually works.
- Product Strategy··4 min read
Stop Calling It an MVP
I need to get something off my chest.
Read - Product Strategy··6 min read
Your PM Doesn't Have a Solution Problem. They Have a Listening Problem.
I watched a PM spend three weeks building a prototype for a "scheduling optimization tool" before talking to a single customer. When we finally did interviews, we found out the pro
Read - Engineering··6 min read
Your Rewrite Will Fail (And You Should Do It Anyway)
There's a famous Joel Spolsky post from the year 2000 — "Things You Should Never Do" — where he argues that rewriting software from scratch is the single worst strategic mistake a
Read - Strategy··6 min read
'AI Everything' Is Not a Strategy
I sat in a strategy meeting last month where a leadership team spent 90 minutes debating where to "add AI." Not what problem AI would solve. Not why customers would care. Just wher
Read - Leadership··3 min read
The Meeting That Should Have Been a Decision
I once sat in a meeting where eleven people spent an hour debating whether a button should say "Submit" or "Continue."
Read - Leadership··6 min read
You Can Tell a Company's Culture by Who Holds the Budget
I can predict whether a company will move fast based on one question: who approves software spending?
Read - Leadership··6 min read
The RTO Memo Nobody Believes
I read the memo. "In-person collaboration drives innovation." "We're seeing better connection across teams." "This is about culture, not control."
Read - Industry··6 min read
Your 'Digital Transformation' Consultant Is Billing You to Learn Your Business
The Big 4 consulting model is beautifully honest if you actually look at it.
Read - Product Strategy··6 min read
The Roadmap Is a Lie (And That's Fine)
I've never seen a roadmap that survived contact with reality. Not once.
Read - Product Strategy··6 min read
Stop Running Discovery Like a Checkbox
I watched a product team do "discovery" with their biggest customer.
Read - Engineering··6 min read
The Org Chart Is the Architecture
Conway's Law says the structure of your software reflects the structure of the organization that built it.
Read - Leadership··6 min read
Leaders Who Are Scared of Change Shouldn't Lead Change
I watched a CEO commission a digital transformation. Real talk with the board: "We need to innovate. We're getting disrupted. This is existential."
Read - Product Strategy··6 min read
The Feature Factory Is a Symptom, Not the Disease
I've watched teams get labeled as a "feature factory." Like they were incompetent. Like they didn't know how to prioritize.
Read - Product Strategy··5 min read
Your Backlog Is Not a Strategy
I watched a PM present their roadmap once. 47 slides, color-coded Gantt chart, every feature through Q3. Impressive. Then I asked: "What happens if Q2 doesn't go to plan?"
Read - Leadership··5 min read
When 'Stakeholder Alignment' Means Nobody Decided
The phrase "we need stakeholder alignment" is the death knell of execution. It sounds decisive. It sounds collaborative. What it actually means is: "Six people have six different o
Read - Engineering··5 min read
Technical Debt Isn't the Problem. It's the Symptom.
Every CTO I know says the same thing: "We're drowning in technical debt. We need to dedicate a sprint to cleanup."
Read - Engineering··6 min read
The Myth of the 10x Engineer
Every organization has one. The engineer who ships twice as fast as everyone else. The one whose PRs are works of art. The one who can debug anything in five minutes. The unicorn.
Read - Engineering··5 min read
Your Standups Are Status Theater
The daily standup was supposed to be a quick sync. Fifteen minutes max. Three things: what I did, what I'm doing, what's blocking me. Done.
Read - Product Strategy··5 min read
The Cost of Saying Yes to Everything
A customer calls. Big deal. $500k ARR. They want a custom export feature. "Sure," you say. "We'll ship it in two sprints."
Read - Product Strategy··6 min read
Metrics Theater: Measuring Everything, Learning Nothing
I walked into a product review once. The PM pulled up a dashboard. Forty-seven metrics. Cohort retention, feature adoption, week-over-week growth, DAU trend, NPS by segment, featur
Read - Leadership··6 min read
The Committee-Driven Product Death Spiral
I watched a SaaS company pitch their newest feature once. Took them five months to build.
Read - Leadership··5 min read
Stop Hiring for 'Culture Fit'
Every hiring rubric I've seen has "culture fit" somewhere. Usually near the top.
Read - Industry··6 min read
The Vendor Demo That Sold the CEO
A vendor comes in. They've got a polished demo. Clean UI. Smooth transitions. Workflow animations that make the CEO lean back and say "wow."
Read