Performance reviews are a perennial headache in many organizations – often seen as bureaucratic, time‐consuming, and stressful for managers and employees alike. With the rise of AI tools, some argue we might automate or even eliminate traditional reviews. Is it realistic (or wise) to have AI do our performance reviews? I believe the answer is no: while AI can assist, it cannot replace the thoughtful human effort that makes reviews valuable. The idea that we can fully offload performance…

A career development plan is a structured approach to professional growth. It’s a tool for both individuals and managers to align on expectations, identify opportunities, and measure progress. A well-crafted plan can be the difference between a reactive career and a proactive one.

When you’re a small team, pairing each new hire 1:1 works great—but as you grow, that model becomes overwhelming. Mentorship pods solve this by pairing a single mentor with a small cohort of new engineers. They learn together, share questions, and ramp up faster than going it alone.

We’ve all faced the dilemma: should we rush a quick feature out the door, or spend extra time refactoring code? That choice often creates technical debt—shortcuts in code, architecture, or process that make future work harder. Left unaddressed, debt piles up and slows your entire team down.

When something breaks in production—maybe a server crashes or a deployment goes sideways—it’s tempting to point fingers and hunt for the person “at fault.” But that only breeds fear and discourages honest discussion. A blameless postmortem flips the script: it treats every outage as a chance to learn how our systems and processes can improve, rather than a moment for shame.

On-call rotations are more than “who picks up the phone”—they’re a critical way to balance incident response, customer support, and operational health without burning out your team. Below is a template you can adapt, illustrated with examples from my time leading a device-management on-call rotation at a fast-growing tech company.

In the software development world, teams often face the dilemma of whether to build a tool in-house or purchase an existing solution. This “build vs. buy” debate can significantly impact a company’s efficiency, budget, and focus. A quintessential example of this debate is the implementation of feature flags.

The primary purpose of one-on-one meetings is to give your reports a chance to discuss issues and topics that they find important. It’s an opportunity for them to bring up concerns, challenges, and ideas that might not surface during regular team meetings. This is not a meeting to get status updates on projects! Schedule other time for that.

In my current role, I inherited an older codebase where best practices were often overlooked. As I reviewed the code and the surrounding processes, I found numerous areas for improvement in both code quality and operational practices.

In the realm of incident management, accurate and swift communication is vital. Different organizations adopt various strategies to ensure efficient communication during emergencies. One such strategy that has been gaining traction is the utilization of CAN reports, a mnemonic that stands for “Conditions, Actions, Needs.” Let us delve deeper into the intricacies and origins of this unique reporting format.