About
I'm Shane, an engineering leader with fourteen years of experience building software and leading teams. I used to think the hard part was writing good code. I was wrong.
The real challenges are the human ones: building trust, making decisions with incomplete information, creating systems that outlast any single feature, and helping teams do their best work. This is where I share what I've learned about the everything else that makes engineering work.
ENGINEERING LEADERSHIP
The best code I've ever written was deleted years ago. The best decisions I've made created space for others to do great work. The most valuable systems I've built were the ones that made themselves obsolete. This is what fourteen years teaches you.
WHAT I WRITE ABOUT
Team Leadership
Building trust, creating psychological safety, and helping engineers do their best work
Technical Decision Making
Choosing technologies, managing trade-offs, and making decisions with incomplete information
Systems Thinking
Building systems that scale, maintain themselves, and outlast any single feature or person
Engineering Culture
Creating environments where quality work happens naturally and people want to stay
EXPERIENCE
Over fourteen years, I've worked across startups and established companies, led teams of various sizes, and built systems that served millions of users.
I've made every mistake in the book—shipped features nobody wanted, optimized the wrong things, built systems that couldn't scale, and learned the hard way that technical excellence means nothing without solving real problems. These lessons shape everything I write.
WHY I WRITE
Most engineering content focuses on the code—the how. I write about the why, the who, and the what happens when. The messy human parts that determine whether great code actually matters.
If you're an engineering leader wrestling with decisions that have no right answer, or an engineer trying to understand why the technical solution isn't the whole solution, this is for you.
CONNECT
If you're working through similar challenges in engineering leadership, want to discuss an article, or just want to connect, reach out. I'm always interested in hearing about what other leaders are learning.