In defense of hiring the generalist
Specialization has been the right career shape for twenty years. I think that just ended, and my own weird résumé is the argument.
Writing
All posts →In defense of reading every word
The highest-value thing I do with an agent is read its output in real time and stop it the second it says something incongruent. Every trend in tooling pushes the other way.
In defense of the boring harness
Most agent setup work is procrastination with excellent tooling. The tell is that the builder cannot name a single shipped outcome it caused.
In defense of the control arm
Nobody is running the control arm, including me. Every productivity number in this field is therefore unfalsifiable, and we should say so.
In defense of the deadline you cannot move
I ran digital for three national campaigns. Election day is set by law, and it taught me more about shipping than any methodology has.
In defense of the player-coach
Staying in the code was the compromise I was quietly embarrassed about for fifteen years. The economics just made it the correct position.
register_globals and the whole catastrophe
I have written PHP since 1999, on version 4. Twenty-seven years of watching confident practice become embarrassing is a specific kind of training.
RIP the org chart that assumed typing was the bottleneck
Team structure, headcount planning, and career ladders were all designed around a constraint that no longer binds.