Insights
Codebase intelligence, product management, engineering leadership, and the future of software understanding.
How to Convince Your CTO to Invest in Developer Experience
You know the problem. Your team loses two hours a day to slow builds. New engineers take three weeks to understand the codebase. Your CI/CD pipeline feels like it was built in 2015. And when developers finally ship code, half the bugs should have been caught earlier.
I Analyzed 50 Codebases - Here Are the 5 Patterns That Predict Tech Debt
Tech debt doesn't appear suddenly. It leaves signatures.
Why Your Sprint Velocity Is Lying to You
The moment your team's sprint velocity becomes a performance metric, it stops being useful.
Open Source Tools Every Engineering Leader Should Know About in 2026
Building and scaling engineering teams in 2026 means choosing the right tools. The good news: the best tools are often open-source. The challenging news: there are thousands of them, and most won't move the needle for your team.
Building an Awesome List That Actually Gets Stars (Step-by-Step)
A few months ago, I decided to start an awesome list. Not because I thought I'd become famous - mostly because I was frustrated that no single repository existed as a definitive guide to codebase intelligence tools and practices. I wanted to solve my own problem and maybe help others along the way.
The Bus Factor Problem: What Happens When Your Best Engineer Leaves
Your lead backend engineer walks into your office on a Tuesday morning and tells you they're leaving. Two weeks notice. They found a new opportunity. They're excited about it.
Technical Debt Is Not a Metaphor - Here's How to Put a Dollar Figure on It
Ward Cunningham introduced the technical debt metaphor in 1992, and it was useful. Talking about debt helped engineering teams communicate with business stakeholders about the cost of shortcuts. But metaphors have limits. The moment you want to make an actual decision about whether to refactor or ship the next feature, a metaphor breaks down. You need numbers.
I Built a CLI Tool to Score Codebase Health - Here's What I Learned
Three months ago, I built a CLI tool to score codebase health. I called it `codebase-health-score` (original, I know). The goal was simple: give a team a single number that represents the overall health of their system.
Why 95% of Product Managers Can't Read Code (And Why That's a $1.85T Problem)
I sat in a product review meeting at a Series B fintech startup where the VP of Product confidently proposed moving a feature's deadline up by two weeks. The engineering director's face went pale. "That's literally impossible," she said. "We'd have to refactor the payment service first, and that touches core systems."
Software Estimation Accuracy: Why We're Systematically Wrong
When engineers are 90% confident, they're right 60-70% of the time. Here's the science behind bad estimates.
Technical Debt Statistics 2026: The Data You Need to Convince Leadership
35% of CTOs name tech debt as their #1 challenge. Here's every stat you need to make the business case.
ChatGPT for Product Managers: What It Can and Can't Do
ChatGPT dethroned Jira as PMs' top tool. But it has a blind spot: it can't see your codebase.