How Decisions Get Made: Approval Chain or Single Signature?
Companies don't fail at going fast or going slow — they fail at matching the speed to the decision. A reversibility frame, and three desks to view it from.
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#Career
Suggestions, advice and reflections on the software career.
There are 13 posts with this tag.
Corporate or Owner-Run? Size Isn't What Separates Them
What separates company types isn't headcount — it's where decisions are made and how much of the reasoning gets written down. Four axes, and three desks to view them from.
Vibe Coding vs AI-Assisted Development — and Why You Still Need a Senior
Vibe coding genuinely made shipping a product easier. But what someone without software and systems knowledge ships to production isn't the same as what a senior steering the AI ships. Three levels, three different qualities.
Which Methodology for Which Project? — Notes from an 18-Year Developer
Waterfall, Agile, or Hybrid? That's the wrong question. A decision matrix from 18 years of production experience, three real case studies, and a way out of methodology religion.
Is PHP Dead? The 2026 Picture, by the Numbers
A view from 18 years of PHP development — the 2026 state of PHP through W3Techs, Stack Overflow, JetBrains, and Packagist data, including the language's often-ignored weaknesses.
Visibility: why writing is a career investment
Writing sharpens your thinking and compounds over time. On the career value of being visible — not as personal branding, but as an honest record.
Mentorship and knowledge sharing: growing by helping others grow
A career post on why mentorship is not a sacrifice but one of the most effective tools for a senior developer's own growth.
Specialist or Generalist: A T-Shaped Career
On the tension between deep specialization and broad generalism, and how the T-shaped career model resolves that equation.
Side projects and open source: what they add to your career and their real cost
An honest assessment of how side projects and open source contribute to a career: the returns, the costs, and when archiving a project is the right call.
The job-change decision: stay or leave
How to turn a leaving-or-staying decision from an emotional reaction into a measurable evaluation — and distinguish legitimate signals from temporary frustration.
Filtering the hype: you don't have to learn every new technology
How to manage your learning budget against the constant pressure of new tools and frameworks — a practical approach to deciding what to learn and when.
Letter to my 2014 self: advice for the early years
Looking back at 2014, the year this journal started — what I over-prioritized, what I neglected, and what I would do differently in those early career years.
Seniority: The Responsibility That Doesn't Come with the Title
The title often arrives before genuine seniority does. On why seniority is not about technical knowledge, but about the capacity to make decisions under ambiguity.