Field notes,
in progress.
An irregular journal of software, leadership, and the occasional rant. Some pieces are practical. Some are me thinking out loud and hoping it’s useful to someone else.
Five workplace health hazards that could be silently sabotaging your productivity
Your office might be making you sick — and you probably don't even know it. While you're focused on shipping features and hitting sprint goals, your workplace could be quietly undermining your health and performance.
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Seven job hunting strategies that actually work (and why most people get them wrong)
Job hunting doesn't have to feel like debugging legacy code at 2 AM. With the right approach, you can streamline the process and land opportunities that actually move your career forward.
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How to handle workplace criticism like a senior developer
Workplace criticism hits different when you're used to code reviews that focus on logic, not ego. But handling feedback from humans requires a different skill set than debugging syntax errors.
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Video meeting fatigue is a performance issue (and how to debug it)
Your video meetings are probably leaking cognitive resources faster than a memory leak in production. What started as a temporary solution to stay connected during 2020 has become a permanent drain on mental bandwidth.
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Your home office setup is sabotaging your job search (and how to fix it)
Your job search success depends on more than just your resume and interview skills. If your home office looks like a debugging session gone wrong, you're undermining your professional effectiveness before you even start.
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Managing up when your boss is a remote API (and how to optimize the connection)
Managing a remote boss is like working with a poorly documented API — you need to understand the interface, anticipate the inputs they need, and deliver consistent, reliable outputs even when you can't see what's happening on their end.
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No spare room? How to architect a productive workspace in any living situation
Remote work doesn't require a dedicated office — it requires intentional space design. When you're competing with family activities, kitchen chaos, and living room distractions, you need to architect your workspace like you'd design a resilient system: adaptable, efficient, and optimized for your specific constraints.
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Master Remote Work: A Developer's Guide to Home Office Success
Remote work isn't just about swapping your office chair for a kitchen table. It's a fundamental shift in how you approach productivity, focus, and career growth. After years of managing remote teams and optimizing my own home office setup, I've learned that success comes down to intentional systems and boundaries.
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4 Tips to get your resume noticed
Using the CCAR method to get your resume noticed
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Find What App is Hogging Your Port: A Developer's Detective Guide
You're trying to spin up your development server, and boom: "Port 3000 is already in use." Sound familiar? This scenario plays out daily in development environments worldwide. Sometimes it's obvious (your React app is still running from yesterday), but often it's a mystery process lurking in the background.
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The Three Faces of Developer Burnout: A Field Guide to Recovery
Burnout isn't just feeling tired after a long week of debugging production issues. It's the difference between a temporary energy dip and a systematic breakdown of your professional mojo. After years of managing development teams and navigating my own career challenges, I've learned that burnout has distinct patterns—and more importantly, specific solutions.
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Navigating Difficult Coworkers: A Systems Approach to Team Harmony
Every team has them: the chronic complainer who shoots down every idea, the perfectionist who blocks progress over minor details, or the passive-aggressive colleague who agrees in meetings but undermines decisions later. After years of managing development teams and navigating complex team dynamics as a Scrum Master, I've learned that difficult coworkers aren't just personality quirks to tolerate—they're system problems that require systematic solutions.
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Self-Coaching vs. Professional Coaching: A Developer's Cost-Benefit Analysis
Developers are natural self-learners. We've mastered complex frameworks from documentation, debugged obscure issues with Stack Overflow, and built entire applications from tutorials. So when it comes to career development and personal growth, the question naturally arises: can we just coach ourselves?
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Performance Reviews: From Anxiety to Advocacy (A Developer's Guide)
Performance reviews don't have to be the annual corporate theater where you sit across from your manager wondering if you're about to get promoted or managed out. After conducting hundreds of performance reviews as a Scrum Master and receiving my share as a developer, I've learned that great performance reviews are less about luck and more about systematic preparation.
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Public speaking 101
Why public speaking is your secret weapon in tech
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Changing your career after 40
The reality of career pivots after 40
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