https://blog.turboawesome.win/series/startup-eng/ Recent content in Startup-Eng on Bits, Trades & Systems Hugo en-us Wed, 22 Jan 2025 11:15:00 +0000 https://blog.turboawesome.win/2025/01/staff-engineer-or-engineering-manager-on-choosing-the-road-that-doesnt-come-back/ Wed, 22 Jan 2025 11:15:00 +0000 https://blog.turboawesome.win/2025/01/staff-engineer-or-engineering-manager-on-choosing-the-road-that-doesnt-come-back/ Thirteen years in, the fork in the road becomes real. The honest framing of what each path actually involves, and why the choice is more reversible than people claim — and less. https://blog.turboawesome.win/2024/11/cross-team-technical-alignment-at-scale/ Wed, 20 Nov 2024 10:30:00 +0000 https://blog.turboawesome.win/2024/11/cross-team-technical-alignment-at-scale/ Getting multiple engineering teams to agree on technical direction is hard. The approaches that work — architecture forums, decision records, working groups — and why lightweight coordination beats heavy governance. https://blog.turboawesome.win/2024/08/writing-rfcs-for-wide-audiences/ Wed, 21 Aug 2024 09:45:00 +0000 https://blog.turboawesome.win/2024/08/writing-rfcs-for-wide-audiences/ RFCs that need sign-off from multiple teams or leadership require a different structure than internal team proposals. The writing changes when the audience includes people who don't share your context. https://blog.turboawesome.win/2024/02/engineering-at-enterprise-scale-what-changes-when-the-system-is-actually-big/ Wed, 14 Feb 2024 10:22:00 +0000 https://blog.turboawesome.win/2024/02/engineering-at-enterprise-scale-what-changes-when-the-system-is-actually-big/ After a decade in financial technology — trading firms, institutions, a startup, a European fintech — joining a large US technology company. The technical and organisational delta. https://blog.turboawesome.win/2023/11/eleven-years-in-a-retrospective-on-careers-choices-and-compounding-knowledge/ Wed, 15 Nov 2023 15:41:00 +0000 https://blog.turboawesome.win/2023/11/eleven-years-in-a-retrospective-on-careers-choices-and-compounding-knowledge/ Eleven years of software engineering across trading firms, financial institutions, startups, and large technology companies. What compounds, what doesn't, and the decisions I'd make differently. https://blog.turboawesome.win/2023/08/navigating-org-change-as-an-engineer/ Wed, 16 Aug 2023 11:20:00 +0000 https://blog.turboawesome.win/2023/08/navigating-org-change-as-an-engineer/ Reorganisations, leadership changes, and strategy shifts are facts of life in growing companies. The engineers who navigate them well share some common practices — and some common misconceptions about what's actually changing. https://blog.turboawesome.win/2023/02/feature-flags-at-scale-beyond-the-on/off-switch/ Tue, 28 Feb 2023 11:02:00 +0000 https://blog.turboawesome.win/2023/02/feature-flags-at-scale-beyond-the-on/off-switch/ Feature flags sound simple — toggle code on or off. At scale they're a deployment primitive, an experimentation platform, a kill-switch infrastructure, and a source of technical debt. Here's what a mature feature flag system looks like and how to avoid the traps. https://blog.turboawesome.win/2022/10/postmortems-as-a-learning-tool-structure-culture-and-follow-through/ Wed, 05 Oct 2022 11:27:00 +0000 https://blog.turboawesome.win/2022/10/postmortems-as-a-learning-tool-structure-culture-and-follow-through/ A postmortem that concludes with 'be more careful' has failed. The structure and culture of blameless postmortems, and why follow-through is where most teams fall short. https://blog.turboawesome.win/2022/07/on-call-culture-that-doesnt-burn-out-your-team/ Wed, 06 Jul 2022 09:55:00 +0000 https://blog.turboawesome.win/2022/07/on-call-culture-that-doesnt-burn-out-your-team/ On-call is a forcing function for reliability — when engineers are paged for their own systems, the feedback loop on quality is immediate. Done badly, it burns out your team. The practices that keep it sustainable. https://blog.turboawesome.win/2022/04/platform-engineering-is-a-product-problem-not-a-technology-problem/ Wed, 06 Apr 2022 11:39:00 +0000 https://blog.turboawesome.win/2022/04/platform-engineering-is-a-product-problem-not-a-technology-problem/ Two years into a platform engineering role at a mid-sized financial technology firm. The core insight: developer platforms succeed when they're treated as products and fail when they're treated as infrastructure projects. https://blog.turboawesome.win/2022/02/engineering-roadmaps-planning-for-uncertainty/ Wed, 16 Feb 2022 09:30:00 +0000 https://blog.turboawesome.win/2022/02/engineering-roadmaps-planning-for-uncertainty/ Engineering roadmaps are commitments made under uncertainty. The planning practices that keep them honest — time horizon discipline, explicit uncertainty, and the difference between a roadmap and a plan. https://blog.turboawesome.win/2021/10/technical-debt-is-a-balance-sheet-item-not-a-moral-failing/ Wed, 06 Oct 2021 10:18:00 +0000 https://blog.turboawesome.win/2021/10/technical-debt-is-a-balance-sheet-item-not-a-moral-failing/ The language around technical debt is usually moral: 'bad code', 'dirty shortcuts', 'cutting corners'. The financial metaphor it's named after is actually more useful. Debt is a tool. Manage it like one. https://blog.turboawesome.win/2021/07/hiring-senior-engineers-what-the-interview-loop-cant-tell-you/ Wed, 07 Jul 2021 14:02:00 +0000 https://blog.turboawesome.win/2021/07/hiring-senior-engineers-what-the-interview-loop-cant-tell-you/ After running hiring loops for senior engineers at the European fintech firm, the pattern was clear: the things that determined whether a hire was successful were almost never well-measured by our interview process. https://blog.turboawesome.win/2021/03/after-the-startup-joining-a-larger-organisation-without-losing-your-mind/ Wed, 17 Mar 2021 09:11:00 +0000 https://blog.turboawesome.win/2021/03/after-the-startup-joining-a-larger-organisation-without-losing-your-mind/ Two years into a fast-moving startup, I joined a larger, more structured European financial technology firm. The culture delta was significant in both directions. https://blog.turboawesome.win/2021/02/writing-technical-rfcs-that-actually-get-read/ Wed, 24 Feb 2021 09:07:00 +0000 https://blog.turboawesome.win/2021/02/writing-technical-rfcs-that-actually-get-read/ Most technical RFCs fail at their primary purpose: creating alignment before building. The failures are almost always structural — missing context, buried decisions, or no clear ask. Here's the format that worked. https://blog.turboawesome.win/2021/02/engineering-velocity-at-a-startup-what-actually-made-us-fast/ Tue, 09 Feb 2021 13:41:00 +0000 https://blog.turboawesome.win/2021/02/engineering-velocity-at-a-startup-what-actually-made-us-fast/ After two years at a fast-moving fintech startup, the things that actually determined how quickly we shipped were not the tools or the process — they were much simpler and harder to fix than that. https://blog.turboawesome.win/2020/08/the-platform-vs-product-tension-in-a-growing-startup/ Wed, 12 Aug 2020 10:45:00 +0000 https://blog.turboawesome.win/2020/08/the-platform-vs-product-tension-in-a-growing-startup/ Every startup engineering team eventually faces the platform question: invest in the foundation or keep shipping features? The tension is real, the tradeoffs are non-obvious, and the wrong answer in either direction is costly. https://blog.turboawesome.win/2020/05/from-ic-to-lead-the-first-90-days-managing-a-technical-team/ Wed, 13 May 2020 13:44:00 +0000 https://blog.turboawesome.win/2020/05/from-ic-to-lead-the-first-90-days-managing-a-technical-team/ The transition from individual contributor to technical lead is the career move that most engineers underestimate. The skills that made you good at the IC role don't automatically transfer — here's what the first 90 days actually taught me. https://blog.turboawesome.win/2019/06/building-the-first-production-service-at-a-startup-decisions-under-uncertainty/ Wed, 26 Jun 2019 10:44:00 +0000 https://blog.turboawesome.win/2019/06/building-the-first-production-service-at-a-startup-decisions-under-uncertainty/ The first production service sets patterns the team will follow for years. At a startup, you're making these decisions without full requirements, under time pressure, with a team that's still forming. Here's what we decided and why. https://blog.turboawesome.win/2019/01/why-i-left-on-risk-pace-and-ownership/ Wed, 09 Jan 2019 09:04:00 +0000 https://blog.turboawesome.win/2019/01/why-i-left-on-risk-pace-and-ownership/ After three years at a large financial institution, why I took a significant pay cut to join a tiny startup. The reasoning, the fears, and whether it was the right call.