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The principles behind the work.

Convictions about systems, products, and the people they serve, connected to the work and writing that put them into practice.

11 convictions Earned across 6 engagements 2 essays

  1. 01Systems

    Structure is a form of care

    The shape you give a system, its boundaries, names, and defaults, is a message to everyone who uses and maintains it after you.

  2. 02Systems

    Systems over processes

    Build systems that make the right behaviour automatic, instead of processes that depend on people remembering to comply.

  3. 03Product

    The user experiences your boundaries, not your diagram

    Architecture diagrams describe a system to its makers. Users encounter only the seams, and every seam is a promise.

  4. 04Product

    A product is an operating model

    The product is what users see. The operating model is what makes it behave that way over time. Both are designed, or both drift.

  5. 05Reliability

    Reliability is part of the product

    Users do not separate the product from the platform that delivers it. To them every silent failure is the product. Neither should you separate them.

  6. 06Judgment

    Continuity over intensity

    Most things worth building are won by people who kept a steady cadence for longer than was reasonable, not by bursts.

  7. 07Judgment

    The point of abstraction is judgment

    Abstractions exist so the next decision can be made more clearly, not so the previous one can be reused.

  8. 08Judgment

    Know the one-way doors from the two-way

    Judgment is mostly telling reversible decisions from irreversible ones, and spending your caution accordingly.

  9. 09People

    The work only travels as far as it's legible

    At staff scope, your impact is bounded not by what you can build but by what others can carry without you in the room.

  10. 10Craft

    Simplicity is earned under constraint

    The simple version is the third or fourth, made once you can see which complexity is essential. Constraint is the material that forces it.

  11. 11Taste

    A calm interface is an ethical choice

    The interface decides how much of the user's attention it will take. That decision is not neutral.