Newsletters

Every Friday I send a short letter from the field. Stories, tips, techniques, and the occasional bit of beekeeping. The archive below is what you can expect.

If you'd like the next one in your inbox instead of finding it here later, join the letter below.

• Dark Factories 🏭: October 09, 2026
• Trust the team know the details 🥸: October 02, 2026
• Is Ted Lasso a Player-Coach: September 25, 2026
• Overproduction is waste, and you're probably doing it.: September 18, 2026
• AI Productivity Dies with Dependencies: September 11, 2026
• Why are metrics so hard 🩻: September 04, 2026
• Bad estimates are a missed opportunity 😱: August 28, 2026
• How to fix the stall in your team's improvements: August 14, 2026
• Your org structure might be killing your productivity 🔥: July 10, 2026
• Get jiggle with it: June 26, 2026
• Death to Code Reviews 💀: June 19, 2026
• Skills, Context, and Agents. Oh My!: June 12, 2026
• Devil in the details: June 08, 2026
• Pivots sucks, do them more: May 29, 2026
• Lies Our Engineering Metrics Tell Us: May 22, 2026
• Idea for Agents in Larger Codebases: May 15, 2026
• A real-world example of using signals 🐝: May 08, 2026
• Toyota Taught Me A3s and I Almost Forgot: May 01, 2026
• Measures and Signals as Taught By Bees 🐝: April 24, 2026
• Announcing - Lies Our Engineering Metrics Tell Us: April 17, 2026
• Louder, for the people in the back ✅: April 13, 2026
• How to actually use metrics 😱: April 03, 2026
• Great teams quit good leaders: March 20, 2026
• How do you save a transformation 🎣: March 13, 2026
• My AI Agents Don't Think QA is Important. 🪳: March 06, 2026
• Want your teams to take ownership. Here's why they aren't and how you can fix it.: February 27, 2026
• Consultants suck, and I'm one of them. 🤡: February 20, 2026
• So what went wrong An honest debrief of reko.day: February 13, 2026
• Book Review - Spin Selling: February 06, 2026
• Book Review Profit First Accounting: February 06, 2026
• Looking ahead to 2026: January 02, 2026
• Adventures in Agentic Software Development 🏔️: December 19, 2025
• What Can You Learn from Black Friday 💰: December 05, 2025
• What surgeons learned from changing tires 🚗: November 21, 2025
• A Very Serious Survey of Development Techniques 🤡: November 14, 2025
• Ready for a Halloween tale of chills and thrills 👻👻👻: October 31, 2025
• A Very Serious Survey of Product Prioritization Techniques 🤡: October 24, 2025
• Stop taking bad interview advice!: October 10, 2025
• What happened to creativity and brainstorming 🧟: October 03, 2025
• When You Have to Lead: September 26, 2025
• Thanks for Attending!: September 22, 2025
• What can you learn from the TTRPG gaming community 🎲: September 19, 2025
• Job Satisfaction Webinar is Today at 12PM CST!: September 18, 2025
• Job satisfaction webinar starting now!: September 18, 2025
• 2 Days Until Job Satisfaction Webinar!: September 16, 2025
• 1 in 4 Companies Reduced Benefits in 2024: September 12, 2025
• The Job Satisfier Webinar is on September 18th!: September 12, 2025
• Some of the best advice I can give for your next job interview: September 05, 2025
• Agile doesn't have to suck, and neither does your next job. 🤮: August 29, 2025
• The cost of poor meetings: August 22, 2025
• Do you know your rhythm: August 15, 2025
• Little Rituals, Big Results 🐸: August 08, 2025
• A Leadership Lesson from Beekeeping 🐝: July 25, 2025
• Take the step 👟: July 18, 2025
• Writing code isn't very productive: July 11, 2025
• The biggest mistake I see in folks doing Scrum (and a free download): June 27, 2025
• Beware the bikeshed my son 🚴‍♂️: June 20, 2025
• AI or not to AI 🥸: June 13, 2025
• Some thoughts on Build vs. Buy: May 30, 2025
• Your next leap as a leader may be one game away. ♟️: May 16, 2025
• Can you hear me now 👂: May 09, 2025
• What happened when researchers studied how developers use their IDE: April 25, 2025
• Missed the talk Don't worry! 😨: April 11, 2025
• Come to my upcoming talk on April 8th! 🤯: April 04, 2025
• Sensors and Signals 🌡️: March 28, 2025
• I'm giving a talk and I'd love you to join!: March 21, 2025
• Are Self-Managing Teams Worth It Or Just Hype: March 14, 2025
• The Delegation Trap 🐋: March 07, 2025
• 🤯There are two types of coders and neither believes the other is sane: February 28, 2025
• Here's where everyone's attempt to be efficient falls apart: February 21, 2025
• Have you tried the Balanced Scorecard: February 14, 2025
• Why your teams aren't self-managing and what you can do about it 💻: February 07, 2025
• This email is for folks serious about leadership: January 31, 2025
• 📄 How to create standards people follow instead of subvert: January 17, 2025
• Take a step even if you aren't sure of the end: January 10, 2025
• Safety matters more than ever: December 06, 2024
• 2024 is almost over and Sprint Goals are still weird: November 22, 2024
• A set of tools for better meetings 🧙‍♂️: November 08, 2024
• The Clean House Fallacy: October 25, 2024
• Pushing for speed is almost always a bad idea. Almost: October 11, 2024
• The shape of tests ✅: October 04, 2024
• What is your legacy: September 20, 2024
• One of my favorite movie quotes starts, I've been listening to my guts for 11 years: September 13, 2024
• Local optimizations are great!: September 06, 2024
• Fall Prep Isn't Just For the Bees 🐝: August 30, 2024
• What I Learned From a Fire: July 08, 2024
• Would you eat at a restaurant run by software developers: June 28, 2024
• Projects and Products: June 21, 2024
• What does washing your hands have to do with software 🙌🫧: June 14, 2024
• Simulate simulate simulate 💻: June 07, 2024
• Don't Look Back: May 03, 2024
• Enough with bad meetings: April 26, 2024
• Doing the Unthinkable: April 19, 2024
• The Model Paradox: March 29, 2024
• Models and Measures: March 22, 2024
• Boundaries of Change: March 15, 2024
• Data Analytics Trap: March 08, 2024
• Is assuming positive intent enough: February 23, 2024
• Team Structures and Efficiency Aren't Intuitive: February 16, 2024
• Know Your Target 🎯: February 09, 2024
• See Ya Later Scrum Master 👻: January 26, 2024
• Beekeeping and Organizations: January 12, 2024
• New year, new skills: December 29, 2023
• Ew, your risk is exposed. 🤢: December 15, 2023
• Perect is the enemy of good: December 08, 2023
• The book that impacted me the most: December 01, 2023
• Cautious Optimism About AI: November 17, 2023
• What's the Next Big Thing Here 🤔: November 10, 2023
• HBF - Case Study Team In College No Problem: October 27, 2023
• HBT - In the Margins: October 20, 2023
• HBT - Celebrate 🎉: October 06, 2023
• A Few Thoughts on Teams 🤔: August 25, 2023
• Enough with the crappy tests already: May 19, 2023
• When Opportunity Knocks 🚪: May 05, 2023
• Best Way to Know Your Product is Worth It 💯: April 21, 2023
• Playing Jenga for Change: April 14, 2023
• Let's Learn Something: April 07, 2023
• The (un)Importance of Measurements ⁉️: February 17, 2023
• Why I Don't Use OKRs 🥵: February 10, 2023
• What're you building for 🤨: January 20, 2023
• Reader Question Why did you say to avoid mocking ✉️: January 13, 2023
• In Pursuit of Operational Excellence 📈: January 06, 2023
• Happy Holidays: December 23, 2022
• A Deep Dive Into Types of Tests 🌊: December 09, 2022
• Elon Is Everywhere: December 02, 2022
• Some Tips for Communication ☎️: November 25, 2022
• The Importance of Career Liquidity 🌊: November 18, 2022
• A Bit About Hurricanes ⚡: September 30, 2022
• What Can I Do For You 🤔: September 23, 2022
• Getting the Bookends of Product Right 📚: September 16, 2022
• A Tale of Two Leaders ⁉️: September 09, 2022
• Nobody Told Me That! How To Fix Common Communication Issues ☎️: September 02, 2022
• Starting A New Business 👀: August 26, 2022
• A Quick Question 🤔: August 12, 2022
• The Tooling Trap 👀: August 05, 2022
• The Wonder of No-Code 🏝️: July 29, 2022
• The Power of the Written Word ⚡: July 22, 2022
• The Trick Frameworks Play on Us 👻: July 15, 2022
• Seek Mentors 🥰: July 08, 2022
• When There is Too Much of a Good Thing: July 01, 2022
• Challenge The TWiG Game: June 24, 2022
• An Attempt at Engineering Benchmarks: June 17, 2022
• Putting the Reps in for Change 🏋️‍♀️: June 03, 2022
• Form an Alliance with Legal: May 27, 2022
• Is Security the Next Strategic Differentiator: May 20, 2022
• Picking Your Problems 🌵: May 06, 2022
• Getting Past a Performance Plateau 🗻: April 29, 2022
• The Language of Stuck 🔐: April 15, 2022
• Do You Code Review Your Tests 🎢: April 08, 2022
• How Does Engineering Get Time For Tech Debt 👻: April 01, 2022
• A Couple Quick Links 😁: March 25, 2022
• The Power of Why ❓: March 18, 2022
• A Case for Tests: March 11, 2022
• I'd Like to Share a Success 🥰: February 25, 2022
• Onboarding and CCPA 😴: February 11, 2022
• Collect Options 🍭: February 04, 2022
• How Much Are You Worth 💵: January 28, 2022
• Why I don't mock in tests 🤔: January 21, 2022
• Rituals and Piseogs ✨: January 14, 2022
• A Magic Phrase that Inspires Change 🎆: January 07, 2022
• Why Running Into Failure is Better than Running Away From It 🏎💥: December 17, 2021
• Why I Love Sprint Reviews 🎭: November 19, 2021
• Runbooks and RICE 🍙🍛: November 12, 2021
• Mastering a Technical Interview 💻: November 05, 2021
• Another Small Way to Strengthen a Team 💪: October 08, 2021
• Apologies for the Broken Link: October 08, 2021
• Don't Punish the Punctual 👂: October 01, 2021
• Getting Standups to Finish in 15 Minutes ⌚: September 24, 2021
• A Story of Pair Programming 💻💻: September 17, 2021
• Putting Wind in Team's Sails ⛵: September 10, 2021
• Learning on the Edge 💻: September 03, 2021
• The Single Best Technique I Know To Grow Technical Skill ✨: August 27, 2021
• Eliminating Product-Market Risk 📈: August 20, 2021
• Looking At Horizons 🌅: August 13, 2021
• What is the Right Mix of Skills 🍰: August 06, 2021
• How I Generated Revenue Before Production 💰: July 30, 2021
• Reflecting On Career Coaching 🤔: July 23, 2021
• Testing a Ball of Mud 🚛: July 16, 2021
• Team Metrics I Use 📈: July 09, 2021
• A Small Secret That Motivates Teams 🤐: July 02, 2021
• The Small Question for Big Results 🐜: June 25, 2021
• A Terrible Interview Question and What to Do About It 🎬: June 11, 2021
• Does your framework own you 🧟‍♂️: June 04, 2021
• Customer Service 😵‍💫: May 29, 2021
• Taking a Stand 🦶🦶: May 21, 2021
• Example of Subtle Strategy 🐱‍👤🐱‍👤: May 14, 2021
• Not All Founders Are Leaders 😫: April 30, 2021
• The Importance of Downtime: April 16, 2021
• The Clean House Paradox: April 09, 2021
• How Do You Know 📏: April 02, 2021
• Who Loves Estimation 🥵: March 26, 2021
• The Cost of Great ☠: March 19, 2021
• Estimate Anything 🎂: March 12, 2021
• Growth Mindset, SolarWinds, and Knowledge Transfer. Oh My 🌴: March 05, 2021
• Impact Map for Fun and Profit 🌎: February 26, 2021
• Eating an Ice Cream Cone 🍦: February 19, 2021
• Dependency Confusion 🤔: February 12, 2021
• Know vs Trust 🎭: February 05, 2021
• GameStop and the Final Fantasy of Products: January 29, 2021
• Code and Money: January 22, 2021
• Who Are You Really 👀: January 15, 2021
• Happy New Year 🍾: December 30, 2020
• System Design Interview Tutorial 📽: December 18, 2020
• Goal Setting and Schools: December 04, 2020
• When to Break the Rules 🔨: November 20, 2020
• Stand-Ups, Meetings, Procrastination and More 👀: November 13, 2020
• Happy Halloween! 🎃: October 30, 2020
• I'm Hosting an AMA For Career Questions ✨: October 23, 2020
• The Ups and Downs of Recruiters ☎️: October 09, 2020
• 💍 One Resume to Rule Them All: September 25, 2020
• 💣💣Who Wants a 1-Hour Resume Consultation: September 18, 2020
• Apply to Jobs You Don't Want 🐱‍🏍: September 11, 2020
• What’s My Value: September 04, 2020
• When is Done, Done ⏲: August 29, 2020
• I got dirt under my nails from my digital garden: -
• The 5-Minute Rule ⏰: -
• The story of the Mai Tai 🍹: -