Notes on engineering leadership, AI products, and lessons from building teams.
In 2008 Google set out to learn what makes a great manager, and technical skills came last of eight. Why that still holds in 2026, why it doesn't mean what people think, and what the job looked like across two companies and four products.
After two years of lecturing at an engineering school, the most common feedback was not about theory. It was: show us a real PDP. Here it is — the template, real examples per level, and the loop that keeps it alive.
About 15 coffee chats in my first month, around 30 by the end of probation, more than 60 by the time I left. Why that habit did more for me than any onboarding doc, and why it matters even more outside your company.
Product engineer is not a different profession. It is an engineer who asks a different question. Here is the four-stage path I have watched work, and the checklist that trains it.
A weekly changelog template helps engineers capture impact while it is fresh, build better self-review notes, and walk into performance reviews with evidence.