mitchellkosowski.bsky.social
@mitchellkosowski.bsky.social
Most software teams don’t ship badly because they lack talent.

In this week’s Signal vs Noise, I break down a boring-but-effective shipping playbook that makes releases feel routine instead of heroic.

Subscribe for practical takes on engineering that actually scale!

substack.com/home/post/p-...
Software Shipping Best Practices They Don’t Teach in System Design Interviews
The Real-World Habits that Actually Get Code into Production
substack.com
January 20, 2026 at 3:23 PM
AI is an implementation detail not a value prop.

At the end of the day, customers buy outcomes not the models that drive them.

If you can't sell the pen without saying “AI,” you probably don't understand the problem well enough yet.

Defining what you're actually trying to get done is step #1.
January 19, 2026 at 3:03 PM
💻 Software Engineering 101: Learning Through Memes

Today’s Lesson: Lambda

The promise of AWS Lambda is simple: Upload a function. An event triggers it. You pay per execution

But cold starts, harder debugging, and unexpected costs can all cause issues

What’s your best (or worst) Lambda story?
January 16, 2026 at 2:16 PM
AI was 2025’s favorite promise. 2026 is the year engineering leaders have to live with the consequences. Most teams now feel more productive with AI but the data is blunt. Developers are faster on tasks while code churn, security incidents, and “almost‑right” fixes are climbing.
5 uncomfortable predictions for engineering leaders in 2026
The holiday season is an apt time to take stock and consider what worked and what didn’t in the previous 12 months. 
leaddev.com
January 15, 2026 at 1:03 PM
AI didn’t “break” software development in 2025, it exposed where our incentives were already weak. AI is a powerful tool. But in the wrong incentive system, it just helps us make a mess faster.
Best of 2025: AI in Software Development: Productivity at the Cost of Code Quality? - DevOps.com
New research analyzing code reveals AI tools may accelerate development but potentially at the expense of maintainable, quality code.
devops.com
January 14, 2026 at 1:00 PM
This week on Signal vs Noise, I write about why pass/fail thinking collapses the moment you ship probabilistic systems and how eval fills the gap that testing was never designed to handle.

signalvsnoisetechinsights.substack.com/p/ai-evals-a...
AI Evals Aren’t Tests and Treating Them Like Tests Is a Costly Mistake
Why Pass/Fail Thinking Breaks Down the Moment You Ship Probabilistic Systems
signalvsnoisetechinsights.substack.com
January 13, 2026 at 2:41 PM
AI won’t replace developers but it will divide teams that learn to manage it from those that blindly adopt it. Leadership’s job in 2026 is to design workflows, guardrails, and skills so people can use these tools with judgment.
AI coding is now everywhere. But not everyone is convinced.
Developers are navigating confusing gaps between expectation and reality. So are the rest of us.
www.technologyreview.com
January 12, 2026 at 8:00 AM
💻 Software Engineering 101: Learning Through Memes

Today’s Lesson: Moore’s Law

Moore’s Law isn’t physics. It's an observation made by Gordon Moore in 1965: transistors roughly doubled every ~2 years

Now Moore's law is slowing as transistor are harder to shrink as we run into physical limitations.
January 9, 2026 at 1:26 PM
If your interview process doesn't cover salary, responsibilities, and work culture, what exactly do you talk about?
January 8, 2026 at 12:44 PM
There are two kinds of companies.

Type 1: It’s good when lots of people know who you are
👉 Visibility = opportunity
Think startups

Type 2: It’s bad when lots of people know who you are
👉 Visibility = risk
Think large corporations

Figure out which environment you’re in and optimize accordingly.
January 7, 2026 at 2:08 PM
MongoDB didn’t fail... but at some point, it did stop being the default.

This week on Signal vs Noise, I break down what actually happened and why it matters beyond MongoDB.

👉 Signal vs Noise: weekly, no-BS engineering strategy

signalvsnoisetechinsights.substack.com/p/whatever-h...
Whatever Happened to MongoDB?
The Rise (and Repositioning) of MongoDB
signalvsnoisetechinsights.substack.com
January 6, 2026 at 2:41 PM