It's well understood that engineers writing code see diminishing returns on the business impact of their work as they improve, eventually plateauing. What is less well understood is how an engineer performing beyond the pace of their team create a dangerous silo.

❓Is the mythical "10x developer" actually a good thing?

🧠I spent this week reflecting on a number of recent examples, and it's the subject of this week's newsletter.

🪜I break down how to put your hard work to better use to grow your career.

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An engineer that can project manage is a sweet & rare ven-diagram overlap. An engineer is so well placed to call out risks & uncertainties in a way that someone without the technical frame just can't.

Technical Design Document (TDD) templates tend to grow over time. This has a few effects, including hiding the few important details and reducing the quantity and quality of reviews. TDDs should do just a few things. The last one is BY FAR the most important.

When an observer hears that a project is behind schedule they ask something like "Why is pace so slow?" But this is misunderstanding the root cause of almost all project delays.