Writing
What I am thinking about.
Longer pieces on agentic engineering and what changes in engineering practice when agents write the code. Shorter notes go out on the newsletter.
- Code review when the agent wrote the code
Clean code, passing tests, and a linear scan where a binary search belonged. What actually changes about code review when an agent writes the code, and what to look at instead.
- Skillify: turning agent failures into skills you can test
Every AI framework promises reliability and gives you dashboards. The tools exist; the workflow doesn't. A ten-step checklist for making a failure impossible to repeat.
- Harness Engineering: The Future of Software Engineering
Really enjoyed reading OpenAI's 'harness engineering' approach—and it's the clearest signal yet that the role of Software Engineers is changing and not…
- The identity crisis nobody is naming
Underneath the excitement about agentic coding there is a quieter thing happening: the source of professional meaning is moving, and almost nobody is talking about it.
- Don't outsource your thinking
A randomised trial of 52 junior developers found AI assistance cut coding mastery by 17 percent. The ones who did well used it differently, and the difference is teachable.
- What actually works with AI coding tools
Nine months on messy, real-world codebases. The breakthrough was simple: stop letting AI write code until you have reviewed a written plan.
- What agentic coding actually costs
A $100 seat can consume $2,000 of value, Anthropic burns $19bn against $9bn of revenue, and the cost of generating code is approaching zero. What a CTO should do about all three.
- Should I use microservices?
While #microservices have their place in this world I personally feel they are one technology which have been greatly misunderstood. Microservices has always…
- Why Consultancies Lack Ownership
I have seen many startups engage consultancies esp. when they are not sure if they want to build a team in house. One of the biggest issues I usually see with…
- On Management.
One of my most important tasks is to work on mentorship for our leaders at Sastaticket and coming across such guides such as this are always a welcome. It is…
- Adobe has agreed to acquire Figma.
Some exciting news from the #startup world. Everyone's favourite design tool Figma got bought by potentially one of the more hated companies out there, Adobe…
- Giving Requirements to Engineering.
When starting or working in a product company, one of the most common questions I get is around how to build the engineering team most feel that it is one of…
- Understanding Deployment Pain.
One of the core metrics for Engineering productivity is the frequency of deployments, measured by "number of deploys per day per developer". According to the…
- Thoughts on Time Management
Time management is one of the trickiest to do well. Personally being an efficiency maniac i enjoy optimising every single minute of my day, and evaluating it…
- How many engineers do I need for my tech team?
With all the companies around me downsizing and / or freezing hiring now a days one does start wondering about team sizing and the optimal team size. A sample…
- A problem with using software consultancies in startups
An interesting discussion (and a good article to read as well) on how big consultancies can fail some times. One of the biggest challenges with any…
- Multiple Layers of Quality Control
So a bug in DoorDash payment system lead to hundreds of free food orders last week. Millions of dollars lost in compensation and many customers ended up…
- Managing Innovation and Maintenance Development
When managing #engineering teams one challenge is often to balance the work between new features (innovation) and fixing bugs or adjusting older features…
- Giving a shit.
Been thinking about what makes different teams stand out the same work done by 2 different teams or companies can be very different. The article below shares…
- Balancing Product / Engineering Responsibilities
An excellent post by an xspotify engineer sharing several important lessons from his time there. Strongly recommend reading the whole thing.. My favourite one…
- A Core Part of Continuous Delivery
Yesterday Cloudflare suffered an outage while deploying some enhancements to their network. We at Sastaticket.pk, find and fix the issue (30 mins) and recover…