The rack
All essays
Long-form notes from the lane — leadership, architecture, and R&D bets. Grab a beverage. Stay a while.
From Scale to Scale: What Fixing a 2005 Espresso Machine Taught Me About AI Code Generation
A rusted 2005 espresso machine, a black-box office coffee maker, and the same dilemma AI coding assistants put in front of every engineer: operator or architect?
Rookout's Dudi Cohen — How To Live In The Debugging Moment
“The Production First Mindset” podcast episode which featured me as a guest.
Good Intentions, Bad Outcomes — in Go and Beyond
My Go Israel meetup talk (in Hebrew): how well-meaning design choices — in Go, in policy, in nature — keep producing the exact opposite of what we wanted.
Boosting Development Velocity: Adapting Software Architecture to Changing Team Dynamics
Software developers and software architects have, for a very long time, stood on opposite sides of the “whose is better” competition. They have completely different beliefs, with each vowing that…
A Software Development Manager’s Guide To Beginner Mistakes
R&D managers, when first stepping into the role, tend to make the mistake of choosing one of two extreme management approaches. Each of these comes with its own set of challenges — and its own set of…
5 Basic Steps To Implement The Technology Acceptance Model Of Usefulness In Your Development Organization
As engineering leaders, we all struggle to find the balance between creating cool technology and useable technology. Let’s be real. We all want to create cool things. It’s in our nature. But what’s…
Beware! Don't Make This Developer Manager's Beginner Mistake
My Leaders in Tech 2022 talk (in Hebrew) — the live version of my Guardian vs. Pleaser essay, on the two extremes new R&D managers fall into.
Tracing Is Dead: How to Maximize Results with Logging and Metrics
My Monitorama PDX 2022 talk — a deliberately provocative case that distributed tracing kept failing to earn its keep, and what to do instead.
Solving Customer Related Problems with R&D
As an R&D manager, there are many things on my mind that keep me up at night. These thoughts range anywhere from impossible research explorations, employee motivation, rising cloud costs, all the way…
Profiling Schrödinger’s Code
In modern software development and operations, everything can be monitored. This isn’t a matter of technology. If you want to monitor something, you can. However, modern monitoring tools come with a…
The Journey To Debugging Other People’s Code
Take a look at your application as it runs on your server or the cloud. You’re so proud of it. Admire it as it’s processing data, interacting with the user, and doing magical things. You should be…
Three Debugging Mistakes and Strategies to Fix Them
I have been managing R&D teams for the past 14 years or so and have learned many lessons along the way. Some of the best lessons have come about in the moment when your software meets the real world…
Focus On The Path, Not Only The Product: Here’s Why
As engineers, we continuously aim for perfection. The drive to deliver the perfect product sometimes defines how good we are as engineers. We often discuss and fine tune the term and the essence of…
Onboarding In Full Remote
When taking a look at how we had to change the way we work, going from seeing everyone in the company almost everyday into a fully remote mode, several challenges are apparent. I’ve written about…
Guide: Minimizing Waste in Your R&D Organization
Looking at modern software development practices, most of them aim at maximizing the output of your team and the quality of your software. Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past 20 years…
A Pivotal Paradox: 6 Lessons Learned Managing A Fully Remote Team
A mere few months ago the majority of the world was forced to change drastically, including the move into a ‘fully remote’ mode of office work. As reality was bearing down upon us, tech managers and…
Reassessing My “Works on My Machine” Certificate
I recently remembered that about 13 years ago I was fully certified with the “Works on My Machine” certificate program. Although I went through the entire evaluation process as was required by Joseph…
Move Fast And Break Things With Zero-Tolerance For Product Errors
Since Rookout was founded 2 years ago we’ve been running fast. Real fast. We have created a product that some of our customers believe is magic. This magic lives alongside our customers’ dev,…