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AI must RTFM: Why tech writers are becoming context curators
I’ve been noticing a trend among developers that use AI: they are increasingly writing and structuring docs in context …
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The Academic Pipeline Stall: Why Industry Must Stand for Academia
The Research Pipeline is Stalling The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) froze all outgoing funding, including new awards and scheduled payments on active grants. Over 1,000 NSF research projec…
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OPA maintainers and Styra employees hired by Apple
Banner announcing OPA creators joining Apple
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Why Your Best Engineers Are Interviewing Elsewhere, CodeGood
A company lost five senior engineers in 18 months. Exit interviews cited compensation. The real problem: information does not flow upward through organizational hierarchy. By the time problems reach executive level, they have metastasized into resignation decisions made months earlier.
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Three ways to solve problems
Deciding not to solve a problem, or solving a different one, can also be a viable solution.
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Resident physicians' exam scores tied to patient survival
New analysis finds tests for new doctors can measure what matters — the life and health of patients
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How to build silos and decrease collaboration on purpose
Although counter-intuitive, it can be beneficial to build silos and decrease collaboration between teams. Balance the need for collaboration, coordination, and communication with these tips.
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The Accountability Problem
This is a transcript of my keynote presentation at the Agile Cambridge conference in England on October 2nd, 2025. The topic was “The Accountability Problem.” How do we define software department accountability so our business partners don’t do it for us?
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The Software Engineering Identity Crisis
Many of us became software engineers because we found our identity in building things. Not managing things. Not overseeing things. Building things. With our own hands, our own minds, our own code. But that identity is being challenged. AI coding assistants aren’t just changing how we write software - they’re…
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Let's stop pretending that managers and executives care about productivity
Writing at the end of the world, from Hveragerði, Iceland
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Dangerous advice for software engineers
I’m a big fan of “sharp tools”. These are tools that are powerful enough to be hugely helpful or harmful, depending on how they’re used. Most forms of direct…
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Universities should be more than toll gates
Personal writing by Walid Dib, and a collection of games, apps, and companies I’ve built.
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The port I couldn't ship
Porting a venerable library on vibes. What started as a quick WebPerl success spiraled into weeks of failed attempts, mangled ASCII diagrams, and a hard lesson about respecting the craft embedded in battle-tested code.
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Boring work needs tension
We can make our work exciting by chasing the every day tension.
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What it's like working for American companies as an Australian
My experience working across timezones for Americans
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Gaslight-driven development
Computers are starting to have opinions on how our APIs should look like
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Advice for new principal tech ICs (i.e., notes to myself)
Based on what I've learned from role models and mentors in Amazon
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Taking money off the table
Written pieces, talks, and other bits by Zach Holman.
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Root cause analysis? You're doing it wrong
If you have arrived here, you should know this is an early draft containing mostly unedited stream-of-consciousness crap because I have found it difficult to structure this topic. My latest attempt is to split this information up into multiple separate articles.
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No Pay, No Work; Early Career Lessons
Part 3 of my 12-year journey—what my first rocky job taught me about boundaries and value.
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Why most product planning is bad and what to do about it
OKRs created more ceremony than clarity, so we built Problem Driven Development: a 4-day quarterly process focused on problems, not solutions.
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Reflections
The second birthday of ChatGPT was only a little over a month ago, and now we have transitioned into the next paradigm of models that can do complex reasoning. New years get people in a reflective...
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Don't Become a Scientist (1999)
Don't Become a Scientist!
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Hiring a developer as a small indie studio in 2025
A practical guide for hiring a developer as a small indie studio. How we, a three-person team, managed 159 applicants using a streamlined, time-efficient process. The article covers designing relevant take-home assignments and a simple Gmail labeling system for high-volume candidate triage.
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Always be ready to leave (even if you never do)
After 7 years at the same company, I'm moving on. But the practices that made my exit smooth aren't exit strategies—they're professional habits everyone should build, whether they're staying or leaving.
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Things I learned from 5 years at Vercel
Here are some of the lessons I learned and how I grew as a leader and manager, as well as a bunch of behind-the-scenes photos.
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Changing Directions
<p>I have two important announcements:</p> <ol> <li> <p>I’m leaving the tech industry. Hopefully “for good”; if not, at least “for now”.</p> </li> <li> <p>As such, the content on this blog is going to shift, perhaps dramatically. I’m going to be writing about a broader range of…
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Escaping surprise bills and over-engineered messes: Why I left AWS
Frustrated with AWS's complexity and cost risks, I switched to NearlyFreeSpeech for its prepaid model, ensuring financial control while keeping hosting simple and flexible.