2026-05-03

10 min read

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hell yes engineering

this is supposed to be a click bait-y description to get you to click my manifesto, read, then subscribe. i just don't have anything to sell. i do have a bit of philosophy or religion in the age of software engineering with ai for you. here it is:

say hell yes

for years it was incredibly valuable for engineer to say

we shouldn’t build that because…

tbh I was kinda good at this too. this permeated software engineering culture in lots of crazy ways. stupid, elaborate, complicated, ceremony driven processes. an incredible amount of planning. people made whole careers out of this. saying no was pretty fun and an incredible hack. this had some downstream consequences tho that permeated into software engineering culture. we have to get rid of all that cruft. it’s not helping and it’s not useful or fun

sure i guess this is about ai. but really it’s about the entire way we built software. it was stupid but made sense at the time. there’s some “new shit that’s come to light” and it’s time to adapt. sure when you’re talking to other engineers about stuff say things that you think are good engineering like we should use typescript not rails because llms like types and investing in rails is a bad choice for our ai future. I dunno maybe some day the rails people will see the light and embrace types. but…

they aren’t changing and fucking rails is awesome. seriously. i’m using it now and its rad. i’m still a hater. but also, i freaking get it. it’s super fucking easy and fun. there’s a bunch of really nice things about it. you can pick it up and make shit pretty easily. also the rails people have a good culture around shit like testing and tdd and pairing. and pairing and tdd are awesome and tests are the best guide to onboard to anything.

anyway we still have all this bullshit that we used to use to slow down, demand product actually know what it’s asking for, make sure we didn’t close a door behind us, practice discipline. we don’t need that now. we are product. and product is engineering, so is design. all the artificial separation can go away now. we can work in micro teams and just make stuff and go fast. i know this isn’t intuitive and i suspect a few people will drop out of the industry. that’s a shame.

that’s why i’m trying to create a new cult, kinda like agile except it’s not stupid and doesn’t suck. the new world tests in production like charity says (tbh stop reading anything i say and just do what charity majors says) and it moves fast and breaks things. and it doesn’t act like it’s the most important thing in the world. it’s just building cool stuff. and mostly what you build will suck, then you just delete it. it’s not that hard. you can just delete stuff now. customers get it, google shuts down products all the time. enshitification is the norm and that’s good.

the path forward

don’t be a grump

there’s a bunch of grumps in this field. it’s fucking stupid. we’re freaking wizards! we just imagine things and then boom they’re real. the stuff we build lives in this weird in between universe that’s somewhat real and entirely fiction and it rules. yeah there’s a bunch of annoying shit like pager duty and optimizing a button or whatever. but have you ever had a real job? you know what sucks, having your hands be cold and wet for 11 hours straight. stop being a grump.

this is great. ai is great. stfu about how it uses too much energy and stole art and also stfu about how elon is great or sam altman is a genius. nobody cares. now that we have llms there’s a bunch of zoomers coming who can build shit faster than you and won’t complain because they just wanna buy a house. be like them. embrace it.

this is freaking awesome. we all have superpowers now. let’s use them and make amazing stuff and get after it. have fun. find your enthusiasm and hang on to it. this is the thing to embrace. it’s really cool and fun and crazy. being a grump sucks. be a fun, collaborative, engaged teammate instead.

vibe coding is weird and different. i like weird and different and you should too. just because it’s weird doesn’t mean it’s bad and just because it’s different doesn’t mean you should dismiss it. let your freak flag fly. let’s capture this and work together to make it good. that’s what our industry is about.

say yes and

gas people up. you know that person you met that one time and when you left you were like… they’re awesome. they gassed you up. they were positive about your ideas. they showed enthusiasm for what you were thinking. be that person. especially in code review but also in idea meetings or when building things. if the pm says we should make a thing go hell yea and push for the next idea. push for the stuff that pm instinctively cut because they knew that engineers would push back. build that thing. get crazy. we can move a lot faster (it’s not 10x but it’s faster) and if we cut all the red tape and no and ceremony and bs we can move way faster than we think.

there’s never been a more important time to be about good engineering practices. understanding the adapter pattern or strategy pattern is freaking key. being fanatical about DRY is maybe a bit much but get some DRY in your life, the robots love copying stuff and like watch out for that. but when you see it, go pair on the code review. go pair. seriously. in real time. I don’t really care if it’s not natural. do it anyway. make it fun. this is fun. if you don’t remember that it’s fun fake it. it will come back to you i promise. bring that kid (or mid career adult) back that loved programming or just wanted a great job and would do anything to make it happen.

watch some shows or documentaries about how the comedic actors of recent fame were all doing “yes and…” improv and get enthusiastic. say “yes and”. teach each other. be excited. you may have to do some acting to bring back all the joy that agile stole from you, but it’s still there.

test in prod, review fast, don’t be precious but love learning

i could do spec driven development or a bunch of other stupid ai bro stuff (hell i even low key love ralph loops), but really, i just pair program. one test, one code change, one refactor, commit. next. this is stupid fast in the age of ai. i don’t do it this way because it’s “right”. i don’t know what “right” is anymore. i do it because it’s pretty fast and also i learn as i go. often i still get reviews with “can you change this to an ivar” or whatever. then i learn what that is. i still have flash cards for concepts so i can drill them. because memorizing concepts is still the GOAT if you wanna be good at things.

i do that because i wanna learn. you should too and the whole “yes and” philosophy means you should learn and teach. if you’re not a good teacher just practice. do some lunch and learns or write or make youtube videos. whatever works for you. but… hurry the heck up.

you’re probably working on a SaaS of some kind or internal software, some kinda app i dunno. i promise you it can break. it’s nbd. don’t be goofy, be thoughtful, try, that’s why I do TDD. but it can break. you can delete features. you can test in prod with feature flags (again just listen to charity not me). bias toward going fast and learning. not learning like some nitwit who says “we failed but we learned a lot” and then when you ask what it is they learned they’re like “we were early to market”. obvs they didn’t learn anything.

i mean personal and team learning. work together in micro teams and learn from one another. you probably work with a designer and a pm and they’re super smart in domains you may never have considered. you can learn from them if you work as a team. so push towards more team work. you’re just sitting there waiting for some robot to write some failing tests. while you’re waiting go collaborate. that’s your job now. your job isn’t putting your headphones on and having that be the zone anymore. you’ll still get that from time to time. but your job now is ultra collaboration. figure it out. if you’re a grump and can’t do this see principle one.

give code reviews but don’t be pedantic. use examples. try to get the codebase to look similar throughout. use lots of patterns. share the patterns. do it with joy. treat all this with excitement. “if we use this pattern the robots will copy better and not be chaotic, isn’t that freaking awesome??”. yes. yes it is. this is wild. have fun, go fast, break stuff, laugh it off, fix it, move on.

hire lots of musicians and new comp sci grads

or those weirdos people that are programming raspberry pi’s to track their dishwashers then write about it. or the people who paint miniature figurines. teachers are good too, so are people who spent a bunch of time in retail. obsessives who work in little teams on little details remain goat coworkers. but you know who also freaking rules?

comp sci graduates and software engineering grads. they know the fundamentals cold. there’s a bunch of practical shit they don’t know don’t get me wrong but it’s fine. go pair with them. we need them and we need to teach them that this is crazy fun and we can make stuff at a rate that’s never been done before. we need that.

there’s this one skill that the musicians and minifig painters have in spades that the new engineer and the seasoned vets don’t have though. they are fine with just deleting stuff. they’ve made plenty of mistakes in their hobbies and just deleted it and moved on. that’s not intuitive for business people and trained developers. we’re about to build a lot of slop/crap/noise. let’s embrace that by surrounding ourselves with people who aren’t too precious about their creations. artists rule at this. so do people who have seen things come and go. get you some folks like this on your team.

work 40 hours

you probably haven’t been working a full week. like really trying to put in 40? it’s incredibly hard to do software engineering and actually do 40 hours. mostly, i’ve worked with people who work less. but now, it’s 40 hour time. fuck 996 and hustle culture. that shit’s for the birds. but like… putting in an honest 40 will propel your work forward. it will also help you get your team together. build the squad of the other “hell yes” people at your job. there’s a PM and a designer that are waiting for you to show up and make stuff with them. live, in real time.

now’s the time to work 40 hours. there’s a bunch of people working way harder for longer for way less. if you’re putting in a collaborative 40 hours you’ll do more than almost anyone in the history of this industry. you’ll have big impact on your org and you’ll secure the bag.