An overview of what’s changed in engineering during the last six months, how various tech companies are changing how they work, and why slowing down could be a sensible strategy
tech isn’t the future it’s just capitalism faster
responding with slowness in relations
Speed: How It Explains the World - Vaclav Smil
In a world that feels like it’s moving faster than ever, Smil examines how our relentless pursuit of speed – in areas such as production, travel and communication – shapes not only our technological landscape but also our social and environmental realities. And through engaging anecdotes and striking statistics, Smil challenges the assumption that faster is always better.
100 years of whatever this will be
What if all these weird tech trends actually add up to something? Last time, we explored why various bits of trendy technology are, in my o...
Don't Feed the Thought Leaders
In this article, the author shares their experience as an engineering manager and the challenges they faced when trying to reach alignment and prev...
Slow Software
What it means for software to be fast, and why most software is not.
Scaling Engineering Teams: Lessons from Google, Facebook, and Netflix
After spending over a decade in engineering leadership roles at some of the world’s most chaotic innovation factories—Google, Facebook, and Netflix—I’ve learned one universal truth: scaling e…
It’s Time to Embrace Slow Productivity
We need fewer things to work on. Starting now.
Wrap to 2025, Proem to 2026
Technological Paradigm Shifts are fundamental changes in technology that reshape industries and society.
Software Acceleration and Desynchronization
A look at the ever-present drive to make software delivery faster and how it might break down various activity loops in organizations.
There's no reason for software to be slow anymore
The other day, I saw a viral tweet saying that people talking about how LLMs are causing slow, bloated, code are going to eat crow once they re-write everything in super-optimized assembly. We're not quite at the point where we want to write everything in assembly, but some variant of what Nolan Lawson said about testing, you can choose how many bugs you want now, which I less eloquently noted here, is becoming more true for performance.
Deep research requires a slower pace than tech industry work
Anyone working in an industry for a while will become accustomed to that culture—its processes, its norms, its values, its tacit knowledge. Much of this is incredibly valuable, of course, but these ideas can also represent constraints. There are some important impedances here between tech industry culture and research culture. In particular, tech culture is calibrated to a much faster pace. This can lead to impatience or early abandonment when confronting problems which require a researcher’s pace.
Deep research requires a slower pace than tech industry work
Anyone working in an industry for a while will become accustomed to that culture—its processes, its norms, its values, its tacit knowledge. Much of this is incredibly valuable, of course, but these ideas can also represent constraints. There are some important impedances here between tech industry culture and research culture. In particular, tech culture is calibrated to a much faster pace. This can lead to impatience or early abandonment when confronting problems which require a researcher’s pace.
Opinion | Let’s Get Excited About Maintenance! (Published 2017)
Innovation is overrated. When it comes to technology, we need to celebrate upkeep.
one of the reasons why I'm critical of "bigger models will solve this" is that cranking the output velocity of technician work sharpens the need for process work, which is the domain of expertise. process is incredibly hard to get right. most fields are bad at it. and it's *gaining* importance.
Ed
when it comes to LLMs, I have been trying to beat the technician/expert drum. LLMs are becoming master technicians, but they obviously lack integrative capabilities to deploy expertise. but I'm starting to realize that a lot of people don't understand, or don't value the difference.
