There’s a significant difference between discussing engineering management principles in theory and applying them during real-world crises. This experience taught me valuable lessons about protecting your team while managing business pressure. The Business vs. Quality Paradox The Fundamental Truth Business stakeholders will always prioritize speed over quality. This isn’t inherently wrong it’s simply how business operates. However, the responsibility for maintaining quality standards falls squarely on the engineering team and their managers. ...

Why Energy Management Matters I’ve been thinking about the factors that make you energetic and help you get through the day. The biggest factors I believe are diet exercise and sleep. I’ve been reflecting on this a lot because I’ve come to realize that life is really getting busy. I support a family, multiple teams, small organizations, am active in the community, and I’m still trying to grow myself. All of this takes a lot out of me—time, energy, and capability. As you get into your 30s, most of these responsibilities are really demanding. Having energy to deal with all of that becomes very important. ...

As a software engineering manager, I’ve faced my share of technical challenges, but nothing quite prepared me for the week when our core loyalty points administration system went completely dark. The Perfect Storm LPA The system that orchestrates this entire operation, let’s call it our loyalty platform, had lost connectivity to essential services. We were looking at a potential customer impact that could affect our entire quarterly cycle. The technical details were complex: our replica server in the cloud couldn’t communicate with the master server on-premises, authentication services were down, and network connectivity had been severed due to recent security changes. On top of all of this we are working with a strained organization just from hardening exercises. ...

I recently found myself in a troubleshooting session that taught me an important lesson about assumptions we make in our development workflows. What started as a simple “why won’t this application start?” quickly became a deeper conversation about how we approach dependency management in enterprise environments. The Problem Unfolds One of our engineers was struggling with a Spring Boot application that wouldn’t start on an Azure VM. The error was frustratingly vague - just a “connection reset” message that gave us little to work with initially. But as we dug deeper, the real issue became clear. ...

Picture this: You walk into a new organization, excited about the challenges ahead. Your first assignment? Supporting the gift card service that validates whether someone’s gift card is legitimate before processing it. Simple enough, right? Then reality hits. Day two of your new role, and suddenly the app stops working when pushed to production. Key metrics are showing issues across the board. You’re staring at a broken system, and you have no idea what’s happening. ...

This command does a commit. Run it from public folder. bash push_to_live.sh The folder that gets published is just the public folder everything else I need to move manually To solve the problem of localhost appearing in prod ensure setup done on hugo.toml run ❯ hugo --environment production Push changes to prod Moving the project around: archived and uploaded to gdrive

Working with Senior Stakeholders on New Technology Introduction How do you convince or work with a senior stakeholder who’s pushing back on new technology when you need to win them over? My experience comes from two sides: the startup perspective and the corporate perspective. Startup Perspective In startups, the biggest issue is risk, specifically the return on investment. Cash is usually tight, and any project or investment you’re making is at the expense of another initiative. What you need to show is tangible proof there will be value. ...

Introduction I have been giving some thoughts to why domain knowledge is important in building a career in fintech. I thought I could share some of my thoughts on the topic. I have put in QnA format to make it easier to read. Why focus on building domain expertise in fintech? With the advancements we’re seeing in artificial intelligence and development tools, the ability to translate well-defined requirements into code is no longer the primary differentiator it once was. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang takes it further and says ...

I’m a big fan of event-driven architecture. I think it’s a great way to build scalable and resilient systems. I thought I would share some of my thoughts in this QnA format Why use event-driven design? Event-driven design should be considered for many system designs due to its ability to address common challenges in modern software architecture: Scalability: Events can be queued and processed asynchronously, allowing for better handling of high loads. Availability: Systems can continue to accept events even if downstream processors are temporarily unavailable. Evolvability: The decoupled nature of event-driven systems makes it easier to modify or replace individual components. Resilience: Queuing mechanisms provide a buffer against failures and allow for easier recovery. However, it’s important to weigh these benefits against potential drawbacks like increased complexity and the learning curve for developers. ...

What does having a growth mindset mean to me? Let me share an experience from my younger days that shaped my understanding of resilience and personal growth. The Challenge: Society of Actuaries Exam I was preparing for my Society of Actuaries P1 exam. The preparation materials were expensive - these books cost north of a hundred dollars at that time. I had gone through the book thoroughly and felt I had a solid conceptual understanding. ...