2026W37
- the senior engineer death spiral — The pattern he names is one I’ve watched happen, you take on the ambitious thing, go quiet for two or three weeks convinced that working harder will close the gap, and by the time you surface you’ve traded sleep and relationships for a project nobody could see progress on. What reframes it is his claim that the actual failure is visibility, remote work and solo ownership let you silo yourself, and the secret catch-up sprint only deepens the hole. His fix is counterintuitive and I think right, drop a level, become the best teammate on the bugs and docs and support, and let momentum plus trust earn you the big project instead of heroics. The line “you are in the reputation-building business, and software is actually downstream of that” is the one I’ll repeat, though I’m still chewing on how it sits next to wanting the work itself to be the point.