What's going on 2025-12-29

Year end things are happening. Reviews, reflection, goal setting… dance recitals, family get togethers, holiday parties… illness, travel, pipes bursting, extreme weather, the Blackhawks are losing… OUR PETS’ HEADS ARE FALLING OFF!!!

Let me take a few minutes to brain dump some things I’ve been reading and the thoughts they sparked.

• Microservices vs Monolith: What I Learned Building Two Fintech Marketplaces Under Insane Deadlines

  Time, team, process, and domain boundaries are what actually decide whether microservices or a monolith make sense. The author ties it to a soccer analogy at the end, but the real takeaway is that organizational structure drives architecture far more than engineering ideals. This resonates because so many debates pretend the technology exists in a vacuum when it very clearly does not.

• What Actually Makes You Senior – Terrible Software

  This came out of a work discussion around responsibility and ownership at different engineering levels. The article frames mid-level engineers as people who can solve well-defined problems, while senior engineers operate more strategically and help define the problem.

  I look at it a bit differently. To me, senior engineers require deeper technical and product understanding, along with the ability to communicate clearly and effectively. I also see senior engineers as a critical force multiplier for junior and mid-level engineers. They should be leveling others up, building more maintainable systems, and making decisions that age well. I think a lot of that gets ignored, and it makes me wonder how I would define these roles if I were designing them from scratch.

• Visibility and Communication is The Job – by Yue Zhao

  I am not sure where this originally came from, but it was sitting in my notes and felt like a natural continuation of the point above. A huge part of being a good engineer is communication.

  While regular touch points and updates are valuable, I also think it is important to train people on how to get information from you without constant interruption. During my most productive development years, I was very deliberate about keeping my work items up to date so others could help themselves to status and context. That only works if you are disciplined about it, but when it works, it scales far better than being a perpetual human status endpoint.