Engineering Leadership
/Design × Code
Brands I've Built For
What People Say
“Jono is the manager every engineer hopes to work for at least once in their career.”
“Jono may be the most talented technologist I've worked with in my long career.”
“Jono has been my greatest professional accelerant. He provided the framework I needed to grow into a technology leader.”
“A natural born leader ... working with Jono was a masterclass in drive with insane depth of knowledge.”
“Jono excels at building teams and solutions from zero to one.”
“Jono propels any team he is a part of.”
Latest Writing
The Difference Between Debt and Preference
The term has been inflated to mean anything an engineer doesn't like about the codebase. Real debt has interest. It slows delivery, raises defect rates, and creates operational drag the business can feel. If none of that is happening, you're looking at preference with better branding.
The Goat Farmer Problem
We teach technical design. Code architecture. System thinking. All of it assumes the person wants to be a better engineer. What if they don't? The moment you ask someone where they actually want to be in 10 years, everything about how you lead them changes.
The Mirror Principle
Every post above 5,000 impressions shared one trait. Every post below 3,000 didn't have it. The topic didn't matter. The format didn't matter. The time of day didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was whether the reader saw something about themselves they didn't want to see.