Blog

Sixty-four posts on engineering leadership, healthcare technology, and some books worth reading about both.

1. Tim Berners-Lee, This Is for Everyone: The Unfinished Story of the World Wide Web (Book Review)

   February 16, 2026 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

2. Dan Wang, Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future (Book Review)

   November 25, 2025 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

3. Darryl Campbell, Fatal Abstraction: Why the Managerial Class Loses Control of Software (Book Review)

   August 4, 2025 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

4. Karen Hao, Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI (Book Review)

   June 28, 2025 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

5. Eduardo Ustaran, European Data Protection: Law and Practice (Book Review)

   April 27, 2025 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

6. Sarah Wynn-Williams, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism (Book Review)

   March 22, 2025 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

7. Kate Conger, Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter (Book Review)

   March 16, 2025 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

8. Jennifer Pahlka, Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better (Book Review)

   February 17, 2025 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

9. Bent Flyvbjerg, How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors That Determine the Fate of Every Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration and Everything In Between (Book Review)

   July 13, 2024 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

10. Tom Chivers, Everything Is Predictable: How Bayesian Statistics Explain Our World (Book Review)

    July 5, 2024 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

11. Dana Mattioli, The Everything War: Amazon’s Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power (Book Review)

    May 1, 2024 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

12. Loren Kohnfelder, Designing Secure Software: A Guide for Developers (Book Review)

    December 17, 2023 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

13. Kristi Coulter, Exit Interview: The Life and Death of My Ambitious Career (Book Review)

    September 13, 2023 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

14. Brad Stone, Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire (Book Review)

    March 22, 2023 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

15. Colin Bryar, Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon (Book Review)

    March 13, 2023 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

16. Roger A. Grimes, A Data-Driven Computer Defense: A Way to Improve Any Computer Defense (Book Review)

    November 6, 2022 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

17. Nicole Perlroth, This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race (Book Review)

    January 22, 2022 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

18. Tim Wu, The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age (Book Review)

    December 26, 2021 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

19. Eliot Brown, The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion (Book Review)

    August 19, 2021 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

20. Michael Lopp, The Art of Leadership: Small Things, Done Well (Book Review)

    May 26, 2021 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

21. Matthew Skelton, Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow (Book Review)

    March 10, 2021 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

22. A.G. Lafley, Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works (Book Review)

    October 26, 2020 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

23. Paul Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine: The Rise of a Sovereign Profession and the Making of a Vast Industry (Book Review)

    September 7, 2020 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

24. Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World (Book Review)

    June 21, 2020 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

25. John Carreyrou, Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup (Book Review)

    March 9, 2020 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

26. Lara Hogan, Resilient Management (Book Review)

    January 29, 2020 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

27. Gene Kim, The Unicorn Project (Book Review)

    January 20, 2020 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

28. Mike Chapple, ISC2 CISSP Certified Information Systems Security Professional Official Study Guide (Book Review)

    November 30, 2019 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

29. Dominica Degrandis, Making Work Visible : Exposing Time Theft to Optimize Work & Flow (Book Review)

    June 25, 2019 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

30. Evan Francen, Unsecurity: Information security is failing. Breaches are epidemic. How can we fix this broken industry? (Book Review)

    June 24, 2019 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

31. Mark Schwartz, A Seat at the Table: IT Leadership in the Age of Agility (Book Review)

    January 16, 2019 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

32. Yasha Levine, Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet (Book Review)

    August 10, 2018 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

33. A Middleman Extension for Categories

    May 26, 2018 in Middleman

34. Hansen, Great at Work: How Top Performers Do Less, Work Better, and Achieve More (Book Review)

    March 3, 2018 in Reading, Reviews, and Management

35. Transitioning to being a Programmer

    February 18, 2018 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

36. Values

    February 10, 2018 in Iora, Reading, and Values

37. Sara Wachter-Boettcher, Technically Wrong: Sexist Apps, Biased Algorithms, and Other Threats of Toxic Tech (Book Review)

    January 7, 2018 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

38. Fournier, The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change (Book Review)

    September 2, 2017 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

39. Sutherland, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time (Book Review)

    August 25, 2017 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

40. Turco, The Conversational Firm (Book Review)

    July 1, 2017 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

41. Niven and Lamorte, Objectives and Key Results: Driving Focus, Alignment, and Engagement with OKRs (Book Review)

    May 20, 2017 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

42. Christina Wodtke, Radical Focus (Book Review)

    April 8, 2017 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

43. How I get to Inbox Zero

    January 18, 2017 in Uncategorized

44. Moving from WordPress to Middleman, Part II: Multiple categories per post

    February 5, 2015 in Technology, Ruby, and Middleman

45. Moving from WordPress to Middleman, Part I: ActiveRecord modeling of WordPress

    January 30, 2015 in Technology, Ruby, and Middleman

46. User prioritization of bug / issue tickets

    January 30, 2014 in Uncategorized

47. Notes and Translations for the New York Times coverage of healthcare.gov software

    October 21, 2013 in Uncategorized

48. Tribal Leadership (Book Review)

    June 23, 2013 in Reading and Reviews

49. Jeff Gothelf, Lean UX (Book Review)

    April 24, 2013 in Technology, Reviews, and Code

50. Sandi Metz, Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby (Book Review)

    November 25, 2012 in Reviews, Ruby, and Code

51. The Most Important Social Network: GitHub

    July 14, 2012 in Uncategorized

52. Helpful Rails book: Rails AntiPatterns, by Pytel and Saleh

    May 24, 2011 in Reading, Rails, Reviews, Ruby, and Code

53. Russ Olsen's Eloquent Ruby, and the teaching of Ruby

    March 5, 2011 in Reading, Technology, Reviews, and Ruby

54. Rapid software development with my 8-year-old

    February 28, 2011 in Technology, Ruby, and Code

55. Application delivery on mobile devices: App Store/Native vs. Browser/HTML5

    February 3, 2011 in Technology

56. The iPad and the classroom

    March 10, 2010 in Teaching

57. My Start-Up Life (Book Review)

    March 19, 2008 in Reading, Reviews, and Startup CTO Bookshelf

58. Weaving the Web (Book Review) [about ten years later]

    March 18, 2008 in Reading and Reviews

59. No Vision, All Drive (Book Review)

    February 25, 2008 in Technology, Reviews, and Startup CTO Bookshelf

60. Management and the bugs database

    December 7, 2007 in Technology

61. Pro Active Record (Book Review)

    November 9, 2007 in Technology, Rails, and Reviews

62. Amazon Web Services - EC2 - Wow!

    September 28, 2007 in Technology and Kendall Square

63. Distributed media - through vendors or standards?

    August 22, 2007 in Technology

64. Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich (Book Review)

    August 19, 2007 in Reading and Reviews