Hello Again.
Back in 2017, I took a new job and stopped writing.
Not completely, but the kind of writing I’d done before - on my blog, on Twitter, in threads and essays and conference talks - took a back seat. That writing was opinionated, exploratory, often a little messy. It came from being in the mix: shipping things, arguing about architecture, mentoring junior devs, sitting in rooms where real tradeoffs got made.
If you followed me on Twitter back then (when it still existed in anything resembling its original form), you might remember those threads about software design, organizational dysfunction, product culture, and the weird squishy interface between code and people. We talked about inheritance hierarchies and team trauma in the same breath. It was a good time.
This newsletter is a return to that energy.
I’m writing again because I feel like I have something to say - things I’ve learned, patterns I’ve seen, ideas I want to poke at in public. It’s not a hot take feed. It’s not tech news or link dumps. It’s the kind of thinking work I used to do in long tweetstreams, now shaped into essays for a different era.
Here’s what you can expect:
Essays about software, systems, and the people who build them. Technical, but not tutorial. Philosophical, but not hand-wavy.
Stories from my time in the industry - from small startups to big companies, from IC to exec and back again.
Thoughtful takes on new trends, especially where they intersect with old mistakes.
Maybe some experiments, like reader questions, architecture teardown walkthroughs, or interviews with other folks doing interesting work.
You don’t need to be a senior engineer to get value from this. But you should be curious - about how software gets made, about how teams work, and about where we go from here.
What’s Free and What’s Paid?
Right now, most of what I write will be free - I have a lot of new ideas that I want out in the world. You can expect those every couple of weeks.
But I’ll also be publishing subscriber-only posts for paid members - deep dives, explorations of older material (like turning my old tweet threads into full essays), and behind-the-scenes process writing. Think of it as the director’s cut: the same voice, just with more room to stretch. Maybe a hot take or two 😅
If you want to support this work and make sure it continues, a paid subscription is the best way to do that. If you’re not ready, that’s fine too - reading and sharing still means a lot.
Either way, I’m so glad you’re here!
- Sarah
Looking forward to the essays!