Starting again
The Human Engineer is back, but not in the same way.
So, I stopped writing The Human Engineer ten months ago.
The pieces were taking me forever. Each one would end up being 2000+ words of synthesized advice on productivity, communication or leadership. The systems were fabricated to help polish the newsletter (I was still following the advice, but not in such a regimented way). Which meant they weren't truly representative of the day to day issues I faced, it was mostly about what reads the best or coached the best. They were good and I'm proud of them, but writing them took alot out of me.
Then in June last year, I got an ADHD diagnosis at 32 and that kind of consumed most of the mental energy I had outside of work. The newsletter just sort of faded. I didn’t really decide to stop writing, I just stopped showing up to do it.
Alot has happened since though. I got promoted, so now I lead both the mobile and web platform teams at work instead of just mobile. I’ve grown alot as a leader and I think as a person. I feel alot more authentic, generally.
The original Human Engineer was about engineers learning the soft skills, but honestly the way I was writing about it wasn’t really working for me. I was kind of writing like I had things figured out, when I was just in the middle of stuff, same as everyone.
So here’s what The Human Engineer is now.
It’s a working journal of being human while being an engineering leader. If you’re earlier on the path than I am, hopefully some of what I’m working through can save you some time. It’s not going to be the big synthesized takes anymore. Smaller pieces, more in-progress stuff. The diagnosis changes how regimented I’ll be about it, not what I’ll write about. So shorter, less polished, more about what’s actually going on for me at the time.
What I want to write about is just whatever’s coming up day to day. Like the first time I led a project and didn’t really know what I was doing, doing public speaking when it’s not really what you signed up for, starting and pivoting a tech company and what building one taught me, the meetings where I realise I’m the bottleneck and the clear red flags I ignored. Plus alot of Claude Code stuff because I’ve been deep in that lately.
Some of these will be 500 words. Some will just be one specific moment unpacked a bit. The point is I write them and you read them and we both come away knowing something true about engineering as a thing you actually live, not just a craft.
I want this to feel like a colleague writing to other colleagues, not me trying to coach anyone. I’m figuring stuff out. You probably are too. Hopefully some of what I share is useful and hopefully it goes the other way too.
If that sounds like the version you want to read, glad you’re still here. If not, no hard feelings, you're welcome to unsubscribe.
Next post
About a talk I gave at AndroidMakers by Droidcon in Paris recently, and how I prepared for it.