Hello Reader, Understanding this distinction would have saved me years of frustration in my engineering career. Every organization has two kinds of engineers. There are functional engineers and there are vital engineers. Most people never realize this, and it keeps them stuck far longer than necessary. I learned this the hard way, after confusing output with outcome for a long time. At first glance, functional engineers look impressive. They deliver tickets, close incidents, follow processes...
10 days ago • 2 min read
I’ve spent the last few years studying how influence actually works inside organizations, especially among engineers, ICs, and systems thinkers. Not the loud kind. Not the political kind. Not the manipulative kind. The kind that compounds quietly. Below are 26 influence rules I’m following going into 2026 and beyond. Principles for building credibility, trust, and authority without losing yourself in the process. Avoid unforced credibility errors. Most influence is lost through small,...
17 days ago • 2 min read
The Five Ls: A Better Way to Plan Your Year 2025 is officially coming to a close. While most people are dusting off their tired list of New Year’s resolutions (lose weight, save money, read more books), I want to share something far more powerful with you. It’s called The Five Ls I first learned about this framework from Dominic Price, a work futurist at Atlassian, through leadership expert Andrea Clarke. After running it myself, I can confidently say this beats traditional goal-setting by a...
24 days ago • 3 min read
Hello Reader, In the hive system, worker bees leave the hive to explore the surrounding environment, searching for nectar and pollen from flowers. Once they locate a good source, they return to the hive and communicate the distance and location to other bees through what’s known as the waggle dance. But not all bees take notice. Scientists discovered that about 20 per cent of bees ignore the waggle dance; they dismiss the directions and go off at random, which doesn’t make any sense, because...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
30 Short Lessons on Adaptability Adaptability is a strange thing. It determines how far we rise in times of change, yet almost none of us are taught how to adapt. We’re rewarded for knowing the right answers but rarely for asking the right questions. We’re encouraged to stay the course but rarely to examine whether the course still makes sense. For most of my life, I thought adaptability meant being quick. Quick to respond, quick to pivot, quick to act. It turns out, that’s only a fraction of...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
When network engineering gets hard (and it always does), most engineers retreat into one of two worlds Naive Optimism: The world where you tell yourself “AI won’t affect my role,” where every automation trend is overhyped and where the future feels safe because the past felt familiar. This mindset avoids the uncomfortable truth and clings to blind confidence. Hopeless Realism: The world where every advancement in AI feels like a threat, where every new automation tool signals your eventual...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
The Tree Chopping Trap I’ve been thinking a lot about how network engineers spend their time, and I keep coming back to this metaphor that perfectly captures what I see happening across the industry. Most of us are stuck chopping down trees. Let me explain what I mean. Your day looks something like this: alerts flooding your monitoring system. A switch that’s reached end-of-life but still works fine. Other teams ask why their application is slow. Your inbox has 247 unread messages. Your Slack...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
7 Lessons from Warren Buffets’ Final Letter As network engineers, we often think in terms of packets, uptime, redundancy, and scalability. But leadership lessons don’t just come from tech, they come from everywhere, even the investing world. Warren Buffett’s November 10, 2025 thanksgiving letter (his final one as CEO) offers timeless wisdom, and many of his insights map surprisingly well to how we build and operate networks. Here are 7 lessons we can apply. 1. Be Humble About Luck Buffett...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
What Are You Permitting That's Preventing Your Progress? I’ve often thought there are really two ways to improve your career as a network engineer: Add a Positive: Learn a new protocol, get a certification, build a new system. Remove a Negative: Stop tolerating outdated processes, toxic coworkers, or inefficient workflows. Most of us automatically default to the former and ignore the latter. We’re conditioned to believe that career growth means doing more. More tools. More scripts. More...
2 months ago • 1 min read