The Curious Engineer

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Wednesday Wisdom

josvisser.substack.com

Things that are on my mind when I think about work. Click to read Wednesday Wisdom, by Jos Visser, a Substack publication with thousands of subscribers.

Engineering management / careersDevOps / SRE / infrastructureEssays / personal

’23’24’25’26
Posts
193 from 15 Feb 2023 to 28 Oct 2026
Posting
weekly (38 in the last year)
Kind
personal blog
Feed
https://josvisser.substack.com/feed

2026 29

  1. From Locally Correct to Globally Better
  2. Wednesday Wisdom holiday break
  3. Know thyself
  4. Security is not just a feeling
  5. How to start a remote SRE team
  6. On writing interview feedback
  7. A possible future of software engineering
  8. Coding with AI tools is still hard!
  9. A tiny history of software engineering
  10. The whooshing sound of deadlines...
  11. The anxiety factory
  12. Does code review still matter?
  13. Ten things not to worry about regarding oncall
  14. Shiny object syndrome
  15. Big machine people
  16. How to become a better engineer? (bot)
  17. How to become a better engineer? (human)
  18. Coming to terms with my unimportance
  19. Exit plan
  20. Standard response
  21. The cost of efficiency
  22. The one about coding with AI tools
  23. The gift of post-career
  24. Losing the secret sense
  25. Taylor Swift and the value of time
  26. Short: Seniority is a mindset
  27. Math and you
  28. How to become a TL 101
  29. Welcome to the problem fractal

2025 60

  1. The gift of nice
  2. Parameters for success
  3. Why do good people write bad software?
  4. Misinterpreting SRE
  5. Stress!
  6. TG Special: A reader question
  7. Respect what came before
  8. Short: Are you a koala 🐨 or a duck 🦆?
  9. The gift of modesty
  10. More things I learned running a small business
  11. Things I learned running a small business (part 1)
  12. Unhappy the team that needs heroes
  13. Form without function
  14. Leave a sinking ship in time
  15. Show, don’t tell…
  16. Security is temporary, adaptability is forever
  17. Coding in the time of AI
  18. Be a Player of Games
  19. Scale is the only problem left
  20. Consider this: You might be wrong!
  21. Know thy tools!
  22. All communication is strategic
  23. The burden(s) of ownership
  24. Keeping it real
  25. Embrace the politics
  26. Appreciate your IT support!
  27. Candidates: Please prepare!
  28. Getting Stuff Done
  29. Taming the monkey brain
  30. The unfortunate desire for certainty
  31. You can read this!
  32. Ramping up is hard to do
  33. The black box engineer
  34. The swamp and the city
  35. Overcoming a slump
  36. The gift of leaving
  37. The gift of time
  38. Terrible Terraform
  39. Pressure makes diamonds
  40. Nobody escapes corporate gravity (part 3)
  41. Nobody escapes corporate gravity (part 2)
  42. Nobody escapes corporate gravity (part 1)
  43. Senior engineers: Please prep for interviews
  44. Chaos is the price of freedom
  45. The career advice meta article
  46. Talk is cheap
  47. We need more agile system design
  48. It’s a knowledge problem! Or is it?
  49. Video of: The job market is a market
  50. The job market is a market
  51. Video of: No more shell scripts!
  52. No more shell scripts!
  53. Video of: Career choices: What to focus on
  54. Career choices: What to focus on?
  55. Podcast of: The value of grunt work
  56. Podcast of: Sometimes it is okay to just coast...
  57. The value of grunt work
  58. Sometimes it is okay to just coast
  59. Podcast of: The cult of data has gone too far
  60. The cult of data has gone too far

2024 58

  1. Podcast of: Wanna career? Move to the center!
  2. Wanna career? Move to the center!
  3. Podcast of: Faster computers afford dumber solutions
  4. Faster computers afford dumber solutions
  5. Podcast of: The loneliness of the long distance runbook
  6. The loneliness of the long distance runbook
  7. Podcast of: Career Advice: Learn how to write
  8. Career advice: Learn how to write
  9. Podcast: How to (be)come a manager
  10. How to be(come) a manager
  11. Podcast of: Embrace the Plateau
  12. Embrace the plateau
  13. Career advice: Learn how to debug
  14. Flex your color
  15. The misguided yearning for a better plan
  16. Don't sue the bastards
  17. Being right is overrated
  18. Dealing with underperformance
  19. The dangers of utopia
  20. The feedback paradox
  21. Thoughts about the great layoffs
  22. Rust should be your next language...
  23. A message for my sponsors
  24. John Lennon was on to something
  25. The unbearable lightness of being an infra engineer
  26. Life is all about continuous editing
  27. Security is not the user’s responsibility
  28. The review curse
  29. We need genetic variation and software liability
  30. How to communicate when upset or angry
  31. The museum of professional disappointment
  32. Career advice in three parts
  33. Domain Specific Terribleness
  34. Incantations
  35. The Much Maligned Manager
  36. The easy virus…
  37. Trivial code reuse
  38. Q: Why does most offsourcing not work?
  39. Interviewing has become a mess
  40. How to work
  41. Friction R Us
  42. You can’t teach caring…
  43. The Continuous Production Readiness Review
  44. Don’t be a rockstar engineer!
  45. Never approve design docs
  46. Speak up!
  47. Things you can learn from Microsoft
  48. How to beat the critical path
  49. Ode to Tuckman
  50. The need for beautiful code
  51. The devil is old
  52. Working hard does not cause stress
  53. Software engineers and the law
  54. Of course, again
  55. On writing promotion documents
  56. The agile waterfall
  57. What we lose through job hopping
  58. Stop the cringe!

2023 46

  1. Throwing blood against metal
  2. Stop glorifying startups
  3. Don’t build engines
  4. Senior engineers who don’t code
  5. Normalization of deviance
  6. About losers, clueless, and sociopaths
  7. Wait! What now?
  8. Small blessings
  9. In Defense of Return to the Office
  10. Move the needle!
  11. Anxiety in the workplace
  12. Velocity is an attitude
  13. Try harder to suck less
  14. Culture is what you do
  15. Noblesse oblige
  16. Everything that is worth it, is difficult
  17. Be in a business
  18. That's just what we do around here...
  19. Nobody is indispensable
  20. Be in the business!
  21. Why Python is amazing...
  22. Why Python is terrible...
  23. Trouble starting an SRE team?
  24. Be happy about your journey
  25. The unloved relational database
  26. Software engineering in the time of AI
  27. All hail to the almighty spreadsheet!
  28. Winner Takes Most
  29. It is not cool to be unkind!
  30. Seven habits for effective OKR management
  31. On Raising Flagpoles
  32. The complexity of abundance
  33. Don't kick a dead whale across the beach!
  34. It is important whom you report to!
  35. Do not forget to have fun with computers!
  36. A Tale of Two Knowledges
  37. If you do something, say something!
  38. An Action of Punctuality
  39. Quality is fitness for use
  40. The growth curve
  41. It's not just cat videos!
  42. I never approve of anything (except of you)
  43. Whatever happened to, all the heroes 🎶🎶
  44. Fixing backward
  45. It's the principle of the thing
  46. It's the community, stupid!