The notes I would have wanted at fifteen.
Long form pieces on shipping production systems, scaling SaaS, hiring engineers, AI integration, and the engineering decisions behind Yashveer Labs.
799 posts · page 13 of 34
- Startup Technical Strategy
Engineering Retention: The Patterns That Work
Engineering retention is the cheapest form of hiring. Every engineer who stays is one you do not have to source, interview, and onboard. The patterns that work are specific and unglamorous.
12 min read
- Recruiter and Career Positioning
Engineering Mentorship That Actually Works
Most engineering mentorship is theater. The mentor and mentee meet, talk for half an hour, and leave with nothing changed. The mentorship that works is more specific and more rare.
11 min read
- Recruiter and Career Positioning
Engineering Interview Preparation Without Burning Out
Most engineering interview prep is grinding through LeetCode for months. The engineers who get the best offers prepared differently. Here is the schedule that works without destroying your nights and weekends.
11 min read
- Startup Technical Strategy
Engineering Driven Customer Discovery
Customer discovery is too important to delegate to product alone. The engineers who talk to customers build better products. Here is the pattern that makes engineering driven discovery work.
11 min read
- Startup Technical Strategy
Engineering Diversity Without Performative Theater
Engineering diversity is the discipline of broadening the pool you hire from. Performative theater is the corporate ceremony that produces no diversity. The teams that take the work seriously do it quietly.
12 min read
- Startup Technical Strategy
Engineering Capacity Planning for Small Teams
Capacity planning at small team scale is not Jira ceremony. It is the discipline of knowing what your team can ship and saying no to what they cannot. Here is the lightweight version that works.
11 min read
- Hiring Developers, Freelancers, and Agencies
Engineer LinkedIn Profiles That Actually Convert Recruiters
Most engineer LinkedIn profiles look the same. The few that stand out follow a small set of patterns that recruiters respond to. Here is what works.
11 min read
- Tech Debt and Refactoring
End to End Tests: When They Help and When They Hurt
End to end tests are the only tests that prove the system works for users. They are also the most expensive to maintain. The teams that get this balance right ship faster than the ones at either extreme.
12 min read
- Security, Auth, and Compliance
Encryption at Rest vs in Transit: What Customers Will Ask
Encryption at rest and in transit are the two questions enterprise customers ask first. Both are easy to get right. The teams that have not thought about either stumble on the easiest part of a security review.
11 min read
- DevOps, Deployment, Infrastructure
Egress Costs on AWS: The Bill Nobody Sees Coming
AWS egress costs grow silently with usage. The bill arrives a month later. The teams that take egress seriously cut it by an order of magnitude. The teams that do not pay the full rate forever.
11 min read
- Web App and Frontend Development
Drag and Drop in Modern Web Apps
Drag and drop is one of those features that looks simple and breaks in dozens of subtle ways. The libraries have matured. The patterns are known. Here is the practical guide that gets it right.
11 min read
- Backend, APIs, and System Design
Domain Driven Design for SaaS: A Practical Subset
Domain driven design has a heavy reputation. The practical subset that helps SaaS teams is small. Bounded contexts. Ubiquitous language. Aggregates. Three concepts that pay back without the ceremony of the full method.
12 min read
- AI Integration and Vibe Coding Rescue
Document Understanding in SaaS: PDFs, Spreadsheets, and Beyond
AI has made document understanding suddenly cheap. The teams that ship it well integrate it into specific workflows. The teams that ship it badly produce demos that nobody uses.
12 min read
- Comparisons and Vendor Decisions
Discord vs Slack vs Teams for Engineering Communities
Discord wins for open developer communities. Slack wins for internal engineering teams. Teams wins for enterprises already on Microsoft. The wrong choice produces a community that does not stick.
11 min read
- Backend, APIs, and System Design
Designing for Failure: A Backend Engineer's Mental Model
Production systems fail. The question is whether they fail cleanly. The engineers who design for failure produce systems that degrade gracefully. The ones who do not produce systems that cascade.
12 min read
- Backend, APIs, and System Design
Designing for Audit From the Start
An auditable system is harder to retrofit than to design. The discipline at week one is small. The savings at year three when an auditor arrives is enormous. Here is the design that holds up.
12 min read
- MVP Development and Startup Builds
Designing an MVP That Can Scale Without Rewriting It
Most MVPs need a full rewrite at year two. The few that do not were designed with a small set of disciplines that cost nothing extra at the start. Here is the design that scales.
12 min read
- Backend, APIs, and System Design
Designing an API That Customers Will Not Curse In Five Years
An API that customers love at year five was designed for year five. The decisions made at week one shape what is possible in year five. Here is the discipline that produces APIs customers integrate enthusiastically.
12 min read
- Cross Platform and Mobile Development
Deep Linking: A Mobile Engineering Primer
Deep links are how the rest of the world reaches into your mobile app. Done right, they make every email, push, and shared URL land where the user expected. Done wrong, they break in ways the team does not notice until customers complain.
12 min read
- DevOps, Deployment, Infrastructure
Datadog vs New Relic vs Grafana Cloud vs Honeycomb
Datadog for breadth. New Relic for ease. Grafana Cloud for cost and customization. Honeycomb for distributed tracing depth. Four credible observability stacks. Each fits a different team.
12 min read
- Performance Optimization
Database Query Performance: The Five Patterns That Hurt the Most
Most database performance problems come from a handful of patterns. The N plus one. The sequential scan. The unbounded result. The cross join. The lock contention. Fix these five and most performance work is done.
12 min read
- Backend, APIs, and System Design
Database Partitioning: Strategies and Pitfalls
Partitioning solves real problems on real large tables. It also creates new problems if used preemptively or with the wrong partition key. Here is the honest read on when and how.
12 min read
- SaaS Architecture and Scaling
Database Migrations at Scale: How to Move Fast Without Breaking Things
Database migrations get harder as the table gets larger. The patterns that worked at one million rows produce locks and outages at one hundred million. Here is the playbook that keeps the migration safe.
12 min read
- Backend, APIs, and System Design
Database Indexes: A Practical Primer for SaaS Engineers
Most database performance problems in SaaS are missing indexes. The fix is mechanical. The discipline is to know which indexes to add and which to skip. Here is the primer.
12 min read
More than blog posts.
The Labs folder has the experiments themselves. The Systems folder has the stack and architecture. The Journey folder has the timeline. Pick whichever pulls you.