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 21 of 34
- Startup Failure Postmortems and Fear
The Bug That Cost a Year of Trust
A postmortem on a single production bug that eroded a year of customer trust in six weeks. What went wrong, why the fix took so long, and what the team learned.
12 min read
- Startup Failure Postmortems and Fear
The Security Incident That Closed the Series A
A story I have watched play out three times in slightly different forms. A startup builds something good, raises a round, and a security incident kills the next one before it can begin. The cause is always smaller than the consequence.
12 min read
- Startup Failure Postmortems and Fear
The Migration That Ate the Roadmap
The postmortem of a six-month database migration that consumed the engineering roadmap and produced almost nothing visible to users.
12 min read
- Startup Failure Postmortems and Fear
The Outage That Cost the Year
A postmortem on the kind of outage that does more than take the system down for a few hours. It costs customer trust, kills a contract renewal, triggers a board conversation, and changes the company's trajectory. What leads to it, what happens during it, and what the real aftermath looks like.
12 min read
- Startup Failure Postmortems and Fear
The Black Friday That Took Down the Startup
A postmortem on a traffic spike that took down a startup on its biggest day. What failed, why load testing failed to catch it, and what to build differently.
12 min read
- Startup Failure Postmortems and Fear
Why Your App Got Slower After You Added Users
A postmortem of a company that won the customers it wanted and then watched the product buckle under them. The slowdown was technical. The damage was a business and a team. This is the part the engineering writeups leave out.
12 min read
- Startup Failure Postmortems and Fear
The Engineering Decision That Killed the Company
The technical decisions that end startups are rarely obvious bad calls. They are usually reasonable decisions made too early, too confidently, or without enough reversibility.
12 min read
- Startup Failure Postmortems and Fear
When Tech Debt Becomes Existential
A postmortem on the point at which accumulated technical debt stops being a productivity problem and starts being a survival problem. What the warning signs look like and how companies that missed them ended up.
12 min read
- Startup Failure Postmortems and Fear
The Pivot That Came Too Late: A Technical Story
Working notes on the pivot that came too late: a technical story. Written for founders, engineers, and operators who want a clear read on startup failure postmortems and fear from someone who has shipped the work.
12 min read
- Startup Failure Postmortems and Fear
The Five Architectural Failures That Killed Startups I Worked With
Five architectural decisions that looked reasonable at the time and became fatal at scale -- patterns I have seen end companies firsthand.
12 min read
- Startup Failure Postmortems and Fear
Why Most Startup Apps Fail Technically
Most startup apps that fail technically fail for reasons that were predictable a year before the failure. The patterns repeat. Most of them are not exotic. Knowing them is most of the protection.
12 min read
- Startup Technical Strategy
The Engineering All Hands That Engineers Look Forward To
What makes an engineering all-hands worth attending instead of a meeting engineers endure, and how to structure one that actually builds alignment.
12 min read
- Startup Technical Strategy
The Engineering Newsletter That Engineers Forward
What makes an internal or external engineering newsletter worth reading -- and what makes engineers forward it to colleagues without being asked.
12 min read
- Startup Technical Strategy
The Engineering Brand: Why It Matters More Than You Think
How the engineering team's reputation affects recruiting, product credibility, and the company's ability to attract the right technical partners.
12 min read
- Startup Technical Strategy
The Engineering Open Roles Page That Attracts Senior Talent
What senior engineers look for on a company's roles page and how to write job descriptions that signal the right things to experienced candidates.
12 min read
- Startup Technical Strategy
The Apprenticeship Program for Engineers
How to build an engineering apprenticeship program that produces real contributors in 90 days, not interns who watch and wait.
12 min read
- Startup Technical Strategy
The Engineering Sabbatical: An Underrated Retention Tool
Why engineering sabbaticals produce outsized returns in retention, creativity, and team health -- and how to run one that works at startup scale.
12 min read
- Startup Technical Strategy
The Engineering Internship Program at Startup Scale
How early-stage startups can run engineering internships that produce real value for both the company and the intern without derailing the team.
12 min read
- Startup Technical Strategy
The Engineering Hiring Bar: How to Set and Hold It
How to define what good looks like for your engineering team, evaluate candidates against that standard, and avoid the most common failure modes.
12 min read
- Startup Technical Strategy
The Engineering Compensation Philosophy That Scales
How to design an engineering compensation system that attracts strong candidates, retains them, and stays defensible as the company grows.
12 min read
- Startup Technical Strategy
The Engineering Performance Review That Engineers Find Useful
How to design an engineering performance review that produces actionable feedback, drives development, and does not feel like compliance theater.
12 min read
- Startup Technical Strategy
The Engineering Career Ladder That Engineers Trust
What makes an engineering career ladder credible to engineers instead of a performance review document that explains why everyone is underpromoted.
12 min read
- Startup Technical Strategy
The Engineering Values That Survive Hyper Growth
Which engineering team values hold up when headcount doubles in a year -- and which ones collapse under the pressure of scale.
12 min read
- Startup Technical Strategy
The Engineering Culture Document That Engineers Actually Read
What engineering culture documents actually need to say to be useful, not decorative -- and how to write one that engineers trust.
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.