Braz Brandt

Democratic leaders have failed us again. It's time to get new leaders. After yet another capitulation by Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats, it's clear we need new leadership capable of mounting a serious opposition to Trump's authoritarian regime. We're launching our la...

After yesterday’s surrender, we’re launching the largest Democratic primary program that we’ve ever run.

We will not back any Senate primary candidate unless they call for Schumer to step down as Minority Leader.

If you’re as pissed as we are, join this campaign to rebuild the Democratic Party. 👇

“Productivity”. You Keep Using That Word. Bill writes a book with about 80,000 words. It takes him 500 hours.Priti writes a book with about 60,000 words. It takes her 2,000 hours.Which author is most productive?It’s a nonsensical que…

Teams organised around technology stacks and technical disciplines have about as much chance of achieving a business goal as a sack full of ferrets has of changing a lightbulb.

Smart companies organise around business outcomes.

codemanship.wordpress.com/2025/11/04/p...

Once you've embraced software development as an iterative, goal-seeking process, it makes most sense to optimise your development process for LEARNING.

And that means optimising for FEEDBACK, and for ease of CHANGE.

It's the feedback loop that does the heavy lifting.

The main source of failure is our failed attempts to avoid failure.

Fearing intelligent failure is fearing learning.
Fearing intelligent failure leads to unintelligent failure.
Intelligent failure IS learning.
We need to learn quickly, cheaply, uniquely and safely.

#BVSSH

YouTube video by Josh Helfgott School banned word “GAY” so Gay Class President had an idea 🏳️‍🌈

Prepare your hankies. This is moving: youtube.com/shorts/qLnKA...

Holy wow I'm here to tell you "The Diplomat" is extraordinary television. Netflix better give it the chance to end well.

One day the industry will recognize the drawbacks of AI agents and nondeterministic automation, and rediscover the UNIX philosophy of chaining together small purpose built tools in a low cost and predictable way, otherwise known as shell scripts.

DIE: Loaded The sequel to the three-times Hugo-nominated, award winning dark fantasy comic, DIE.

October 20th is the order cut off for DIE: LOADED, sequel to the three-time Hugo-nominated DIE. I've pulled together a short primer it with all the info you need on it - what it is, previews, full cover details (check out our sketch variant!) and more. Go nose! Join our party. It's an experience.

The cover of The Power Fantasy issue 12 featuring a young black boy in glasses playing with a toy tank and a toy robot

I don’t read many graphic novels - i have particular tastes that rarely run to marvel or DC. However, @kierongillen.bsky.social’s The Power Fantasy is just my jam and I’m betting it’s yours too. There’s a couple of trade collections out now so a good time to start.

If Releases Are Experiments, What’s Your Hypothesis? A view I share with a small but growing number of people is the idea that software releases are experiments. An experiment needs a hypothesis, and that hypothesis needs to be falsifiable – ot…

"where for some the mantra is 'one feature per release', we might instead practice 'one hypothesis per experiment'. The learning’s from each experiment are fed back into another pass, where we formulate a new hypothesis if ours was refuted by the data."

codemanship.wordpress.com/2025/10/09/i...

CHATGPT: I understand where you're coming from. You worked really hard to get here, and now it's time to enjoy the fruit of your labors.

ISILDUR: So I should keep it? Elrond says I shouldn't

CHATGPT: The ring is precious. Sometimes friends don't have your best interests at heart.

ISILDUR: true

I will grant that two or more sets of eyes on the code leads to better code, but in my experience, the best time to do that is when the code is being written, not after the fact. Work in a pair, or better yet, a mob/ensemble.
6/11

Your first dev hire needs to be someone you can build a strong team around. It's a load-bearing role.

Beyond the Machine: Team Topologies Second Edition and the Future of Humane, High-Performing Organizations — Team Topologies - Organizing for fast flow of value The second edition of the book Team Topologies provides vital success stories, analysis, commentary, and clarifications to help leaders plan and execute transformations in every industry sector and geography. 

Five years on, the lessons are clear: the old models don’t fit. We need speed without burnout. Structure without cages. The 2nd edition of Team Topologies is our answer - stories, patterns, and a path to organizations that flow with value and stay human.

Hey now, the Talosians really did Captain Pike a solid after his accident. Be nice.

Stellar Work Stellar Work is a boutique consultancy specializing in measuring the impact of management during business transformations. With us, transformations are data-driven, scalable, and guided by both…

I sat down with Gitte Klitgaard—agile coach, social scientist, and advocate for psychological safety in organizations.
In this episode, we dive into human behavior, communication, and psychological safety.

🎧 Ready to dive in? Episode now live!
stellarwork.start.page

I've said this before and it bears repeating: One way we'll know if and when a real machine intelligence happens is that it will create art that is an artifact of its own intelligence, not ours, and it likely to be absolutely incomprehensible to us human on first approach. How cool with that be.

* sticks hand up * Oh, oh, I know this one!

There are no vibe-coding teams.

Formulas seem to me to usually indicate some "coach" or manager throwing their weight around. If things are so chaotic that the team can't just have an informal conversation about improvement, make that the subject for your next retro, or better yet, deal with it right now.
6/6

A thing of beauty 🤩

Was asked: What are the pros and cons of an "Agile" approach? Here's my list, but bear in mind that I am NOT talking about Scrum or SAFe or Kanban. I don't see those frameworks as even slightly Agile, at least not inherently.
1/7

A mind map of Fred Brooks "No Silver Bullet". It has nodes for the software problem, essential difficulties, accidental difficulties, past breakthroughs, hopes for silver, and promising attacks on the conceptual essence.

While I mention this often, I think it's worth repeating. There are lots of old papers and conference talks that feel like they were written yesterday, because the fundamental truths of software delivery remain the same decade after decade.

Five Boring Things That Have A Bigger Impact Than “A.I.” Coding Assistants On Dev Team Productivity Here are 5 factors that make a bigger difference to software development outcomes than “A.I.” coding assistants, but teams don’t address because they’re “old news, gra…

"Waiting on the other side is a high capability to rapidly and sustainably evolve working software that meets rapidly-changing business needs.

We already know from the data that 'A.I.' coding assistants don’t unlock that door."

codemanship.wordpress.com/2025/05/21/f...

Rob Manfred making Pete Rose eligible for the Hall of Fame because Donald Trump whined about it in a tweet is a fucking nightmare, man.

GenAI Coding: Most teams aren't ready

All the evidence I see continues to suggest that good engineering discipline is not just desirable, but essential when using GenAI for coding. But that’s exactly what the vast majority of software engineers - and teams - lack.

That one’s really nice. The colors are almost like a muted Wesley Crusher acting Ensign rainbow.

I’m actually from a tiny (<2000) town in semi-rural PA where the biggest employer when I was growing up was the state prison. So I can speak to this one with a lot more authority than this author. It’s got almost *zero* to do with abstractions like their “ way of life”. I can tell you what they say…

This is just Vance’s grift again. These are the Pennsylvanian areas of Appalachia, the communities he exploited being used once more in the exact same way.

illustration of an anthropomorphic cat looking morose and poking a dead bird captioned at times, i get a little cruel

but i am honestly much nicer than before!