Irrational ExuberanceHey folks, I’m Will Larson! I wrote An Elegant Puzzle, Staff Engineer, The Engineering Executive’s Primer, and Crafting Engineering Strategy. You might also be interested in my collection of popular blog posts over the years, or to read my writing as it’s published via my newsletter or my RSS feed. Roadmap decisions rather than dates. August 11, 2026 Middle management roles are also a trap. August 8, 2026 Generated and suppressed demand. July 11, 2026 Make no assumptions. July 11, 2026 Revised rules of engineering leadership. June 15, 2026 Early and late-stage hypergrowth. April 27, 2026 Agents as scaffolding for recurring tasks. April 12, 2026 The agentic passive voice. March 29, 2026 Judgment and creativity are all you need. March 11, 2026 Refactoring internal documentation in Notion February 5, 2026 Should you include engineers in your leadership meetings? January 25, 2026 Writing Visualizations with Remotion January 25, 2026 Curiosity is the first-step in problem solving. January 25, 2026 Stripe's Lighthouse Hiring pattern. January 25, 2026 Pressure Without a Plan. January 25, 2026 Learning from Every's Compound Engineering January 19, 2026 Sharing Claude transcripts. January 10, 2026 Moved newsletter from Mailchimp to Buttondown. January 10, 2026 ⭐ Building internal agents January 1, 2026 Building an internal agent: Iterative prompt and skill refinement January 1, 2026 Building an internal agent: Subagent support December 31, 2025 Building an internal agent: Code-driven vs LLM-driven workflows December 31, 2025 Building an internal agent: Logging and debugability December 31, 2025 Building an internal agent: Evals to validate workflows December 31, 2025 Building an internal agent: Triggers December 31, 2025 Building an internal agent: Context window compaction December 26, 2025 Building an internal agent: Progressive disclosure and handling large files December 26, 2025 Building an internal agent: Adding support for Agent Skills December 26, 2025 2025 in review. December 18, 2025 Automatically merging dependabot PRs December 18, 2025 Facilitating AI adoption at Imprint December 7, 2025 Coding at work (after a decade away). November 19, 2025 ⭐ "Good engineering management" is a fad October 26, 2025 Crafting Engineering Strategy! October 25, 2025 An agent to use Notion docs as prompts to comment on Notion docs. July 20, 2025 Commenting on Notion docs via OpenAI and Zapier. July 20, 2025 ⭐ Moving from an orchestration-heavy to leadership-heavy management role. July 19, 2025 Advancing the industry, part two. July 18, 2025 What can agents actually do? July 6, 2025 What is the competitive advantage of authors in the age of LLMs? June 14, 2025 My desk setup in 2025. June 7, 2025 Stuff I learned at Carta. May 23, 2025 systems-mcp: generate systems models via LLM May 11, 2025 How to provide feedback on documents. May 11, 2025 Public company comparables. May 3, 2025 How to filter out old email from inbox May 3, 2025 How should Stripe deprecate APIs? (~2016) April 24, 2025 Systems model of API deprecation April 24, 2025 library-mcp: working with Markdown knowledge bases April 22, 2025 Refreshed StaffEng.com and a few other sites April 20, 2025 Why did Stripe build Sorbet? (~2017) April 17, 2025 How to get better at strategy? April 10, 2025 Wardley mapping the service orchestration ecosystem (2014). April 10, 2025 Script for consistent linking within book. April 6, 2025 How to resource Engineering-driven projects at Calm? (2020) April 3, 2025 Is this strategy any good? March 27, 2025 Steps to build an engineering strategy. March 27, 2025 Operational mechanisms for strategy. March 20, 2025 Career advice in 2025. March 15, 2025 Setting policy for strategy. March 13, 2025 Who gets to do strategy? March 6, 2025 How to integrate Stripe's acquisition of Index? (2018) February 27, 2025 Diagnosis in engineering strategy. February 22, 2025 Exploring for strategy. February 13, 2025 How should we control access to user data? February 7, 2025 Our own agents with their own tools. February 4, 2025 Is engineering strategy useful? January 30, 2025 "We're a product engineering company!" — Engineering strategy at Calm. January 23, 2025 Bridging theory and practice in engineering strategy. January 16, 2025 Uber's service migration strategy circa 2014. January 9, 2025 Service onboarding model for Uber (2014). January 9, 2025 Refining strategy with Wardley Mapping. January 2, 2025 How to effectively refine engineering strategy. December 28, 2024 Wardley mapping the LLM ecosystem. December 24, 2024 Wardley mapping of Gitlab Strategy. December 23, 2024 2024 in review. December 14, 2024 Measuring developer experience, benchmarks, and providing a theory of improvement. December 8, 2024 Rough notes on learning Wardley Mapping. November 30, 2024 Video of practice run of QCon SF 2024 talk on Principal Engineers. November 21, 2024 How to get more headcount. November 16, 2024 Navigating Private Equity ownership. November 11, 2024 Using systems modeling to refine strategy. November 4, 2024 ⭐ Eng org seniority-mix model. October 27, 2024 Modeling driving onboarding. October 19, 2024 Modeling impact of LLMs on Developer Experience. October 6, 2024 Strategy testing: avoid the waterfall strategy trap with iterative refinement. September 25, 2024 Should we decompose our monolith? September 15, 2024 Executive translation. September 7, 2024 Video of Developing Eng Leadership Styles. September 7, 2024 Numbers go up. September 1, 2024 When to write strategy, and how much? August 25, 2024 Developing domain expertise: get your hands dirty. July 16, 2024 Physics and perception. June 29, 2024 ⭐ How to create software quality. June 16, 2024 Video of Using LLMs in your product. June 14, 2024 No Wrong Doors. May 22, 2024 Making engineering strategies more readable May 18, 2024 How should you adopt LLMs? May 14, 2024 Load-bearing / Career-minded / Act Two rationales May 2, 2024 Constraints on giving feedback. April 29, 2024 Notes on how to use LLMs in your product. April 8, 2024 Ex-technology companies. March 22, 2024 Leadership requires taking some risk. March 17, 2024 Friction isn't velocity. March 15, 2024 More (self-)publishing thoughts. February 24, 2024 Digital release of Engineering Executive's Primer. February 7, 2024 Thesis on value accumulation in AI. January 31, 2024 High-Context Triad. January 24, 2024 ⭐ Useful tradeoffs are multi-dimensional. January 24, 2024 Navigating ambiguity. January 19, 2024 ⭐ Layers of context. January 15, 2024 Those five spare hours each week. January 14, 2024 Predictability. January 1, 2024 2023 in review. December 18, 2023 Notes on How Big Things Get Done December 15, 2023 ⭐ Writers who operate. December 7, 2023 Advancing the industry. December 7, 2023 Notes on Enterprise Architecture as Strategy December 7, 2023 Create technical leverage: workflow improvements & product capabilities December 1, 2023 Navigators November 24, 2023 Notes on The Crux November 24, 2023 Engineering strategy notes. November 21, 2023 Notes on Technology Strategy Patterns November 20, 2023 Notes on The Software Engineer's Guidebook November 19, 2023 Notes on Tidy First? November 19, 2023 Notes on The Value Flywheel Effect November 18, 2023 Team Charters are a trap. November 12, 2023 A bit late, but I did leave Calm. November 12, 2023 Benchmarking. November 11, 2023 Getting lucky isn't a plan. November 11, 2023 Thoughts on writing and publishing Primer. November 3, 2023 Developing leadership styles October 22, 2023 Video of Solving the Eng Strategy crisis. October 21, 2023 Solving the Engineering Strategy crisis. September 23, 2023 Drafted Eng Executive's Primer! September 4, 2023 Performance & Compensation (for Eng Execs). September 3, 2023 The Engineering executive’s role in hiring. August 27, 2023 Manage your priorities and energy. August 3, 2023 Gelling your Engineering leadership team. July 11, 2023 Building personal and organizational prestige July 4, 2023 Playing with Streamlit and LLMs. June 19, 2023 Extract the kernel. May 27, 2023 Slides for Measuring an engineering organization. May 20, 2023 Good hypergrowth/curator manager. April 30, 2023 The Engineering Executive's Primer. April 27, 2023 Balancing your CEO, peers, and Engineering. April 20, 2023 Grab bag of random thoughts. April 17, 2023 Interviewing engineering executives. April 17, 2023 Poking around OpenAI. April 12, 2023 How to plan as an engineering executive. April 10, 2023 Who runs Engineering processes? April 3, 2023 Onboarding peer executives. March 27, 2023 ⭐ Deciding to leave your (executive) job. March 20, 2023 Using cultural survey data. March 13, 2023 Running your engineering onboarding program. March 6, 2023 Engineering’s role in Mergers & Acquisitions. February 27, 2023 Building your executive network. February 21, 2023 ReadME contribution on reliability programs. February 16, 2023 ⭐ Writing an engineering strategy. February 13, 2023 Better to micromanage than be disengaged. February 6, 2023 Culture vs systems. February 3, 2023 ⭐ Setting engineering org values. January 30, 2023 Safe defaults. January 26, 2023 Internal comms for executives. January 23, 2023 What does it mean to be a cost center? January 20, 2023 Meetings for an effective eng organization. January 17, 2023 Mailbag: What should you do if you report to an underperforming executive? January 15, 2023 Trying Plausible. January 12, 2023 Getting a job as an engineering executive. January 8, 2023 Make an effective executive LinkedIn profile. January 8, 2023 How to capitalize engineering costs. January 5, 2023 Trying Tailscale. January 4, 2023 ⭐ Measuring an engineering organization. January 2, 2023 A brief rant on converging compliance regimes. December 22, 2022 Lessons not worth learning. December 15, 2022 2022 in review. December 13, 2022 2019 - 2022 reading recap. December 12, 2022 When shouldn't you roll out business reviews? December 10, 2022 Company, team, self. November 30, 2022 Twitter. November 19, 2022 The flying wedge. November 13, 2022 Work hard / work smart. November 7, 2022 Time and energy. November 6, 2022 Mailbag: What isn't measurable? To hire as exec or not? October 21, 2022 Reminiscing: the retreat to comforting work. October 11, 2022 Fewer, happier incident heroes. October 8, 2022 One-on-ones with executives. September 6, 2022 'Drawing your three maps' exercise September 4, 2022 Bar raisers, hiring committees, and other complex ways to improve hiring quality. August 28, 2022 How to estimate disk space. July 8, 2022 ⭐ Reading a Profit & Loss statement. July 6, 2022 Downturn career decisions. July 5, 2022 STAR method for interview questions. June 20, 2022 Career checkup template. June 5, 2022 Plagarism, idea theft, and writing online. May 21, 2022 Mailbag: Did I become a manager too soon? May 18, 2022 Moving the finish line. May 11, 2022 Your migration probably isn’t failing due to insufficient staffing. May 5, 2022 ⭐ Founding Uber SRE. April 28, 2022 Platforms change but cool URIs don't. April 25, 2022 Interim assignments. April 23, 2022 Stuff I haven't written yet, but hopefully will someday (2022). April 22, 2022 Stripe's model of product-led, developer-centric growth. April 16, 2022 Mailbag: Resources for Engineering Directors. April 13, 2022 Generating a daily snapshot of Twitter Search results. April 7, 2022 Should you prioritize infrastructure costs? April 3, 2022 What is innovation? April 2, 2022 ⭐ Hard to work with. March 17, 2022 Starting to write Infrastructure Engineering. March 9, 2022 ⭐ Trunk and Branches Model for Scaling Infrastructure Organizations March 5, 2022 Getting started with git-scraping February 27, 2022 The impact of less scalable work. February 21, 2022 Mix and match mental models. January 15, 2022 Index of writing on hiring. January 9, 2022 Things I learned hiring a data science leader. December 30, 2021 Dipping toes in angel investing. December 30, 2…