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Brittany Ellich
~ welcome ~

A garden of thoughts tended in public.

hello, you've found my corner of the internet →

I'm Brittany, a software engineer, writer, podcaster, and gardener. I write about technical careers, community, and what's growing in my back garden.

The garden beds

~ the orchard ~

Everything I've harvested.

posts, talks, comics, newsletters →

~ the seedling tray ~

Notes still figuring themselves out.

half-formed thoughts and rough drafts →

~ the community garden ~

Tending with other people.

communities, conferences, meetups →

no shared work this season

~ the gardener's notebook ~

What I'm tending right now.

a dated note, rebuilt each deploy →

~ recently in the garden ~

A short feed.

the five most recent things → see them all

  • Podcast

    As AI code intelligence tools reshape daily programming work, developer productivity and career growth depend less on speed and more on judgment. In this episode, we explore what skills actually matter when AI writes code—and why engineers need a new mindset about staying sharp…

  • Podcast

    What happens when coding becomes nearly free - but everything else in the software delivery process doesn't? Cameron Etezadi, CTO at LaunchDarkly, joins Erika, Brittany, and Bethany to talk about the gap between code that compiles and code that actually works in production.…

  • Podcast

    Summary Brittany's first weeks at Bluesky are reframing everything she thought about coding interviews. Career growth in tech still hinges on algorithm problems, but AI, remote work, and async development have fundamentally changed what actually signals engineering ability. Why…

  • Podcast

    Summary Dennis Pilarinos has spent nearly two decades building developer tools at Microsoft Azure, AWS, and Buddybuild (acquired by Apple). Now CEO of Unblocked, he's tackling the critical problem holding back agentic AI development: context intelligence. Why do AI coding…

  • Podcast

    Summary What does it actually look like to hand 90% of your workday over to an AI agent you built yourself? Sterling Chin, founding DevRel at Inngest and creator of Marvin, an open-source AI chief of staff with nearly 1,000 GitHub stars, has been doing exactly that for months.…

~ stay in touch ~

Once a month I send The Balanced Engineer, a letter about building a technical career that doesn't consume the rest of your life. No funnel, no sponsor copy.