Everything I've harvested.

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.…

AI is generating more code than ever, but most engineers aren't verifying it. Sonar Staff AI Researcher Joe Tyler shares breakthrough findings from his LLM Leaderboard research on code quality, the hidden "coding personalities" of different models, and why the real bottleneck…

Summary Software engineering career moves don't have to be a lottery. In this episode, Adam Argyle breaks down why the technical interview process is fundamentally broken, how design engineering skills actually transfer across roles, and the tactical job search playbook that…

Brittany shares her journey building Collective Social - a Goodreads-style app for all kinds of media built entirely on the AT Protocol - and how it led her to create OpenSocial, a service that lets any app on the decentralized web share group functionality like book clubs. The…

Summary In this episode, Erika talks with Salma Alam-Naylor about software engineering craft, programming best practices, and why the long game beats shortcuts. As AI coding tools proliferate and everyone chases speed, Salma digs into deliberate practice, sustainable career…

The Balanced Engineer Newsletter May 2026 • Issue # 45 ATTENTION: We are 1/3 of the way through the year. 33% already! Where did the time go? These past two months have been a blur (oops I accidentally skipped a newsletter month again). I celebrated a wedding, did a…

Tech careers don't need to mean grinding LeetCode. In episode 57, John Crickett — 30+ year engineer, Coding Challenges creator (90K+ subscribers) — makes the case that programmer productivity skyrockets when you build real tools instead. We dig into why your own Redis, Git, or…

Summary Career growth through mentorship and work-life balance with Dave Schwantes, Senior Software Engineer at GitHub. Brittany and Dave explore why running toward meaningful work beats running from burnout, how mentorship became his primary form of engineering leverage, and…

Summary Sabrina Goldfarb rejected the tech career playbook. No CS degree, bootcamp instead, teaching before big platforms. Now an engineer on GitHub's Copilot team and instructor at Frontend Masters, she shares how methodical planning, patience, and trust in the process led to…

Summary In this episode of the Overcommitted Podcast, hosts Bethany and Erika sit down with Warren Parad, CTO and co-founder of Authress, a user authorization API built for reliability. Warren shares how his team stayed fully operational during the massive AWS US-East-1 outage…

Summary In this episode of Overcommitted, Satish Saley, a senior software engineer with extensive experience on DoorDash's search platform team, discusses scaling search systems at a hyper-growth company. This conversation dives deep into software engineering challenges and…

Social media was supposed to connect us, but most of it has turned into ads, division, and loneliness. I'm betting on ATProto as a way to fix that, and not just for developers. Whether you're a scientist, journalist, or just someone who wants the internet to feel human again, I think ATProto matters for you too.

Summary In this special one-year anniversary episode of Overcommitted, Brittany, Erika, and Bethany reflect on their journey from a small accountability group to a thriving weekly podcast and community of over 160 software engineers. They discuss their experiences within the…

Summary In this episode, we dive deep into software development education and programmer productivity with Craig Dennis, developer educator at Cloudflare and creator of AI Avenue. Craig shares his unique journey through tech careers, from early challenges to leading AI…

Summary This week on Overcommitted, Erika and Brittany welcome Idan Gazit, head of GitHub Next — a senior-heavy innovation team making strategic "long bets" on the future of software engineering and software projects. Idan shares insights into running a cutting-edge team within…

Summary In this special in-person episode recorded at the GitHub office, Brittany and Bethany dive into the evolving role of AI agents in software development and programming as of early 2026. They discuss the impact of AI tools like Copilot and Claude Code on programmer…

The Balanced Engineer Newsletter March 2026 • Issue # 44 Hello, March! In the interest of prioritizing balance in my life, I skipped this newsletter in February, so now I have a lot of extra stuff to share! This year has started out great. I'm enjoying what I'm working on, the…

Summary Sean Goedecke, a staff engineer on GitHub's Copilot team and a prominent voice in software development, shares his unique frameworks for software engineering and improving programmer productivity. In this episode, discover how understanding the distinction between…

What do composing music and fixing bugs have in common? More than you'd think.In this episode of Overcommitted, hosts Erika and Bethany sit down with Marco Herrera Rendon, Senior Engineer at Comcast specializing in Rust development who, not long ago, was applying to master's…

Summary: In this episode of the Overcommitted Podcast, host Bethany and co-host Brittany Ellich dive into software engineering education with Sam Rose, a developer educator at Ngrok. Sam shares his journey from software engineering to education, emphasizing his innovative…

Summary In this episode of the Overcommitted Podcast, hosts Brittany, Bethany, and Erika dive deep into the realities of software development with guest Robby Russell. They explore the critical challenges of maintaining legacy code and managing technical debt, emphasizing the…

Summary In this insightful episode of the Overcommitted Podcast, hosts Erika, Bethany, and Brittany tackle the critical issue of burnout in software projects and software engineering, especially amid the surge of AI advancements and remote work. They dive into how the evolving…

You can handle so much more than you think

Summary In this episode of the Overcommitted Podcast, hosts Bethany, Brittany, and Erika engage in a rich conversation with Abbey Perini, a web developer and fiber artist. They explore Abbey's current projects, the intersection of fiber arts and programming, and the importance…

Summary In this episode, the hosts meet with Christina Martinez, a developer experience engineer from Resend, who shares insights on her creative process and current projects. She shares her delight in building silly software and how she's using that to learn in her current role…

I spent 2025 going from skeptical to genuinely excited about AI tools. My non-tech friends and family spent 2025 learning to hate them. The AI industry has fumbled this introduction so badly that we've turned a useful set of tools into a cultural flashpoint - but the damage isn't irreversible.

How to go from starting things to finishing things.

2025 was my year of doing ALL the things - speaking at 5+ conferences, starting a podcast, shipping side projects, and somehow not completely burning out. I learned that momentum creates more momentum, perfectionism is overrated, and seeing people in real life again after years of isolation is actually really, really good.

Summary In this episode of the Overcommitted Podcast, hosts Brittany and Bethany with guest Bassem Dghaidi discuss a range of topics from Bassem's current learning journey in system design to his diverse career path at GitHub. They explore the value of experience over formal…

The Balanced Engineer Newsletter January 2026 • Issue # 43 It's January! I've spent the last few weeks cleaning, re-organizing, and spending time with family, and my heart could not be more full. I love the vibes of the New Year. Everything feels fresh and full of possibilities…

Summary In this episode of the Overcommitted Podcast, host Erika and co-host Brittany Ellich welcome Tammy Metz, a software engineer at GitHub, who shares her unique journey from teaching and library science to software engineering. The conversation explores the challenges of…

Summary In this episode of the Overcommitted Podcast, hosts Bethany, Brittany, and Erika are joined by Cassidy Williams, Senior Director of Developer Advocacy at GitHub. They discuss Cassidy's journey in the Developer Relations (DevRel) space, her philosophy of lifting others…

I wanted to add book clubs to my GoodReads-like app (Collective), but ATProto doesn't have a standard way to handle shared group resources yet. So I'm building opensocial.community—a separate service that manages groups independently from any single app. This means the same book club could potentially work across multiple apps (imagine your book club having both a reading list in Collective AND a discussion forum in another app), and groups can migrate between providers if needed. It's probably over-engineered for my use case, but might help other ATProto developers building community features.

Summary In this episode of the Overcommitted Podcast, hosts Brittany, Bethany, and Erika engage in a deep conversation with Piotr Sarna, co-author of 'Writing for Developers.' They explore the journey of co-authoring a book, the importance of writing in engineering, and the…

The Balanced Engineer Newsletter December 2025 • Issue # 42 November is in the books and it was lovely. I went to Microsoft Ignite, which was huge and a ton of fun, and took a whole week off for the week of Thanksgiving! Every time I take time off I’m reminded how much a bit of…

I've cracked the code on breaking the eternal cycle - features win, tech debt piles up, codebase becomes 'legacy', and an eventual rewrite. Using coding agents at GitHub, I now merge multiple tech debt PRs weekly while still delivering features. Tickets open for months get closed. 'Too hard to change' code actually improves. This is the story of the workflow.

The Balanced Engineer Newsletter November 2025 • Issue # 41 Before we get to the good stuff–a change I'm making! After reflecting on what's sustainable (and what energizes me), I'm moving to a monthly newsletter. This lets me spend real time curating insights and writing the…

The Balanced Engineer Newsletter Week of October 06, 2025 • Issue # 40 A coding bootcamp, but for engineers that already have jobs I learned about Overclock Accelerator from a LinkedIn message this week (not an ad). What struck me as interesting is it's pitched somewhat like a…

The Balanced Engineer Newsletter Week of September 29, 2025 • Issue # 39 This has been a bit of an odd week and I'm going through yet another period of “maybe I should change everything about the way I write my newsletter” phase. And I'm debating if it's worth it to keep…

The Balanced Engineer Newsletter Week of September 22, 2025 • Issue # 38 I spent this week at CascadiaJS, a wonderful celebration of web and mobile developers in the Pacific Northwest. Given that I was at the conference, I didn't spend any additional time for the week looking…

The Balanced Engineer Newsletter Week of September 15, 2025 • Issue # 37 🔧 Technical Excellence Building skills that last beyond any framework GitHub Copilot coding agent 101: Getting started with agentic workflows on GitHub by Alexandra Lietzke on The GitHub Blog Summary:…

The Balanced Engineer Newsletter Week of September 8, 2025 • Issue # 36 🔧 Technical Excellence Building skills that last beyond any framework Revenge of the junior developer by Steve Yegge from Sourcegraph Summary: Steve Yegge argues that software development is rapidly…

The Balanced Engineer Newsletter Week of September 1, 2025 • Issue # 35 Labor Day In celebration of Labor Day, and in recognition of the fight made to celebrate organized labor, I'm sharing nothing today. If you're in the United States, I hope you enjoy a lovely day off. If…

The Balanced Engineer Newsletter Week of August 25, 2025 • Issue # 34 🔧 Technical Excellence Building skills that last beyond any framework Big O by Sam Rose ( Link ) Summary: Sam does an excellent job (as always) taking a complex foundational computer science subject and…

The Balanced Engineer Newsletter Week of August 18, 2025 • Issue # 33 ⚖️ Work-Life Integration Sustainable practices for long-term success The Best Years of Your Life by Hidden Brain ( Podcast Link ) Summary: This podcast isn't very software engineering focused, but it felt…

The Balanced Engineer Newsletter Week of August 11, 2025 • Issue # 32 🧠 Mental Models & Problem Solving How we think about complex problems GPT-5 failed the wrong test by Tim Kellogg ( His Blog ). Summary: This is a brief read by Tim Kellogg where he reacts to the paper…

Learn how to add Bluesky comments and likes to your blog in under an hour using ATProto integration, with copy-paste code for Astro sites.

The Balanced Engineer Newsletter Week of August 4, 2025 • Issue # 31 🔧 Technical Excellence Building skills that last beyond any framework It's time for modern CSS to kill the SPA by Jono Alderson ( his blog ) Summary: This article argues that Single Page Applications (SPAs)…

The Balanced Engineer Newsletter Week of July 28, 2025 • Issue # 30 🔧 Technical Excellence Building skills that last beyond any framework Why it feels like AI can reason by Annie Sexton ( Youtube Video ) Summary: This philosophical video from Annie explained what reasoning is…

The Balanced Engineer Newsletter Week of July 21, 2025 • Issue # 29 🔧 Technical Excellence Building skills that last beyond any framework How to review code effectively: A GitHub staff engineer's philosophy by Sarah Vessels ( The GitHub Blog ) Summary: This article by Sarah…

The Balanced Engineer Newsletter Week of July 14, 2025 • Issue # 28 🔧 Technical Excellence Building skills that last beyond any framework Learnings from two years of using AI tools for software engineering by Birgitta Böckeler and Gergely Orosz ( The Pragmatic Engineer…

The Balanced Engineer Newsletter Week of July 7, 2025 • Issue # 27 🔧 Technical Excellence Building skills that last beyond any framework Prefer gaps to margins by Kyle Shevlin ( Kyle's blog ) Summary: This article argues that CSS gaps are superior to margins for spacing…

The Balanced Engineer Newsletter Week of June 30, 2025 • Issue # 26 Hey there! I'm thrilled you're here for what feels like a fresh start for The Balanced Engineer. After some reflection, I realized I was trying to force myself into a weekly content creation machine–and honestly…

I just returned from an incredible week at Gophercon EU in Berlin! While I'm still battling some serious jet lag, the conference was absolutely worth every sleepless night. I had such a great time preparing for and delivering my talk (I'll share the recording once it's…

I'm writing this from Berlin as I get ready for Gophercon EU to kick off tomorrow! The long flight over gave me the perfect opportunity to do a major revamp of my website—and I managed to do it WITHOUT creating a new repository and starting from scratch. I definitely deserve a…

This week I spent some time with Dusti Arab from The Reinvention Co . She was absolutely incredible to work with and I learned a ton from her. We put together a strategy for my newsletter and some other things I have going on, like the Overcommitted podcast. Expect some changes…

We are in one of the best times of the year in the Pacific Northwest. It's warm and sunny, but only around 75F degrees (around 24C for the metric users out there). Everything is still lovely and green from the very wet winters we get. I spent most of this weekend planting…

Phew, what a week! Actually, I'm lying, I'm going on vacation the week of the 19th (to Disney world!) and am scheduling this email an extra week in advance. I'm sure it was a fun week, though! Or maybe incredibly stressful bringing a 4-year-old and 1-year-old twins to Disney…

I'm excited to share that we've hit another milestone - 300 subscribers! It seems like just yesterday I was celebrating 100. I'm not super into marketing so am cooling my jets on sharing the numbers all the time, but it has been a fun journey so far, and seeing that subscriber…

Hello, hello, and welcome to The Balanced Engineer Newsletter! It has been a crazy week! After spending the weekend before last at Boise Code Camp, I spent a week in Atlanta for my team's offsite. That included roughly a week of socializing, bonding, and asking very big…

I'm a bit late to finishing my newsletter this week, after spending part of the weekend in Boise for Boise Code Camp . I love Boise. The tech community is small, but gosh it's friendly. Some of my best friends I've made in my career are there and I love getting the chance to…

This has been a wild week as I am preparing for a very busy May and June. I’ve been working ahead a bit to prepare some newsletter content and podcasts in advance. Not my usual procrastination method! This week I am preparing for Boise Code Camp where I’m giving a talk on deep…

Hello, hello, and welcome to The Balanced Engineer Newsletter! I thought I would mix things up a bit. Instead of doing a Deep Dive article at the end of this newsletter, I'm instead including a Highlights section of things I've been doing this week and things I've enjoyed this…

A look back at parental leave, switching teams at GitHub, finding crochet, and starting therapy and an SSRI that changed everything.

My experience at BoiseCodeCamp 2024: talks on AI, OpenSCAD, and domain-specific languages, plus my first time speaking at a developer conference.

Atomic Habits by James Clear changed how I think about productivity. Key insights on building systems, habit stacking, and compounding small improvements.

Notes from reading Accelerate by Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim, and the practices that separate high-performing software organizations from the rest.