Tech — Work — Ramblings

by Mike Kalvas

I see you're not using JavaScript (which is awesome!) on one of my pages that uses it to provide a better experience. If you see something not working right, please let me know. My site should work exactly the same without it apart from any exceptions noted here.

I use prism.min.js to do syntax highlighting. It clocks in at 23kb total in size. Since the majority of the writing I do involves coding, I personally find this to be a worthwhile trade off. If you choose to keep this disabled, rest assured, the code examples are still there, they just may have some extra whitespace and obviously no syntax highlighting.

I do no tracking at all and am a zealot about keeping my pages as small as possible. If you're reading a page of mine that transfers more than about 250kb over the wire (including my most gratuitous indulgence — fonts) I've messed up.

So, if you'd like to have a slightly richer experience, consider enabling javascript for my site and I promise your trust won't be misplaced.

202206112259 Staff solver archetype

A solver staff archetype digs deep on specific problem areas of any complexity in order to find a path forward. Some solvers focus on specific areas for long periods of time whereas others bounce around, helping out with whatever is most important guided by organizational leadership.¹

Solvers typically don’t deal as much with organizational wrangling, instead working on known (or known unknown) issues. There can be a sense of transience though that must be handled delicately so that teams left to maintain “solved” systems don’t feel slighted.

Larson, W. (2021). Staff engineer: Leadership beyond the management track. https://staffeng.com/ ↩