Welcome back to the second edition of Seed the Way, a recently inspired newsletter where I share my adventures and explorations in software engineering leadership. I’m a 3x VPE having served in early stage, mid-stage, late stage, IPO and even Private Equity, but not necessarily in that order. As I mentioned in the first edition, I plan to share timely and relevant content about my experiences, giving some personal color commentary.
This past week, I launched Seed the Way after nearly 2 years of planning. When I started a sabbatical after 7 years in my last gig, it was one of my goals to return to public, long form writing. I’ve been meticulously planning content and writing along the way. I’m finally in a position where I can make a consistent commitment to producing and releasing content to my readers.
Today’s newsletter is more about sharing context around my intentions with the future of this newsletter. This past week, I had two in-depth conversations with colleagues in the industry that saw the Substack notification and wanted to know more about what I was doing. They specifically wanted to understand:
What content will I be covering?
How often will I post newsletters?
Will I plan to monetize?
How will I deal with sponsorship or endorsements?
Will I use generative AI technology to aid or assist?
Let me share some of my notes below to see if I can give more context on these topics.
What Content Will I Cover
My central viewpoint or perspective is that of a Vice President of Engineering in an Enterprise or Commercial software company. Many of the topics will be independent from current events. However, there will be some that are timely and relevant. For example, two current topics of interest around the use of generative AI in our day to day work, as well as the difficult topic of Tech Layoffs will likely be covered over the next few weeks.
Here are a few of the topics I plan to share in coming weeks:
Career Development/Progression
Decision Making
Technical Leadership
Startups vs. Mature Companies
Working with Venture Capitalists
Mentorship
Working with CEOs, CFOs and Technical Founders
Preparing for Incidents and Problems
Evaluating New Technologies
Employee Engagement
Time Management
Remote Work
Leadership Styles
Developer Experience
…just to name a few!
How Often Will I Post
My writing schedule at the moment is limited to one night a week and a few hours on the weekend. Fortunately, I’ve written a backlog of content, roughly 30+ topics. I plan to make some light edits and updates to many of those posts and release them weekly. Some weeks you may see me squeeze in a second, likely shorter newsletter.
Will I Monetize Seed The Way
I went into this adventure with the goal of getting back to my former public persona. Much of my writing the last 9 years has been internally facing in the various wikis my companies have leveraged. My audience has mainly been my staff. I want to expand my reach and share to the broader community of existing or aspiring VPEs and Technical Leaders.
Ultimately, I may compile some of my editions into a book, similar to one of my favorite authors, Will Larson did with his book Staff Engineer. I will leave open the possibility that I may create additional paid subscription content, but only if there is demand for it.
I’m deeply committed to posting weekly editions to all subscribers at no cost.
Dealing with Sponsorship and Endorsements
I am going to take a hard stance and commit to my readers that I will not accept any sponsorship or paid endorsements from any commercial or open-source technologies.
I will write about my experiences and relationships with the ISV and OSS communities. Those viewpoints will be personal and not reflect the opinions of my past or current employers.
Using Generative AI
I was surprised when I was asked this question during both conversations. I plan to incorporate generative AI into my posts. I’m limiting my use to the creation of charts and images for content creation. I’m incorporating the use of tools like Grammarly and OpenAI for editorial purposes of text-based content. I take a lot of pride in my writing, specifically my tone and style.
I also use writing as my creative outlet. Using generative AI to create content would feel more like work and less like an outlet for exhibiting my creativity.
When I do make use of generative AI, I will make sure to reference it in my post.
What To Expect in My Next Edition
I plan to talk about making technology decisions that directly impact your team. Many years back, we used to make reference to build vs. buy decisions. Today we talk about low-code and no-code tooling. I have many perspectives and experiences to frame the conversation. I would encourage any of my readers to take a look at a blog that influenced me as a leader more so than any other post in the last 10+ years. As I will discuss in next week’s newsletter, technology decisions are hard, but having a good framework to drive those decisions can make the journey a little bit easier.