Hi! I am a 20+ year games industry and big tech veteran. I built games at EA Sports, was a technology leader at Amazon, and now 2K Games. Each month I share an interesting, tech-adjacent article, and discuss how the topics affect us professionally and personally. I hope you find these useful.
2026
2025
- December 2025 – Disrupting the first reported AI-orchestrated cyber espionage campaign
- November 2025 – Finding the sweet spot for using AI as a developer
- October 2025 – ‘Myth:’ BMW Says Apple CarPlay Isn’t As Popular As You Think
- September 2025 – The Misconception that Almost Stopped AI
- August 2025 – ‘Forbidden’ AI Technique
- July 2025 – Is RL + LLMs enough for AGI?
- June 2025 – AI 2027
- May 2025 – XZ Exploit
- April 2025 – The Software Engineering Identity Crisis
- March 2025 – Build software that lasts!
- February 2025 – Software development topics I’ve changed my mind on after 10 years in the industry
- January 2025 – Your company needs Junior devs
2024
- December 2024 – Social Engineering Game Exposes AI’s Achilles’ Heel
- November 2024 – The Problem with Time & Timezones
- October 2024 – Crypto Brothers Front-Ran the Front-Runners
- September 2024 – Things You Should Never Do, Part I
- August 2024 – Planning Vs. Action: Why a Product Team’s Best Bet Is Real-world Evidence
- July 2024 – The New Luddites Aren’t Backing Down
- June 2024 – Dread Hunger: A Post Mortem
- May 2024 – Debunking Devin: “First AI Software Engineer” Upwork lie exposed!
- April 2024 – Turning Goals into Results: The Power of Catalytic Mechanisms
- March 2024 – ‘Enshittification’ is coming for absolutely everything
- February 2024 – FTC vs AI
- January 2024 – Machine Code Explained
2023
- December 2023 – The Worst Programmer I Know
- November 2023 – Good engineers train their skills – great engineers improve their mindset
- October 2023 – The Tyranny of Nits – How open source work sputters and dies
- September 2023 – (Life) Advice From The Creator of C++
- August 2023 – X post by Esther Crawford
- July 2023 – 3 Mistakes I Made as an Engineer, but Had To Become a Manager To See
- June 2023 – Leaders are ignoring the dangers of ‘confidently incorrect’ AI: Why it’s a massive problem
- May 2023 – Mastering complexity in Software Engineering
- April 2023 – The Age of AI has begun
- March 2023 – Cheaters Will Never Be Welcome in Dota
- February 2023 – ChatGPT with Rob Miles
- January 2023 – Things your manager might not know
2022
- December 2022 – 3 underrated things great developers do
- November 2022 – From Stolen Laptop to Inside the Company Network
- October 2022 – 11 Laws of Software Estimation for Complex Work
- September 2022 – How to Prevent or Recover from Developer Burnout
- August 2022 – 15 Fundamental Laws of Software Development
- July 2022 – Things You Should Know About Databases
- June 2022 – The Developers Dilemma — The Skill Trap
- May 2022 – The technological case against Bitcoin and blockchain
- April 2022 – Apple unveils M1 Ultra, the world’s most powerful chip for a personal computer
- March 2022 – Becoming a Better Writer as a Software Engineer
- February 2022 – Line Goes Up
- January 2022 – Cookies: the CNIL fines GOOGLE a total of 150 million euros and FACEBOOK 60 million euros for non-compliance with French legislation
2021
- December 2021 – The Maxim For Every Successful Person; ‘Always Stay A Student’
- November 2021 – Why The Status Quo Is So Hard To Change In Engineering Teams
- October 2021 – Warren Buffett’s Little Known ‘Noah Rule’ Is the Key to Surviving Adversity
- September 2021 – The Bumpy Road Code Smell: Measuring Code Complexity by its Shape and Distribution
- August 2021 – Why I left Google to join Grab
- July 2021 – Windows 11: TPMs and Digital Sovereignty
- June 2021 – Bob Cassette Rewinder: Hacking Detergent DRM for 98% Cost Saving
- May 2021 – How Discord Stores Billions of Messages
- April 2021 – Creating a “path to yes” to spur innovation
- March 2021 – Software estimation is your most costly activity. Why not reduce it?
- January 2021 – Choose Boring Technology
2020
- December 2020 – The Wrong Abstraction
- November 2020 – The Science-Backed Secret To Rapidly Improving Any Skill
- October 2020 – It Is Never a Compiler Bug Until It Is
- September 2020 – Dear Google Cloud: Your Deprecation Policy is Killing You
- August 2020 – 5 arguments to make managers care about technical debt
- July 2020 – Chesterton’s Fence: A Lesson in Second Order Thinking
- June 2020 – Why we rewrite (even when we shouldn’t)
- May 2020 – Testing sync at Dropbox…and how we rewrote the heart of sync with confidence
- April 2020 – Zoom Privacy and Security Issues
- March 2020 – The XY Problem
- February 2020 – The programmer as decision maker
- January 2020 – Quality and effort
2019
- December 2019 – The Product-Minded Software Engineer
- November 2019 – Migration Complete – Amazon’s Consumer Business Just Turned off its Final Oracle Database
- October 2019 – How to Make Good Code Reviews Better
- August 2019 – The Technical Side of the Capital One AWS Security Breach
- July 2019 – A Conspiracy To Kill IE6
- June 2019 – 7 absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer
- May 2019 – Amazon Has Gone From Neutral Platform to Cutthroat Competitor, Say Open Source Developers
- April 2019 – The Power of Ten – Rules for Developing Safety Critical Code
- March 2019 – My Favorite Paradox
- January 2019 – Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself
Meir's Monthly Learning Article 