I'm Kevin, a Staff Engineer at Snap who got here by way of film school and a post-production startup. I write about engineering craft, career growth, and learning to get out of my own way.
Recent Posts
Burning the 3:40 AM Window
Published:5 min readFable 5 costs 2x Opus and burns like 6x. I spent a month learning to ration my wishes.
Parachuting In
Published:8 min readI don't hand-write code anymore. The hard parts didn't go away.
Two tables
Published:4 min readYou don't start with parallelism.
You can't borrow muscle memory
Published:4 min readI copied 27 Claude commands and realized it wasn't doing me any favors.
Temporary is Permanent
Published:9 min readLight Iron announced it was winding down. Some memories from my first job, my first family in LA, and where I accidentally started writing software.
You can use AI every day and still not get better
Published:5 min readWorking with AI isn't a binary skill. It's an instrument that requires deliberate practice.
Ideas Die in Drafts
Published:4 min readSome of my best ideas used to die before anyone saw them. That's changing.
Wider, Not Faster
Published:4 min readWorking with AI changed what I'm willing to attempt. It also changed me.
The Rock Tumbler
Published:5 min readSome feedback is easy to act on. Other feedback takes work to process. That work might be the point.
High-Bandwidth Communication
Published:2 min readWhy do some conversations click while others fall flat? Using the language of networking to understand human connection, trust, and saying what you mean.