Blog Post Ideas

Next Post (Target: ~May 21-22, 2026)

“How a Daily Email Became Our Monitoring Strategy”

Story from Vote.org (2017-2019)

The Story:

• Started setting up a cronjob to email myself at end of day tracking app usage
• Monitored: who started an action, who completed it, looking for trends
• Just sent it to myself initially
• Other engineers wanted to be added
• Ops person wanted it
• CEO wanted it
• Became clear we needed better monitoring tools
• Started investing in proper dashboards (Geckoboards)

The Lesson:

• Start with the simplest thing that could work
• Let organic demand prove the need
• Use scrappy solutions to justify real investment
• Best features often start as hacks you build for yourself
• How engineering culture and tooling evolve organically

Alternative titles:

• “The Best Feature Starts as a Hack for Yourself”
• “From Cronjobs to Dashboards: How Good Observability Grows”

Tone: Reflection piece - “Here’s something that happened years ago that taught me [lesson]”

Other Ideas (Brainstormed)

Interviewing

• “What I Look for When Interviewing Senior Engineers (Hint: It’s Not Algorithms)”
• “The Best Interview Question I’ve Ever Been Asked”
• “How to Tell a Good Engineering Story in Interviews”
• “Red Flags I Watch for as an Interviewer”

Leadership & Mentorship

• “Code Review is a Conversation, Not a Critique”
• “What Improv Taught Me About Pair Programming”
• “The Most Important Thing I Learned About Mentoring”
• “How to Give Feedback That Actually Helps”

Career & Culture

• “14 Years In: What I Wish I’d Known as a Junior Engineer”
• “From Flight Simulators to Web Apps: Why Career Pivots Are Worth It”
• “How I Helped Start a Women’s ERG (And What I’d Do Differently)”
• “Building Team Culture Remotely: Games, Rituals, and Real Connection”
• “When to Leave a Job (And When to Stay)”

Imposter Syndrome & Growth

• “The Day I Realized I’m Actually a Senior Engineer”
• “Everyone Googles Basic Syntax (Yes, Even After 14 Years)”
• “What ‘Senior’ Actually Means”

Tech-Adjacent

• “My Debugging Process: A Detective Story”
• “The Production Bug That Taught Me [X]”
• “Why I Keep Coming Back to Rails”
• “Things I’ve Learned to Just Write Down (Because I’ll Never Remember)”