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Sharper engineering, in public.

Long-form writing from the team — postmortems, architecture notes, and the lessons we learned the hard way.

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Engineering
11 min read
Issue · 2025
EngineeringFeatured

How we estimate software projects (and why most estimates are wrong)

Every estimate is wrong. The useful ones are wrong in known ways. A practical method we've refined across 50+ engagements — and the failure modes we learned to spot first.

Sarah Chen
Mar 24, 2025 11 min read
The archive

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09 more
  1. Engineering
    13 min read
    Engineering 13 min readMar 20, 2025

    The unreasonable effectiveness of plain SQL

    ORMs are fine. Until they aren't. After a decade of building data layers on every framework we could find, we keep coming back to plain SQL — and the patterns that make it pleasant.

    Hiroshi Tanaka· Co-founder · CTO
  2. Engineering
    12 min read
    Engineering 12 min readMar 17, 2025

    Why we don't write microservices anymore

    We split into microservices because it was 2019. Then we spent three years feeling the cost. Here's what we learned, and how we structure backends in 2025.

    Sarah Chen· Co-founder · CEO
  3. AI
    9 min read
    AI 9 min readMar 13, 2025

    Why your first ML model should be embarrassingly simple

    The first model in production teaches you more in a week than a perfect model in a notebook teaches you in a quarter. A practical case for shipping something terrible — on purpose — first.

    David Park· Head of AI
  4. Infrastructure
    18 min read
    Infrastructure 18 min readMar 10, 2025

    Migrating 4M users with zero downtime: a postmortem

    Nine months, 180 services, and exactly zero customer-visible incidents. The technical and operational playbook from the Aurora Networks migration.

    Hiroshi Tanaka· Co-founder · CTO
  5. Design
    10 min read
    Design 10 min readMar 6, 2025

    Design tokens as engineering contracts

    Design systems fail at hand-off. Tokens — treated as a versioned contract between design and engineering — fix that. How we structure them and the conventions that keep them honest.

    Marcus Holloway· Head of Design
  6. Compliance
    15 min read
    Compliance 15 min readMar 3, 2025

    Building HIPAA-compliant systems in 2025

    What the regulation actually requires, what auditors actually check, and the architecture choices that make the difference between a clean pass and three months of remediation.

    Priya Kothari· Healthcare Engineering Lead
  7. Frontend
    10 min read
    Frontend 10 min readFeb 24, 2025

    The state of React Server Components in production

    After 18 months of shipping RSC at scale, here's where it shines, where it hurts, and the patterns we've evolved to handle the rough edges.

    Marcus Holloway· Head of Design
  8. Design
    9 min read
    Design 9 min readFeb 17, 2025

    Designing for trust in fintech mobile apps

    Trust is built in microinteractions — confirmation flows, error states, and the second-and-a-half between tap and transaction. A field guide from rebuilding Vyra.

    James Whitfield· Mobile Engineering Lead
  9. AI
    14 min read
    AI 14 min readFeb 3, 2025

    How we ship ML to production in 30 days

    The infrastructure, the team structure, and the discipline that turns 14 months of notebook research into models serving real traffic in a month.

    David Park· Head of AI