Simple, Beautiful Software Development

January 2025

On communicating through writing

In February 2024, I joined a new organization as a “principal engineer”.

Jan 6 • 

Andrew howden

1

November 2024

Anatomy of a “Good” commit message

Current thinking about what should be in a commit

Nov 1, 2024 • 

Andrew howden

October 2023

Should you go to SRECon?

A story about whether or not it is useful to go to conferences (spoiler: yes), why, how to maximize the value and how to overcome the invariable…

Oct 16, 2023 • 

Andrew howden

1

September 2023

Suddenly, you’re in charge. How do you create direction?

A story about how I've learned to use strategy as a common tool

Sep 4, 2023 • 

Andrew howden

Suddenly, you're in charge. Now what?

Some tools and techniques I've used in the past to create a common sense of direction and purpose.

Sep 1, 2023 • 

Andrew howden

1

August 2023

Reading Lists

Books, papers and assorted bits I've made it through and are useful.

Aug 28, 2023 • 

Andrew howden

My Radical Idea: How to be a Site Reliability Engineer

Listen now (8 mins) | I want to pass on whatever I've learned about SRE. I need your help to make sure its useful

Aug 26, 2023 • 

Andrew howden

7:59

My radical idea: How to be a Site Reliability Engineer

I want to pass on whatever I've learned about SRE. I need your help to make sure its useful

Aug 23, 2023 • 

Andrew howden

3

Incident Commander

Listen now | What an incident commander is, they need to know, what they do and how to prepare for the role.

Aug 20, 2023 • 

Andrew howden

20:07

Incident Commander

How to maximize the capabilities of those responding to production outages

Aug 14, 2023 • 

Andrew howden

The elegant, but unspoken solution

A quick write-up about the interlinking between engineering value, high performance teams and psychological safety

Aug 7, 2023 • 

Andrew howden

1