Skills and capability
The capability model: engineering depth, domain fluency, delivery judgment, and the parts of the job no course teaches.
- 2026-10-30Six capabilities that only work togetherWhy the FDE capability model fails as a checklist, which combinations break first, and what evidence to demand in an interview.5 min read
- 2026-10-30Seven questions for the first two weeksThe seven questions an FDE must answer before quoting, what a good answer sounds like, and what self-deception sounds like.5 min read
- 2026-10-30Three maps: money, authority, who losesReconnaissance produces three maps in a fixed order — money flow, authority flow, and who loses. The third one decides feasibility.4 min read
- 2026-10-30Shadow systems: the process that actually runsThe real process lives in spreadsheets, group chats and handwritten ledgers. How description drifts from execution, and how to extract the one that runs.5 min read
- 2026-10-30What leaves the human loopOne test decides what an agent can own — whether the input can be delivered into an interface. Three data cases and three ways out-of-the-loop fails.4 min read
- 2026-10-30Debugging where you cannot deploy a fixThe customer's environment removes the two things engineers rely on — reproduction and fast iteration. Four constraints, and the order of moves that still finds the fault.4 min read
- 2026-10-30The three people who decide whether it survivesSponsor, owner and operator carry different powers and are often different people. A map of who can spend, who can adopt, and who can quietly kill a deployment.4 min read