Measuring Soft ROI: Morale, Trust, Sanity
Some wins don't fit a spreadsheet. Proxy metrics, the two-question survey, and the double-entry rate: how to document soft ROI honestly.
Read article → FDE FundamentalsThe FDE Title Problem: Delta, Echo, and Other Names
Delta, Echo, deployed engineer, field CTO: why the same job has six titles, which lookalikes aren't the job at all, and what to actually put in the posting.
Read article → Case Studies & StoriesThe Handoff That Actually Worked
How one engagement ended right: the junior hire we trained, the six-page runbook that gets used, and a twelve-week fade instead of a cliff.
Read article → Tools & StackSelf-Hosted LLMs: When Privacy Demands It
Open-weight models on modest hardware genuinely cover extraction, classification, and summarization. Here's when self-hosting is right, and the honest limits.
Read article → Prototyping & DeliveryThe Weekly Release Cadence Clients Love
Plan Monday, ship Tuesday, demo Friday. Why a boring weekly drumbeat beats impressive speed for client trust, and what to do when you miss a week.
Read article → AI & DataEvals: The Unsexy Discipline Behind Reliable AI
LLM features fail politely, in fluent prose. Evals are unit tests for probabilistic systems: real test sets, three scoring methods, and deploy-time gates.
Read article → Industry PlaybooksFDE for Nonprofits: Big Mission, Tiny IT Budget
Donor dedupe, volunteer scheduling, and grant reporting without the meltdown: how nonprofits get real software on shoestring budgets, in weeks.
Read article → Hiring & Careers7 Mistakes Companies Make Hiring FDEs
Consultant clones, leetcode loops, unreadiness checks, and four more ways companies botch their first FDE hire, plus the screens that actually work.
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