Engineering
How we build systems that don't fail
Correctness is non-negotiable
Every calculation verified. Every edge case handled. Every state transition validated. We don't ship code that "mostly works." In the systems we build, incorrect output is indistinguishable from system failure. We treat it accordingly.
Failures are anticipated
Networks drop. Services timeout. Disks fill. Users do unexpected things. Every system we build assumes the environment is hostile. Graceful degradation isn't an enhancement—it's a baseline requirement. If we can imagine it failing, we've already written the handler.
State is the enemy
Bugs live in state. Race conditions breed in shared memory. Data corruption starts with "it should be fine." We minimize mutable state, isolate what remains, and treat every state change as a transaction that can fail. Stateless by default. Stateful only when proven necessary.
Observability from day one
If you can't measure it, you can't fix it. Every service ships with logging, metrics, and tracing. Not as an afterthought—as part of the architecture. When something goes wrong at 3am, we know exactly where to look. We don't guess. We query.
Complexity is debt
Every abstraction has a cost. Every dependency is a liability. Every "clever" solution is a maintenance burden waiting to surface. We choose boring technology. We write obvious code. We delete more than we add. The best systems are the ones simple enough to understand completely.
Tests prove behavior
Documentation lies. Comments drift. Only tests tell the truth about what code actually does. We test critical paths exhaustively. We test edge cases obsessively. If a behavior matters, there's a test that breaks when it changes. No exceptions.
Security is architecture
Security bolted on is security waiting to fail. We design systems where the secure path is the easy path. Principle of least privilege. Defense in depth. Zero trust between services. Encryption in transit and at rest. Not because compliance requires it—because engineering demands it.
Recovery is a feature
Systems fail. The question is what happens next. Every database has point-in-time recovery. Every deployment can roll back in seconds. Every critical operation is idempotent. We don't prevent all failures—we make recovery fast enough that failures don't matter.
These aren't aspirations. They're requirements. Every system we deliver meets these standards, or it doesn't ship.