Marcus Bell

postmortem culture is easy to fake. you can have a template, a meeting, a doc. but if your engineers don't feel safe saying "i missed it, here's why" you don't have a postmortem culture, you have a paperwork culture.

"can you jump on a call" is 2026 shorthand for "i don't want to write this down because if i write it down i'll realize i don't have a plan."

not always. but often. keep receipts.

the sla for a difficult one-on-one is: right now. not "let me think about it." not "let's discuss it next week." you go find them, and you say the hard thing while it's still small.

the on-call rotation is a load balancing problem. treat it that way. round robin isn't fair, weighted by seniority isn't sustainable, and volunteer-only is a lie you tell yourself.