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The template, where to store them, and how to make the habit stick
An engineer on my team pulled up an ADR we'd written months earlier, realized the constraints still held, and saved two weeks on a migration that didn't need to happen. Here's the template, the repo layout, a scaffolding script, and the mistakes I made running ADRs across distributed teams.
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Clarity Does
A dev posted on Reddit about their manager's manager demanding more productivity while adding more meetings. Used terms like 'o3' for one on one and 'N+2' for skip level manager. The top reply was 'Speak English brother.'
You Built the Stage
Three meetings before anyone says a real thing. That's not dysfunction. That's theater. And the leaders never see the mess. They see the performance.
I Read the Logs and Actually Was One
A release broke payments for 10 minutes. So I added a meeting. Release retrospective. Every deployment gets a review. Sounds like leadership. The fix came from reading logs. Not from a meeting.
Nobody Told You
You've mastered the stack. You know every corner of the codebase. You could do the work in your sleep. And that's exactly the problem. The five year wall is real. It happens because growth stopped and nobody noticed. Not your manager. Not your skip level. Definitely not you. Because everything still works.
The Laziest Career Advice in Tech
Every time an engineer says 'I want to grow beyond coding,' someone suggests management like it's the default next step. Nobody asks if they're good with people. Nobody asks if they want to lead humans. Nobody mentions that most engineering managers fail in year one because they think managing is just 'not coding anymore.'
That's Not a Compliment. It's a Cage.
A strong engineer asks to try a new team. Explore a different problem. Grow into an adjacent space. Leadership says no. You're too critical. And the engineer hears 'we appreciate you.' What they should hear is 'we've decided your growth doesn't matter as much as our convenience.'
They Feel Like Guilt
Great pay. Smart coworkers. Reasonable hours. Generous PTO. You list all of that and think 'I have no right to feel this way.' But you're still staring at your laptop at 2pm unable to write a single line of code. The 'objectively good job' is the hardest burnout to escape. Because there's nothing obvious to blame.
The Hockey Stick That's Destroying Your Team
90 points becomes 120. 120 becomes 150. By Q4 you'd need 500 points a sprint to stay on track. Nobody questions the math because nobody wants to look like the person who can't keep up. If your velocity chart looks like a hockey stick, you don't have a productive team. You have a team that learned how to survive your metrics.
Everyone Knows Except Leadership
120 points completed. Leadership sees progress. Meanwhile every engineer in the room is staring at the same screen thinking the same thing. That number is fiction. Not because anyone lied. Because the system was never designed to tell the truth about what engineering actually does.