software engineering leader
Chase Pierce
- currently
- I lead software engineering orgs, own architecture and delivery, and still write code. The architecture needs to be right to enable building the right products. Without it, you're fighting the system instead of building on it. Problem clarity tells you what to build. Then the architecture circles back to provide the right solution, and when requirements change, that should be a configuration change, not a bug.
- previously
- Writing code since I was 11. Over 20 years across gaming, social media, fintech, e-commerce, proptech, hosting, travel, sports tech, and more. The problems are universal. The fun part is solving them.
- otherwise
- Open sorcerer. Perpetually online. Obsessed with technology, hooked on shipping. Your favorite internet junkie with a love of all things digital and bacon-based.
docs
all docsAPI Design
Naming Conventions
How API paths are named: plural kebab-case nouns, one level of nesting, IDs not names in URLs, actions as sub-resources, and no formats or versions in paths.
Requests & Responses
Pagination
Cursor pagination by default, page numbers only for small stable lists, metadata in the Link header, and why offsets break on data that keeps changing.
Requests & Responses
Error Responses
One error shape for every failure, status codes that carry the outcome, and the 400 vs 422 and 403 vs 404 calls clients branch on to recover.
Database
Database Naming Conventions
Naming and typing conventions for tables, columns, keys, constraints and indexes, so a schema is predictable enough to guess and safe to change.
tools
all toolswhoami
See how you appear on the internet. IP, location, browser, device, and more.
JWT Debugger
Decode, encode, and verify JSON Web Tokens entirely in your browser.
Text Format Converter
Convert between JSON, YAML, TOML, XML, TOON, CSV, ENV, and query strings.
UUID / ULID Generator
Generate, validate, and inspect UUIDs (v1, v4, v7) and ULIDs.
writing
all posts- new12 min
Building It Isn't Owning It
Anyone can build an app over a weekend now. Building it was never the same as owning it, and owning it is the part that costs.
- 15 min
We've Been "Vibe Coding" This Whole Time
Every promotion has moved you further from the code. Now every engineer gets a small org chart of their own.
- 10 min
We Called It Progress
We spent decades building software that made other people's jobs cheaper. Now I'm on the job market, watching it happen to us.
- 10 min
Control Isn't Success
I turned a dying CRM rebuild into a real platform and shipped a year early. Then I started fixing the problem statements myself, which broke everything else.
- 7 min
The Thinking Tax
I fixed a bug in ten minutes that could've cost me hours, and felt nothing. The understanding never showed up. On what goes missing when the tool thinks first.
- 8 min
Growing Together in the Age of LLMs
AI made the first version easy. Everything after that (the scaling, the edge cases, the maintenance) still takes real engineering. On growing alongside LLMs.
- 5 min
The Evolution of Software Engineering in the Age of AI
With AI-assisted coding, software engineers are becoming product engineers and architects, leaning into system design, collaboration, and iteration with LLMs.
- 6 min
Passing Secrets to Manual GitHub Actions Workflows
workflow_dispatch has no secret input type, and add-mask runs too late to hide one. A one-time link gets a secret into the workflow, masked, without leaking it.
- 1 min
Hello, world, again!
We're back. Round and round we go. Why I keep rebuilding this blog, why I keep abandoning it, and why this time I'm betting I'll actually stick with writing.