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4.6.6
engineering director. coach. quantum particle. in search of adventure; it’s probably fine ✨
Author of The Engineering Leader, published by O'Reilly
Scaling up and out of the day to day made awareness too expensive to be useful. New post on rebuilding it: the AI skills that route, report, and tell me what's actually going on. https://cate.blog/2026/06/09/useful-ai-skills-for-engineering-leaders/
This stage of capitalism is so gross. Entry level jobs gone? Now you can learn the skills by paying for a subscription in order to do unpaid labour. https://www.extern.com/externships
Day 3 of the cate.blog design refresh.
Will to live: gone 🫠
Feelings about WordPress: extremely negative 🔥
Determination: somehow higher than ever 👩🏻💻
"Don't ask someone to read or review what you haven't read or reviewed yourself." @skamille@mastodon.social on respectful AI use. This should be common sense... and yet it's not.
Your individual productivity should move things forward, not DDOS your coworkers 👩🏻💻
https://skamille.medium.com/guidelines-for-respectful-use-of-ai-affcc85d7072
Gossiping with a friend about people who can't admit they're wrong. Then realised I needed to do the same - admit I was wrong, and make a new plan.
Future-Cate will thank me.
I've been lucky: the right coach at the right time, and a job that paid for it. It was good for my career and good for my well being.
Paying that forward as one of 21 coaches offering free scholarships this round to engineering leaders from underrepresented groups in tech. 29 spots. Apply by 30 June 👩🏻💻
https://monkeysthumb.co.uk/coaching-for-engineering-leaders/scholarships/
Me in DRI's "Navigating the AI Shift" course: "Think critically, don't just accept AI output."
Me using Claude Design: 😍🤩👩🏻💻👩🏻💻👩🏻💻👩🏻💻👩🏻💻🚢🚢🚢
@jyhsu@mstdn.social later: "Why are there numbers everywhere? What does this strike through mean?"
AKA very valid questions I should have asked myself.
I have been quite judgy about people uncritically accepting AI output, but turns out all I needed to fall into the same trap is using it in a space where I completely lack trust in my own judgement.
Thank goodness for Jean! This is why we are a team 😆 💕
I am still convinced Claude Design can improve cate.blog though... BRB!
A story about one of my most impactful personal projects: @chiuki@sunny.garden and I ran a newsletter (before everyone had one) called "Technically Speaking" about public speaking in tech.
It started because we wanted to make something useful for our community - and they supported us from day one 💓 100 subscribers before we'd even launched. People sponsored it because they wanted it to exist. We got to push conferences toward codes of conduct and covering speaker travel.
What's a project you worked on that felt genuinely meaningful? 👩🏻💻✨"
Having so much fun developing again! Reminds me of why I fell for mobile dev:
People had started to hate their computers but still loved their phones. That felt like an opportunity to build applications people actually want, not ones corporations subject them to 👩🏻💻📱
It's my birthday next week 🎂 Here's what I'd tell 18-year-old me:
Skip chemistry, go straight to CS. Turns out I'm more 👩🏻💻 than 👩🏻🔬 - plus the market for chemists has been declining for over a decade. So even if things seem hard today, it could have been worse!
Oh, and economic history ≠ economics 📚🤦🏻♀️
My partner is quietly looking for his next iOS/macOS role — particular love for accessibility 💖
Ping me if you're hiring 👩🏻💻
(We live in Cork. Ireland - so remote / Ireland preferred, open to EU).
My friend asked if Claude could replace coaching. I started writing about that and ended up somewhere else entirely - on what it means to be seen and challenged by another human being.
New issue of What's My Job Again 👇
https://newsletter.whatsmyjob.club/archive/the-human-weight-of-it/
"Relieved, and then immediately guilty about the relief, and then annoyed at myself for feeling guilty about something that is, by any rational measure, a completely reasonable thing to do."
Honest piece on the ethics of AI code tools now that they're actually good. It's easy to opt out of something that doesn't work. It's a lot harder when your industry is making it a requirement and you still need to pay rent.
https://matduggan.com/i-sold-out-for-200-a-month-and-all-i-got-was-this-perfectly-generated-terraform/
Audio book now available!
Exciting news, the audio book of The Engineering Leader is out! Available on Amazon or wherever you buy audio books.
