In today's hyper-connected world, the ability to focus without distraction is becoming increasingly rare — and increasingly valuable. Cal Newport calls it Deep Work, and after 20 years of shipping software I think it's the single most underrated engineering skill.
After watching dozens of microservice architectures crumble in production across two decades, I've compiled the patterns that hold up when reality kicks in. Spoiler: it's not about the framework, it's about the contracts between services.
The jump from senior developer to tech lead is not a promotion — it's a career change. You stop optimising your own output and start amplifying an entire team's. Here's the unfiltered truth nobody puts in the job description.