Throughout my career, I’ve learnt, usually the hard way, the importance of getting the foundations of whatever I was working on right. Or at least as right as possible. I learnt how fundamental it is for setting your project — and by proxy, your team — up for success. I’d argue it’s one of the most important things you should pay attention to. Getting the basics right is notoriously hard due to the inevitability of changing requirements, external factors, etc. which is why dedicating a reasonably large amount of time to figure out the foundations is so invaluable.

This blog post is a collection of advice or rules I’ve learnt to live by as a software engineer.

It’s an accumulation of experiences I’ve gained through working for software organizations of various sizes.

Most of the advice in this post is aimed at software engineers, but some may be applicable to other roles and industries.

Understand the problems you are solving

This isn’t a revolutionary idea. But the very sad reality of life is that it still hasn’t been internalised by so many engineers and organisations that it’s worth reiterating. I can’t stress enough how important understanding the problems you are trying to solve is. I’ve seen countless hours and budgets wasted on “solving” problems that have been completely misunderstood and often actually made worse by taking the wrong action.