$ whoami
I'm John Moody — a tech industry veteran with 30+ years of experience, currently building on-premises email delivery systems that handle billions of sends. Writing about engineering leadership, deliverability at scale, and the hard lessons in between.
Developers using AI tools ship features faster. Designers iterate more quickly. Data scientists analyze in minutes what used to take days. More output per person means fewer people needed for the same goals. Which means fewer managers.
The reality is often far different — rather than being a mechanism for the employee to share questions and concerns, a 1:1 can easily become a mechanism for the manager to get status updates, share information on upcoming projects, and solve problems. It becomes a command performance that, far from putting the employee at ease, raises their stress level.
I reached for a trick I’ve used many times when learning new computer languages. I decided to build something interesting but hard. It needed to be something that would require me to use the language’s features.
Engineering Manager, Email Platforms @ Klaviyo
Building the systems behind billions of email sends. I write about email infrastructure at scale, engineering leadership, and the messy reality of figuring it out as you go.
Read more →