TJ's Desk

People · everyone my notes name

Every name in a note links here first.

When a note names someone, the name points to their entry on this page. Each entry says who they are, links to where you can find them, and lists the notes they appear in. The people fall into two groups: the ones my notes are about, and the ones whose work the notes build on.

In my notes

The people my notes are about: colleagues whose work a note describes.

  1. Matt MonroeCTO, Career Team

    Matt is the CTO at Career Team. His standing rule is that a wrong assumption gets cheaper the earlier you catch it, so move bugs to the left. That rule is what the epic checker was built to enforce.

    Find them onLinkedIn

    Mentioned inMove bugs left

  2. Kaither HoliwayDirector of Engineering, Career Team

    Kaither is our Director of Engineering. When review work piled up, he is the manager I raised it with, and his experience of engineering teams that built AI into how they work shaped where the reviewer went next.

    Find them onLinkedIn

    Mentioned inThe reviewer that learned to be wrong

  3. Kercwin OcampoTech lead on my team

    Kercwin went from developer to tech lead in about a year. He built the epic checker, which reads every ticket and pull request against the architecture plan, and he taught the team to make Claude write to him in the format he reads fastest.

    Find them onLinkedInGitHub

    Mentioned inBuild the floorMove bugs leftShow them the boardThe reviewer that learned to be wrongThe voice file

  4. Kyle Alan ManayonDeveloper on my team

    Kyle is a junior on my team. Two weeks after I demoed my review board, he had built his own board in Obsidian to keep his work in view.

    Find them onLinkedInGitHub

    Mentioned inBuild the floorShow them the board

  5. Cyrus Gello ParDeveloper on my team

    Cyrus is a fresh graduate who joined my team about three months ago. After my demo, he built a desk that tracks his pull requests all the way to UAT, on no tokens.

    Find them onLinkedInGitHub

    Mentioned inShow them the board

Sources

The people whose work my notes build on. Their books, essays and videos have a card on the reading page.

  1. Addy OsmaniEngineer and author

    Addy gave me the words for what I was already fumbling toward with AI: durable work is a loop built from a few reusable parts, not one clever prompt. His seventy percent problem is the honest half of that. The machine gets you most of the way, and the last stretch is where unmanaged work rots. Every gate and handoff in my setup exists because of that last stretch. His comprehension-debt warning is the reason the report and the checklist are in the loop at all.

    Find them onWebsiteGitHub

    His workLoop EngineeringBeyond Vibe Coding

    Mentioned inBuild the floorSet up the loopOne loop, every repoThe loop outlives the modelTen times zeroThe reviewer that learned to be wrong

  2. Alfonso GrazianoEngineer and author

    Alfonso's book is where most of my thinking on handing work to an AI got sharpened. Give a model one sentence of instruction and watch what it does first. If it guesses the stack or invents a folder, that gap is mine and not the model's, and the fix is to write down what I meant. The front door in the setup guide is that fix.

    Find them onWebsiteGitHub

    His workLearning AI-Native Software Engineering

    Mentioned inSet up the loopThe loop outlives the modelTen times zero

  3. Cole MedinBuilder and educator

    Cole drew the clearest picture I have seen of what an AI-native project actually is, as one artifact rather than a list of parts. I borrowed his cross-section because it was better than the one I was carrying around in my head. The five pieces in the setup guide are that artifact.

    Find them onGitHub

    His workAI-native starter pack

    Mentioned inBuild the floorSet up the loopThe loop outlives the model

  4. Brad FrostDesigner and author

    Atomic design is more or less my love language for frontend work. Atoms compose into molecules, molecules into organisms, and nothing gets built big when it can be built from small parts. I would happily make fifty tiny components before one large one, and GRAIN, the design system under this site, is built in exactly that shape.

    Find them onWebsiteGitHub

    His workAtomic Design

    Mentioned inOrigin story

  5. Coding2GOVideo channel

    Coding2GO reminded me that the web platform grew up while I was not looking. Much of what I used to reach for a framework to do, the browser now does on its own, and that is a large part of why this site runs with no build step at all.

    Find them onYouTube

    Their workOn the reading page

    Mentioned inOrigin story

  6. Ege Vusal Chelebichele.bi

    Ege tested writing rules for language models and found that a skill built from Simplified Technical English cut rule violations far more than a list of banned words. That result gave my VOICE standard its rule about plain verbs.

    Find them onWebsite

    His workThe Cure for AI Slop

    Mentioned inThe voice file

Photos come from each person's public LinkedIn or GitHub profile. Where there is no photo, the entry shows initials.

This page grows when a note names someone new. If you are on it and want your entry changed, tell me.