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Hey folks,

I want to try something out this year, I want to write a monthly newsletter. “Newsletter,” I guess. You may notice this isn’t in your mailbox, if you’re reading this, its probably posted on my website, and depending on when you’re reading it, there may not even be a place to input your email. It’s a bit rushed, and I don’t know how I’d want to host a newsletter just yet (more on that later), so I chose to do probably the harder part of just writing it. I’ll post it, and it’ll exist. Folks can read it, or maybe just I will, either is fine by me.

Let’s get into it, I’ll talk more about what I want for this newsletter and then just get going with it.

🗞️ Why a Newsletter?

Lately, I’ve felt more value in trying to serialize my thoughts, and just exist online in a slightly more meaningful sense, but I don’t necessarily want to participate on a social network as much as just write or create & post it on a personal site. The web is phenomenal, and its also changing fast. Faster than it’s ever felt like it has for me — granted, I joined the web a bit after the Web 2.0 era started. Social networks continue consolidating (except for microblogging, thanks to X for exploding & giving some oxygen to new platforms), and AI is increasing the output of low value content on the web.

I want to be a part of what I think is a better way forward for the web, which in my opinion, looks a lot like the old web did. I believe that POSSE (Publish Own Site, Syndicate Everywhere) is the best chance for ownership & autonomy on the web. The Verge also has a great writeup on POSSE that I’d recommend for an introduction. While I’m not a prolific writer, poster, or really participant on most social networks, I still want to advocate for a method of online activity by doing it regardless of the popularity of it.

I also simple must shout out Dann Berg for being the one to convince me to actually start writing this, with his great article Why I write a newsletter (and why you should, too). Dann has been the latest online writer that I’ve found in my favorite way, and in a way I do genuinely hope someone finds me one day. I was looking for something specific online (how to set up a good Daily Notes template in Obsidian), and I found Dann’s article on the topic. It was what I needed, and it was well written, and oh, what’s that at the top of the page? “Articles” and “Newsletter” headers? Perfect. I read some more articles, I subscribed to his newsletter, and I started following him in my RSS reader.

Finding new people online from searching for an answer and discovering an interesting person behind the article has been such a genuine joy since (mostly) leaving social media. It’s harder to find new interesting voices, but its not impossible. If you like an article, read more from them before you move on (or if you’re in a rush, use a Read-It-Later app, I’m sure I’ll talk about this & RSS soon). Better yet, odds are the writers you follow will talk about topics from other writers. They’ll link to new articles, and before you know it, you’ve got a web of content. An interconnected network, wow, what a concept.

🤷 What should I expect from the Newsletter?

Probably not much, at least to start. I’ll be honest & set expectations, I’m not a writer, I want to be a writer. Regardless, I do have a structure in mind for the newsletter. My plan is to write this monthly, and have a few smaller sections with two main types, synthesis of what I’ve been reading & personal updated.

Like I said, I want to be a writer, and I think a good way of pursuing that will be trying to focus on smaller chunks, building off my thoughts from what I read from better, smarter writers. I promise this isn’t just selfish, I want to also expose readers to the better writers that influence me. Synthesizing the things you read & getting your feelings of the concept on paper is a better way to learn from it, so it feels like a well suited fit to be part of the newsletter.

Secondly, this newsletter will serve for personal updates. Maybe more professional, maybe more personal, maybe a mix. Obviously this first letter is pretty highly personal, discussing my thoughts as the catalyst for the newsletter. I want to have an outlet to discuss brief updates about what I’m doing or working on, without having to have a completed project, or an overarching point like like other articles I’ve written.

I’ve done a deal of personal updates here, on to a short section of synthesis on an idea before wrapping what feels like a long first entry…

👨‍💼 Is management right for me?

Recently, David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH) wrote The benefit of seniority ought to be bandwidth, which really resonated with me at a time where my seniority has afforded me the smallest amount of bandwidth I’ve felt in my career. He posits a crazy idea, you may want your most knowledgeable folks working on hard problems. That as reward for having a highly competent employee, they should be given more time to do the work they’ve been praised and elevated for doing.

It comes at a cost though, because you cannot (and should not) lock your senior developers in a room to produce quality code. I genuinely see that as a waste of talent, because you need someone to teach juniors and run projects. Let me be clear, this is not a denouncement of DHH’s point, he notes this as well. But I think the goal for any senior position would be to find balance in their day. The balance will look different for everyone, and once you’re out of balance, it may be hard to find it again. This is what I’m struggling with, and why the article resonated with me.

At Seven Hills Technology, I’m a “Tech Lead,” which is the third highest position, under the Owners and the Head of Operations (it is also the second from the bottom, above only individual contributor developers and QAs, its a small company). I’m not saying this to be over important, but to talk about how I wear a lot of hats, I run two projects as a Scrum Master, on one, I am also a Product Owner, I have two junior devs that are given a lot of mentoring, and two developers who thankfully take a load off my shoulders, and I still do development work on both projects (one project less so, thank you / sorry Dominic).

I’m happy with what I do, but I need to rebalance myself to give more bandwidth to development work, but that is simply not possible to do without taking away attention from either project management or mentoring my fellow developers. Figuring out how to rebalance your efforts is never easy, and never without compromise. If you have a row of four lightbulbs connected in series, to make one brighter, the others must dim. So far, its been hard for me to decide to dim the bulbs that would affect others in favor of my own career preferences (ie, doing more development).

🎯 Rapid Fire

Finally, a quick list of some things I want to share.

👋 Signing Off

Thank you so much for reading my first “newsletter,” I genuinely appreciate your time. If you have thoughts about this, please reach out to me and let me know. If you’re here, I assume you know me in person, but if somehow you don’t, I’m on LinkedIn, or you could email me at hey[at]willo[dot]dev! Let me know if it was interesting, not interesting, or if I use to many parentheses (I probably do). I’ll start off calling this newsletter “Will’s Written Web,” which probably manages to be both a bit cringe and a bit egregious, but I’ll stick with it. If you have a better idea, I’m so open to it.

I really appreciate you, and I hope to talk to you next month!