Posts by Scott Barstow

Imagine that you and I live next door to Khufu in ancient Egypt, say around 3000 BCE. One day we're standing along our fence, chatting about the weather and how...

Simply one of the most compelling stories you'll ever read.

In many ways, I grew up with Steve Martin. I listened to A Wild and Crazy Guy as a kid. The Jerk was one of the first R-rated movies I...

I was somehow living under a rock and hadn't heard about this book. A tremendous story of avarice, corruption and abuse of power.

Light read about New York high society. We listened to this book on a 10-hour car trip and it was a perfect fit. Don't know that I would've read it...

I've done work with a large Syrian refugee community here in Raleigh and found myself wanting to know more about Islam. Excellent book on the historical context for Islam's rise...

This series is look into daily life in Sweden through the eyes of Anita Sundstrom, a police detective in Malmo. I've read all nine of the books and found them...

I read this book right after reading Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. It's completely different, and a lighter read. If you are a book lover like me, this is a...

A great story about partnership, gaming, entrepreneurship and love all rolled up into one. I read this book in less than two days while on a short holiday and was...

I have a not-so-secret love affair with all things Scandinavia. This book was a hilarious, yet incredibly insightful, read into the culture, economies and politics of the Scandinavian countries. Great...

I've written previously about firing your CTO in a hostile situation and how to survive your CTO leaving. In this post I'd like to talk about the process you as...

"Every system is perfectly designed to get the result that it does." W. Edwards Deming When your product and engineering team is struggling to deliver consistently, it is tempting to...

"Any organization that designs systems will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure." Melvin Conway One of the questions I've been asked most often,...

On Decisions I was listening to the year-end episode of the All In podcast over the weekend. Though I don't love these kinds of "recap" shows, this show was great...

A peek under the covers of Apple's design process as they built the iPhone keyboard

The most common complaints in software product companies are typically some form of the below: "We're spending all of this money and I don't know what I'm getting" "Our team...

Such a great and timely book given the times we are living through. A deep exploration of the history and importance of free speech, and the constant back and forth...

Not too long ago, a company I know had a serious outage. The customer base was split across the old, legacy environment and the new public cloud, and there was...