Holidays I

Well today is day 2 of the holiday, well complete day 1 of Cornwall. And I’ve gotta say that I’m knackered for it.

Back on Friday I got up early and packed my a full backpack in Downham. Quickly I got myself down to the train station; after Downham decided that it might be quite useful to actually man the quiosk, I go on the train.

A quick hop to Ely and a coffee later I got on the cross country train heading for Manchester and Lady E. The tiny 2 carriage train lead to an interesting fight for a seat, something quite essential considering the next 4 hours I was going to spend on the train.

Nevertheless I managed to find myself a nice table seat with 3 others. A vacant mother, concerning father and 5 year old boy. After mum had been ignoring the child for about twenty minutes. The child started to climb onto the mums lap. At which I couldn’t believe what was happening, the mother actually said “if you don’t stop being naughty and sit down, I’ll call that nice policeman in the other carriage and he’ll come down here and arrest you”. After the second warning she then preceded to pretend to type numbers into her phone, hold it to her face and pretend to have a conversation. At which point the child quickly moved back to his seat. Although you have to wonder what happens when that one day when the kid pushes the boundary past that “phone call”

Several hours later I managed to get into Manchester and was welcomed by my lady. That night we went to Pizza Express and we got a meal for 7 for £12.60. This was due to us going the other week and it taking nearly 5 hours to do 3 courses, for which we got a free meal and wine. So, the meal was under £2 each and effectively paid for a veer and a few cokes.

Saturday a really dull day in the house with the aunt in-law and her brood a they are house sitting whilst the others went to Cornwall.

Sunday meant a good old drive down to Maidenhead so that Lady E could attend her job interview the next day. A complementary upgrade by the hotel sweetened the deal, as our room had a pleasant view over the river Thames.

Monday brought Lady E getting up silly early to go to the job interview. So she was there before 830 leaving me to explore the area of Maidenhead until 530. The only problem is that I managed to walk all the way around Maidenhead town centre in less than an hour. So, the rest of the day was spent in the cinema, coffee shops and talking to hippy dudes in music shops.

As soon as E was done. It was time for the super fun 4 1/2 hour run down to Cornwall.

Today we went around, King Arthurs castle.

To avoid soaps this evening, I found jenga blocks


This page previously appeared on morganbye.net[^1][^2][^3]

[^1:] http://morganbye.net/holidays [^2:] http://morganbye.net/2009/07/holidays) [^3:] http://morganbye.net/blog/?p=17

Newer post

Holidays II

How do you define successful engineering leadership?

The Philosophy

Many view technical leadership as being the “smartest architect in the room.” I see it as the opposite. My job is to build a room where I don’t have to be the smartest person because the systems, culture, and communication are so robust that the team can out-innovate me.

The Strategy

  • Alignment: Does every engineer understand how their sprint task impacts the company’s bottom line?
  • Velocity vs. Stability: We aren’t just “shipping fast”; we are building a predictable, repeatable engine that doesn’t collapse under its own weight at the next order of magnitude.
  • The Human Growth Curve: Success is when the engineering team’s capability evolves faster than the product’s complexity. If the team feels stagnant, the tech stack will soon follow.

What is your approach to scaling technical organizations?

The Philosophy

Scaling isn’t just “hiring more people” - that’s often how you slow down. Scaling is about moving from Individual Heroics to Organizational Systems.

The Strategy

  • The 3-Continent Perspective: Having managed global teams, I focus on “High-Signal Communication.” As you grow, the cost of a meeting triples. I implement “Asynchronous-First” cultures that protect deep-work time while ensuring no one is blocked by a timezone.

  • Modular Autonomy: I advocate for breaking down monolithic teams into autonomous units with clear ownership. This reduces the “communication tax” and allows us to scale the headcount without scaling the bureaucracy.

  • Automation as Infrastructure: At petabyte scale, manual intervention is a failure. I treat the developer experience (CI/CD, observability, self-service infra) as a first-class product to keep the “path to production” frictionless.

How do you balance high-growth velocity with technical stability?

The Philosophy

Technical debt isn’t a “bad thing” to be avoided; it’s a set of historical decisions that no longer serve you. Like any loan, leverage can accelerate growth when investments payoff. But if velocity and returns are slowing you need a payment plan before the interest kills you.

The Strategy

  • The ROI Filter: I don’t refactor for the sake of “clean code.” I don’t refactor a micro-service with no users. I refactor when the pain on that debt - measured in bugs, downtime, or developer frustration - starts to exceed the cost of the fix.

  • Zero-Downtime Culture: Especially at scale, stability is a feature. I implement “Guardrail Engineering” where the system is designed to fail gracefully, ensuring that a Series B growth spike becomes a success story rather than a post-mortem.

  • The 70/20/10 Rule: I typically aim to dedicate 70% of resources to new features, 20% to infrastructure/debt, and 10% to R&D. This ensures we never stop innovating, but we never stop fortifying either.