Blog
•

Blog introduction (2012)

Hello and welcome to my personal website here @ morganbye.net .com

This website serves three continuing purposes. Initially this was started as a pet project, I have always been an inquisitive sort especially when it comes to technology. However, I found myself in a position where I knew very little about the workings of websites, despite using them on a daily basis. So, being the “why not?” sort that I am I decided to expand my knowledge. And what better way to learn than through a project of your own?

You are currently reading the results of this on-going project.

I think a certain amount of self promotion in this modern world is a nice thing to have. Increasing it’s becoming more and more of a necessity, whether it be interest from future employers, competitors or just nosy individuals. This modern world finds itself heading in a direction where communication between one’s social network is ever increasing.

With the ever increasing popularity of social networking and microblogging sites cataloging everything in one’s life soon privacy will be gone, but why not? If someone wants to know what music I listen to, then let them, it’s only when this knowledge is used for commercial gain do I have issue.

For this reason I think it is a worthwhile investment to have one centre for your online life and persona, from this location all friends and family can share in my experiences as well as thoughts and feelings.

Finally, as I progress through my professional research career and PhD I hope to keep updating my research section with helpful hints and maybe simple introductions to more advanced topics. Whilst currently this still remains on the drawing board as a pipe-dream, there are noble intentions to give back to the education community.

So please take a minute or two to explore the site. I hope that you enjoy it, so as to justify the hours that have been ploughed into it over the months. Hey, you might even learn something.

Thanks for reading.

Morgan

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

[^1:] http://morganbye.net/2012/01/a-short-welcome-and-introduction) [^2:] http://morganbye.net/uncategorized/2012/01/a-short-welcome-and-introduction/

Older post

EPR Converter (e2a)

Newer post

PyMOL visualising binding interfaces

Further reading for leaders

Explore the archive

Blog
•

2025-03-30

French

I think that I’ve reached a new milestone. I had my first dream in French. Well actually, I distinctly remember having two dreams in French last night. Not that I remember anything about the dreams themselves, or even how coherent the …

Blog
•

2025-03-23

It’s been a while since I’ve sat down and just checked in, despite all good intentions. Nearly every weekend, Saturday and Sunday, I wake up intending to make a coffee and write a little summary of the week.

Today, however, I suddenly looked up, and …

Blog
•

2025-01-14: Surgery day

Today was the day when we were to find out whether our youngest would need brain surgery.

Just getting there

We left home around 930 for a 1030 appointment, a 20 minute drive away. After 45 minutes of queuing in traffic we were nearly on hospital …

LEADERSHIP, SCALE, AND THE HUMAN ELEMENT

Principles & Perspectives

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.