Technical debt isn’t just “bad code”. Learn five concrete types of technical debt (mortgage, student loan, depreciation, credit card, environmental debit) and a simple decision matrix to know what to fix and what to ignore.
Field note
Paolo G.
Notes on Leadership, Systems, and Life.
Hi, I’m Paolo. I spend my life wearing different hats. I lead teams, I serve in the Navy, I parent three kids, I sail and hike and create and learn. This site is where all those threads meet.
This is my notebook in public. I write about leadership, systems, and insights, and about the everyday practice of building and solving problems.
People
Humans are strange. The way we love, fight, cooperate, and invent rarely makes sense. That's interesting. We tell stories to explain the unknown, we break rules just as quickly as we make them. Those contradictions teach us as much about others as they do about ourselves.
Products
Products are puzzles. We try to make them simple, but they have rules, trade-offs, and a hundred unseen choices. We think we just build things, but we’re really shaping systems that guide how people act and think. Those hidden layers show how what we create also shapes who we are.
Perspectives
Perspectives are the lenses we choose. The same story can look right or wrong, fair or unjust, depending on where it is viewed from. Context shifts meaning, and holding more than one view at once is often the closest thing to clarity.
Latest Thoughts
View all posts →How does feedback control applies to teams and work? I came up with the PID Compass as a way to tune how you respond, stabilize, and anticipate.
I spent my first months at AWS convinced I’d been hired by mistake. Imposter syndrome felt like a bug, but it turned out to give me useful perspective about the gaps I could see, and about everyone else in the room pretending they weren’t confused too.