2018 Recovery Projection for Companies That Raised Hundreds of Millions in 2014

Introducing The Startup's 2018 review of 100 companies that raised big rounds in 2014, and reacting to being on the unrecoverable list.

Support Only Specific Browsers for Admin Panels to Reduce Development Costs

Why limiting an internal admin panel to just Chrome is a reasonable way to cut development costs.

Developer Experience in the AI Era — Helping Engineers Stay Competitive

While teaching a Claude workshop, an engineer in the room asked me: how do you think about improving Developer Experience (DevEx) in the AI era? I answered on the spot. This post revisits that as a fully remote CTO. What DevEx used to mean, what AI changed, how leadership provides the environment. The goal: growing engineers who stay competitive in the market, the kind people call excellent even after they move on.

The AI Era Is a Great Time to Learn - 15 Years Since I Was a Fledgling Engineer

"What should I learn in the AI era?" "How do I grow as an engineer?" At TechLead Conference 2026, I heard those anxieties often. Fifteen years after asking basic MySQL questions at Python mini Hack-a-thon, and with AI now available to answer anything on demand, I believe this is the best era yet for beginners.

Stop Asking Humans for Status Updates — In the AI Era, People Should Only Report the Future

Past and present progress is already etched into artifacts, commits, PRs, CI, and observability, and an AI agent can summarize it on demand. If so, there's little point in having humans re-report their progress. The information only humans hold lives on the side of the future, in intent no artifact has captured yet. From the seat of a CTO running a fully remote organization, I take apart the status-update ritual and redesign meetings and reviews around the future.

Articles I use for position talk as a git rebase opponent

Quotes I lean on when making the case against git rebase in team discussions.

Books and articles to get a general understanding of antisocial forces

Primer articles and books for a general understanding of antisocial forces reaching into the Japanese startup industry.

Reading Notes: '世界は贈与でできている　資本主義の「すきま」を埋める倫理学' (The World is Made of Gifts: Ethics to Fill the 'Gaps' in Capitalism) by Yuta Konuchi

Reading notes on Yuta Konuchi's 'The World is Made of Gifts,' capturing quotes on gifts and education.

I Cancelled My Sakura VPS

Notes on cancelling Sakura VPS and planning a migration to Sakura Cloud.

Create an environment where you can create what you want to create

A short reflection prompted by Yasutaka Nakata's article on shaping an environment to build what you want to build.

September 4, 2014 Topics

A daily roundup: GitHub split diffs, LESS / Sass / Stylus, and DeNA Namba-san on hiring — September 4, 2014.

September 6, 2014 Topics

A daily roundup: remote-collaboration tool Sqwiggle, portfolio service JAYPEG, and GREE news — September 6, 2014.

[Column] Interview with Ruby on Rails Creator David Heinemeier Hansson - Dan Kogai's Meeting with Alpha Geeks

A pointer to Dan Kogai's DHH interview on gihyo.jp, plus a note on rereading 37signals' Rework.

The dangers of managing tasks with email

A short note on why managing tasks in Gmail is risky, after misaddressing a mail almost right away.

Daylight Saving Time Specifications ~ Summer Time, Daylight Saving Time (DST)

A developer-focused summary of DST terminology and the PST ⇄ PDT switching rules to be aware of.

Development Team Structure Retrospective (January to May 2015)

Retrospective on the H1 2015 dev team structure — what worked, what didn't, and the shift ahead.

Experience Report: Completely Cashless, Walk-through Store 'Developers.IO CAFE'

Visiting Classmethod's fully cashless, walk-through Developers.IO CAFE as implementation reference.

Digital Content (PDF, Images, ZIP) Redistribution Prevention Strategies

Notes on preventing redistribution of PDF, image, and zip content sold on an EC site.

Recent work content and thoughts (August 2014 edition)

August 2014 notes on days pulled between vendor coordination, bug triage, and recruiting instead of coding.

2018 Goals and Policies

2018 goals and policies as a development lead and PM, plus what I've decided not to focus on.

Engineers aren't wizards who can do everything

Engineering roles are highly specialized — a note on setting realistic expectations across them.

Engineers/Programmers Will Eventually Become Cheap Labor

Notes on a book's prediction that engineering will commoditize, and what still matters in an AI-driven era.

ESG, SDGs Introduction, Criticism, and Recommended Books

A categorized reading list on ESG and SDGs — intros, critical takes, and recommendations.

Reading Notes: 'Process Economy: Your Story Becomes Value' by Kazuhiro Obara / 『プロセスエコノミー　あなたの物語が価値になる』尾原和啓（著）

Reading notes and quotes from 'Process Economy: Your Story Becomes Value' by Kazuhiro Obara.

Hacker News translation blog

Discovering a Japanese-language translation blog for Hacker News stories.

How to Ask Questions for Learning

On asking for the method to reach an answer, rather than the answer itself, when you're still learning.

Ideas for Not Working with 'People You Don't Want to Work With'

Practical options — from direct feedback to changing jobs — for not working with people you'd rather not.

I Think Not Being Able to Buy Additional Coupons During IIJmio OFF-Time Communication Restrictions is a Lost Opportunity

IIJmio's off-time throttling makes even buying more data impossible — a real-world lost-opportunity story.

Is a Salary Freeze Effectively a 3% Pay Cut? The Reality of Rising Prices and Real Wages (November 2025)

Do you feel like your paycheck should be going further, but somehow it isn't? As prices continued to rise throughout 2025, the real value of our wages has been steadily declining. This article uses official data to simulate just how much harder life would be if your salary had been frozen, and explores what engineers can do to break free from this situation.

Should Engineers Choose In-house Development or Contract Development for Their First Job?

My personal take on whether new engineers should start at an in-house product company or a contract dev firm.

International Press Release Distribution Services and Blog Media [2021 Edition]

A 2021 roundup of international press release distribution and blog media options — PR Newswire, Medium, LinkedIn, Substack, and more.

iPhone 14 has arrived

Unboxing my new iPhone 14 and comparing it with the iPhone SE (3rd generation).

Are iPhone Earphones the Best for Remote Work?!

Why I ended up going back to Apple's EarPods with 3.5 mm Headphone Plug for remote work.

Steps to Initialize iPhone for Transfer

iCloud sign-out, factory reset, and SIM disposal steps for handing over an iPhone.

Leadership Anti-patterns

Five leadership anti-patterns I identified from a real workplace experience.

For beginners learning programming, I recommend specialized engineer training instructors

Why I recommend specialized training instructors over working engineers for programming beginners.

Looking Back at 2020

Reflecting on 2020, my first year as a co-founder, across development, back office, corporate engineering, and hiring.

Looking Back on 2016

Reflecting on 2016 across business improvement, returning to engineering, and starting remote work from Kumamoto.

Pick Your Coding-Agent Model by Opportunity Cost — Why I Run Fable 5 Low and Codex 5.6 Sol Light for Speed

Lately I've deliberately defaulted to light, fast settings: Fable 5 at the Low reasoning level in Claude Code, and 5.6 Sol at the Light reasoning level and the Fast speed level in Codex. Today's high-intelligence models fail with the same shape of mistakes whether you spend a lot of reasoning tokens or a few. If the failure mode is the same, review effort doesn't change, and what matters isn't token cost but wait time, which is opportunity cost. Hard to see, but its dominance is obvious once you accept that humans are the bottleneck.

Development Project That Kills All Motivation

Reflections on a development project with no market research or revenue estimates that killed engineer motivation.

[Video] "Venture-oriented Programmer" by Naoya Ito

A quick note on watching Naoya Ito's Venture-oriented Programmer lecture video.

Why Narcissistic Leaders Resist Remote Work — A Reflection from Running a Fully Remote Organization

A Wharton team has published evidence that the more narcissistic a leader is, the more they resist remote work. The reason isn't productivity or culture, but the loss of the power and status that in-person work supplies. From the seat of an executive and CTO running a fully remote organization, I reflect on this uncomfortable finding a step removed: auditing your own motives, the hidden costs of return-to-office mandates, and remote work as a governance mechanism.

Number Abbreviations: No. and # (Number Sign)

A quick look at abbreviations for Number (No., #, №) and how to use them concisely.

NURO Biz ONU doesn't have router functionality

A note that NURO Biz's ONU (Huawei-EchoLife HG8040H) has no router functionality, unlike NTT's.

I Canceled NURO Mobile

A memo on canceling NURO Mobile after Rakuten Mobile's 0 yen plan ended.

What I Learned from One Week of Hard Work

One week of hard work — takeaways on energy, input, and spotting DEV team tech debt.

Services I paid for in 2018 [Subscription Edition]

The subscription services I paid for in 2018 — LastPass, Backblaze, Evernote, Amazon Prime, Google One, and Family Album Mitene.

Got a Path T-shirt!

I received a T-shirt from the social networking app Path. American sizes were big, so I went with Small.

What Should You Do to Pay Back Technical Debt?

Notes on hsbt-san's take that paying back technical debt comes down to hiring the right person and giving them authority.

Even for IT companies, phone calls are still the emergency communication method

Even at an IT company, phone calls are still the emergency channel — configuring iPhone Do Not Disturb around it.

Product Development and People, Products, Money

A People / Products / Money framework for framing product development decisions and ADRs.

[Column] Notes from Reading 'How to Deal with the Programmer 35-Year Age Limit Theory?'

Notes from a roundtable article on how programmers should deal with the '35-year age limit theory'.

Programmers and eyes

A short reflection on eye pain from staring at a display all day as a programmer.

Programmers: Ideal (Movies) vs Reality

A gif contrasting the movie/drama version of a programmer with the reality of the job.

Proposals from people without track records are like entrepreneurs with ideas but no execution ability

An email excerpt on why cross-team proposals need a track record and completed personal work behind them.

PO (purchase order) = Purchase Order, Order Form, Purchase Instruction

PO = Purchase Order, and sometimes Product Owner or Project Owner — a quick reference to disambiguate the term.

Let's have witty communication on GitHub

GitHub PR chatter was getting stiff, so we shifted to a more relaxed, witty tone and it noticeably helped.

Remote Work May "Potentially Degrade Social Skills"

A favorite illustration from The Oatmeal on how remote work may quietly degrade your social skills.

Retirement-Driven Development (RDD)

Retirement-Driven Development: using a teammate's departure to convert tacit knowledge and drop busywork.

Retty Office Moving Party

A short note from Retty's office moving party, where the Tsukiji-fresh sushi stole the show.

Ruby Advent Calendar jp: 2011 - Selected Articles I Want to Read

A personal pick of entries worth reading from Ruby Advent Calendar jp: 2011.

Meaning and Etymology of 'Scratch Development'

A memo on the meaning and etymology of the term 'scratch development'.

Thinking About When Operating Companies Should Do Contract Development

Why an operating company shouldn't take contract dev during its own service's peak season, using an e-commerce year-end as the example.

Should Shared Library Directory Be Named 'shared' or 'common'?

Should a shared-library directory be named `shared` or `common`? Linux, Rails, and Capistrano all pick `shared`.

Disadvantages of Side Jobs

The downsides of side jobs from an employee's perspective, and why I don't actively pursue them.

Considering Alternative Chat Services When Slack is Down Due to Outages ~ Email, Google Chat, Discord, Hipchat

Fallback chat options — email, Google Meet, Discord, Hipchat — after the 2017 Slack outage.

Internal Interview Notes Related to Software Engineer Hiring

Notes prepared for an internal interview on software engineer hiring — values, work style, and priorities.

[Resource] 'Future Vision Through a Business Model That Makes Programming a Lifelong Career' by Sonic Garden CEO Yoshihito Kuranuki

Slides and Publickey commentary on Yoshihito Kuranuki's talk on making programming a lifelong career.

The Debt of Being Unable to Decide

A short note on the debt that piles up when a startup can't decide who owns each call.

Hiring Plans Should Be Cautious Even After Successful Fundraising

Why hiring plans still need to be cautious after fundraising — spell out the role and its day-one work before interviewing.

Stopped MAC Address Filtering Function

Why I turned off office Wi-Fi MAC address filtering after finding the security benefit didn't justify the maintenance cost.

Joined Twitter Blue After Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm Source Code Was Released

Why I subscribed to Twitter Blue after Twitter open-sourced its recommendation algorithm.

I want to know the know-how for building good teams

Looking for team-building know-how as the product team grows to around 20 engineers.

IT Department Response Policy for Water-Damaged PCs

IT department response policy for water-damaged PCs, based on insights from other companies' IT teams.

Reflecting on 2018 [Work, Family, Learning]

Looking back on 2018 as Engineering Lead — hiring, warehouse relocation projects, 1on1s, family, and learning.

Operational policy for distributing YouTube channel revenue among multiple people

An operational policy for splitting YouTube channel revenue among multiple owners, and where to check the earnings.