The Unwritten Spec

JP Howlett New York · 30+ years in software engineering

The skills that compound across a career — professional dynamics, leadership, economic literacy — are almost never taught in CS programs. This series is built on hard data, not intuition. Ten lessons published.

• No. 01
  Business Is Social

  The data behind the "good old boys network" — and why mastering the human side of work separates great engineers from merely competent ones.
• No. 02
  Valuing Your Time

  An abundance of time is not an excuse to price it at zero. The math, the signal, and the trap of overcorrecting into isolation.
• No. 03
  Show Up in the Room

  Video conferencing closed the distance problem. It did not close the bandwidth problem.
• No. 04
  Speak as If They're Listening

  What you say about people travels — mostly off the record, disproportionately if it's negative.
• No. 05
  Leadership Isn't for Everyone

  Being good at your job is not the same skill as leading people who do it. The data says companies confuse the two constantly.
• No. 06
  Working a Room

  A purposeful meeting runs business, then social. A networking event flips the formula.
• No. 07
  The Nuclear Reactor

  Professional proximity creates genuine attraction — most of it powers the work. Understanding the ratio and the risk.
• No. 08
  Why Engineers Should Read Sci-Fi

  Fiction builds the target before engineering builds the thing.
• No. 09
  Have Your Own Personal Principles

  Engineers with vision shape the world. You don't have to want to be an iconoclast for the same instinct to make you a better designer of ordinary software.
• No. 10
  Ride the Wave

  Engineers who multiply their efforts with AI are the ones who succeed. It's still invisible to much of the world. It won't stay that way.