About

Hi, I’m Brother Nan, a software engineer with over 10 years of experience in the industry. Throughout my career, I’ve noticed a significant shift in the availability of resources for software engineers. While it’s fantastic to have a wealth of information at our fingertips, I often find the abundance of materials overwhelming. With so much data—some outdated, some duplicated, and some just noise—it can be challenging to quickly locate the most valuable and actionable insights.

That’s why I decided to create this site. My goal is to provide a curated, concise, and practical set of resources to help you succeed as a software engineer. Instead of adding to the noise, I aim to offer distilled, high-value content based on my professional journey.

The Playbook Approach

If you’ve been in the industry for a while, you’re probably familiar with playbooks—the essential documents engineers rely on when they’re on-call or managing production operations. An ideal playbook is concise in its main content, rich in context through appendices, and most importantly, actionable. With reasonable training, an engineer should be able to follow a well-written playbook to perform an operation confidently, even if they’ve never done it before.

Inspired by this concept, I’ve chosen a playbook-style approach for the content on this site. These playbooks capture the lessons I’ve learned during my career in a structured and practical format. While my primary focus is on professional growth as a software engineer, I’ll also share insights into other areas, such as personal finance and side projects, which I believe contribute to a well-rounded and fulfilling career.

Why This Site?

I don’t expect you to become a carbon copy of me, nor is that my intention. My hope is to provide quick, actionable guides for the tasks and challenges that software engineers frequently encounter. These playbooks are designed to save you time, reduce frustration, and inspire you to think critically about how you approach your work.

I’m also eager to hear your feedback. Just as we iterate on playbooks at work to make them more effective, I want to improve these playbooks based on your suggestions. Collaboration is a cornerstone of engineering, and I’d love to build that spirit into this resource.

Thank you for visiting, and I hope these playbooks serve you well. Whether you’re troubleshooting in production, planning your next career step, or exploring a new side project, I want this site to be a practical and reliable guide for you. Feel free to share your thoughts, and together, we can refine and expand these resources to benefit even more engineers.