The Optimist Engineer

Symptoms of Bad Software Design

4 signals that your software is badly designed and how to solve them

May 6 • Marcos F. Lobo 🗻🧭

19

6

April 2026

Why your releases feel harder than they should

And why is the problem almost never at the time of deployment?

Apr 29 • Marcos F. Lobo 🗻🧭

6

Why "Why Not?" is a Critical Engineering Skill

A personal story about losing stability, taking a risk, and learning to operate without a clear roadmap

Apr 22 • Marcos F. Lobo 🗻🧭

13

2

2

For those who want to go deeper

A more practical and in-depth version of The Optimist Engineer

Apr 15 • Marcos F. Lobo 🗻🧭

10

2

2

Lately, I’ve been thinking about this

Some honest thoughts about the future of The Optimist Engineer

Apr 8 • Marcos F. Lobo 🗻🧭

8

2

The Tech Lead’s Toolbox: Managing Debt and Architecture

Practical tasks to transition from solving bugs to solving system-wide problems.

Apr 1 • Marcos F. Lobo 🗻🧭

10

1

March 2026

Stop Coding Tasks, Start Designing Systems

How to shift your mindset from "how it works" to "why it matters" to grow your career

Mar 25 • Marcos F. Lobo 🗻🧭

12

3

Ensuring Data Compatibility and Consistency in Microservices with Schema Registries

Put a Schema Registry in your life and ensure nobody hurts you

Mar 18 • Marcos F. Lobo 🗻🧭

7

4

You're already a senior dev - now what?

The three paths will guide you in the ride

Mar 11 • Marcos F. Lobo 🗻🧭 and Jorge Castaño

13

4

RFCs: The Most Underrated Skill in Software Engineering

How writing down your decisions sharpens your thinking, improves your PRs, and grows your technical influence

Mar 4 • Marcos F. Lobo 🗻🧭

16

6

February 2026

MCP Architecture Overview

An app that implements the Model Context Protocol, how does it look like at architecture level

Feb 25 • Marcos F. Lobo 🗻🧭

10

4

Does your developers need another MCP?

Many Platform Engineering teams are creating MCP for their dev team but, when is it a good idea?

Feb 18 • Marcos F. Lobo 🗻🧭

10

4