Aaron Brethorst

Dec 20, 2025
software-engineering management

What Volunteer Open Source Taught Me About Remote Teams

For the past year, I’ve been leading the development of Maglev, a complete rewrite of the OneBusAway server. The original system was built in Java over a decade ago, and while it still works, it’s showing its age. Maglev is a greenfield project in...

Dec 18, 2025
software-engineering management

One weird trick to manage engineering crises; stakeholders love it

Once, I was leading engineering on a product caught in multiple overlapping crises. Our biggest customer was breaking the database simply through their size and usage patterns. Other customers threatened to churn unless we could provide new featur...

Dec 05, 2025
software-engineering management

Instantaneous Velocity Is a Trap

I worked on a project once where leadership celebrated every feature shipped, every deadline met, every sprint completed on schedule. The team was moving fast. Blazingly fast, by some measures. Every standup had good news. Every demo impressed sta...

Oct 28, 2025
software-engineering ios android

Swift for Android Won't Amount to Anything

The Swift team just announced nightly builds of the Swift SDK for Android, complete with Java interoperability and a getting started guide. They’re pitching it as “opening new avenues for cross-platform development.” It won’t work. Not because the...

Oct 21, 2025
software-engineering management ios

Engineering Managers Should (Sometimes) Write Code

I spent the last few evenings polishing the trip planner feature that an intern built for the OneBusAway iOS app. Not reviewing the code, not providing architectural guidance, but actually writing Swift to handle edge cases in the UI and fixing la...