Engineering leadership · Notes from practice

Good engineering starts with people.

I'm Dave Horan. I've spent more than 25 years building software, leading engineering teams, and connecting technical decisions to the people who depend on them.

This is a place to explore the practical work behind engineering leadership: clearer expectations, healthier teams, reliable systems, and technology that solves a real problem.

Browse the library

The collection

Recent writing

Ideas in progress, published when they are ready to be useful.

Writing

Fostering Innovation in Your Engineering Team

Feb 2026

If you're leading an engineering team and wondering why innovation feels stalled, the answer usually isn't that your people lack ideas. It's that your environment isn't designed to surface them.

Read entry

Experiments and tools

Things being built

A project is a way to test a belief against real constraints.

Project · PRJ.001

SimpleJobMatch

Scores a resume against a job description and generates a match report. Built on Replit with a Claude layer. Free tier, plus a paid tier for saved reports.

Visit project

Project · PRJ.002

ScanFlip

A mobile tool for eBay resellers: photograph an item, get an AI identification and current resale pricing pulled straight from eBay.

Visit project

All projects

Keep in touch

Slow notes, not a stream.

Occasional writing and useful resources, sent only when there is something worth sharing.

Request email access

You can revoke access at any time.