The Zachism Dictionary

Framework to present a demo. Drop the slides and show what you actually built.

“Alright team, it's Friday — time to show your shit.”

Logging your work now saves future-you from a panicked Slack thread at 4:59 PM on a Friday. You're not doing it for the process — you're doing it for the version of you who will absolutely not remember this in two weeks.

The gentle reminder that not every task gets to be the fun, creative stuff. Sometimes you just have to update the damn tickets. That's literally why they call it work.

In the context of SOC 2 auditing, give auditors enough detail to satisfy compliance requirements but never over-specify — say "a ticket is entered into a system" rather than naming Jira. Keep your SDLC documentation tool-agnostic so a future audit can't penalize you for how you actually work.

Organizational philosophy that teams should adapt to what needs to be done, rather than forcing work into existing team structures. Work goes where it makes sense, not where org charts dictate.

“Meaning this doesn't have to land on platform. And of course ya'll have a platform team — what company doesn't!”

Just don't choose a dying language please.

“Clojure flashbacks”

A reframing of "as soon as possible" — everybody wants everything as quickly as possible, but the real question is what are we actually willing to support? MVP should be the thing we are willing to support, not just the fastest thing we can ship.

“I had a boss that always said, "As soon as possible" and my reframing is "As soon as responsible." That's the same thing with MVP.”

Summaries and overviews expand or contract to fit the format you hand them. Give a one-pager and you get a one-pager's worth of detail; give a sprawling template and the same idea sprawls to fill it. The container shapes the content, so choose the container deliberately.

Doing great work doesn't earn you a break — it earns you the next, bigger challenge. The better you are, the more interesting and demanding the problems that land on your plate. That's the deal, and if you love the work, it's a good deal.

“You shipped it? Nice. The reward for hard work is more hard work — here's the next one.”