Shipping software that survives year two

The second-year problem

Launch is the easy part. The hard part is the eighteenth month, when the team that built the thing has rotated, the shortcuts have compounded, and every new feature costs three times what it should.

What we do differently

• Weekly demos. Nothing ships in the dark. Every Friday, working software.
• Senior operators only. No hand-offs from the people who sold the work to the people who do it.
• Boring infrastructure. We pick the technology that will still be maintained in five years, not the one trending this quarter.

Accountability is architecture

A codebase reflects the meetings that produced it. Clear ownership produces clear modules; diffuse ownership produces mud. We keep teams small, named, and accountable for the surface they build.