Erik Zaadi

The tales of a coding manager addicted to dad jokes

Recent Posts

From Clippy to Slippy: The Perils and Perks of AI in Management If you were around in the early 2000s, you probably remember Clippy, the overly eager paperclip who popped up in Word to offer ‘helpful’ tips like how to write a letter (spoiler: nobody asked). Fast forward to today, and Clippy’s spiritual descendants are everywhere, only now they’re called AI assistants. As a manager, I’ve found that leaning on AI can feel like going from Clippy to Slippy: sometimes it smooths the path and saves me hours, and other times it slips me into awkward mistakes, tone-deaf messages, or content that reads like it was written by… well, a paperclip. This post is my testimony of both the perks and perils of letting AI sneak into management work.
EM <> PM: A Song of Ice and Fire How an engineering manager and a product manager forged trust, shared ownership, and high-velocity delivery — without burning down the roadmap.
Markdown My Words! S3 You Later PowerPoint Building, editing, and deploying slide decks with nothing but Markdown, Bash, and dad puns.
Proudly Unnecessary: A Leadership Tale from the Couch What happens when a manager steps away? A story about trust, resilience, and building a team that scales without you.
LAN Party Guide 2.0: Warsow vs Warfork Your go-to setup guide for hosting classic fast-paced LAN FPS games using Warsow and Warfork—especially if you're on a Mac.
The Silver Bullet for Conference Presentations? There Is No Bullet

Ever sat through a slide deck that felt like reading a spreadsheet on stage?

Presentations are hard — but they don’t have to be painful.

You need have the magic schtick that helps you with the value you want to share.

The problem

Most company templates for presentations might be great for sales pitching on zoom,

BUT, they just don’t work for a stage and crowd.

Slides crammed with KPIs and roadmap bullet points might kill on Zoom. On stage? They kill attention.

Onboarding vim'ers Because people deserve to see the light
A Moderator and Mentor's Guide for Doing Public Talks

Intro

Finding what to talk about

CFP outline clickbait title

Working on your talk

Story
Talking
Iterating
Getting feedback
Communicating with your moderator
WIIFM
Dry runs
Slides

Slides

Whoami
Use less bullets
Typos
Correct use of screen estate
Segways
Planning for projector
Live demos, the DO's and DON'Ts
Summary / Key takeaways
bite the bullet, be the bard

Preparing for the conference

Backups
Take some time off rehersals

At the conference

How to Use Zsh and Tmuxp to Speed Up Your Day to Day Workflow Again TUI to the rescue
Pull Request Etiquette - A set of simple rules for your code review What human touches you can add to your review processes that'll make you rock