IDEAS, DECISIONS & LESSONS
Notes on AI, architecture and building useful products.
130 articles
12 Jun 2026 · 8 min read
drills
There are five specific sound patterns that consistently trip up Vietnamese developers in English tech conversations. Not because the sounds are impossible — but because they don't exist in Vietnamese phonology and require deliberate muscle-memory practice. Here are the drills.
Read more12 Jun 2026 · 8 min read
communication
Data doesn't persuade. Stories do. Technical storytelling is the skill of framing complex system decisions, incident postmortems, and architecture proposals as narratives that non-technical stakeholders follow and engineers remember. Here's the structure and the language.
Read more12 Jun 2026 · 8 min read
communication
In Vietnamese work culture, public disagreement with a more senior person feels high-risk. In international tech teams, failing to push back when you see a problem is what actually damages your credibility. Here's the English for productive technical disagreement — the language that moves discussions forward without destroying working relationships.
Read more12 Jun 2026 · 6 min read
career
Learn the word 'initiative' — how to use it in career conversations, emails, and job interviews. Real examples for Vietnamese professionals.
Read more11 Jun 2026 · 9 min read
communication
Pitching a technical proposal in English isn't just about the idea — it's about structure, confidence, and handling skepticism without losing momentum. Here's a complete framework for pitching to your team or stakeholders, with scripts you can say aloud today.
Read more11 Jun 2026 · 8 min read
english
Shadowing is the single most effective speaking practice technique for non-native English speakers. You listen to a sentence and speak it simultaneously, matching rhythm, stress, and intonation in real time. Here's how to do it correctly with tech-specific scripts designed for Vietnamese developers.
Read more11 Jun 2026 · 9 min read
agile
A retro that ends with three vague action items nobody does is worse than no retro. Here's the English for facilitating retrospectives that surface real problems, produce committed actions, and don't turn into complaint sessions — from opening the meeting to closing with accountability.
Read more11 Jun 2026 · 9 min read
coaching
Mentoring is one of the highest-leverage things a tech lead does — and one of the hardest to do well in a second language. The difference between giving answers and developing engineers is a specific set of phrases. Here's the English for questions that build thinking, feedback that sticks, and conversations that accelerate growth.
Read more10 Jun 2026 · 8 min read
code review
Code review comments in English have three failure modes: too vague to act on, too harsh to receive well, or too polite to land at all. Here's the language for reviews that teach, not just judge — from how to open a review to how to handle pushback.
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