sofiakodar.github.io

Speed vs stability: the divide between product and engineering

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The urgency gap

Over the last few months, I’ve sat across from product leaders and engineers in different companies and they all told me the same story: a frustration from product managers and the leadship team about lack of urgency in dev teams and whether they truly care about the company’s success.

Product leaders and managers are super eager to deliver new features and to fulfill commitments to customers, but feel that the development teams are slow and don’t care if a feature gets pushed. “Why don’t the engineers feel a sense of urgency? They don’t care if a feature gets delayed for weeks!” “It feels like they don’t care about the success of the company!”.

Agentic DevDays - my takeaways

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday I attended the Agentic DevDays conference here in Stockholm. I enjoyed it a lot and there were some great talks. This is just a quick post about my favorite talks and learnings.

Usually conferences have several tracks, but here all talks were at the main stage, with only a few workshops in another room. This was actually refreshing: no decision paralysis, no running between rooms, and no realizing halfway through that you’d picked the wrong talk and wished you’d gone to the other one. The venue, Nalen, was great and everything worked very smoothly.

Feedback – why, how and when?

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been a manager for about 11 years now and a team lead for a few years before that. Two of the most important leadership responsibilities, in my opinion, are setting clear expectations and giving feedback.

When I’ve mentored new engineering managers and team leads, this is usually where they struggle most. I’ve seen countless managers struggle to give feedback and feel unsure about how to do it effectively. I’ve also repeatedly seen the consequences of missing feedback, how one person’s behavior can sink a whole team. Across all the companies I’ve worked at, only one has offered any kind of feedback training. I’ve read and learned a lot by myself and by experience. Here are some of my tips and thoughts, because feedback can be an incredibly valuable gift if done right.

Apps I use and like

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I always enjoy getting tips from friends about great apps or services they use, so this post is about what apps I really like and use.

My favorite productivity apps:

Obsidian (MacOS, iOS) (free)
I take a lot of notes and I save a lot of information, snippets from books, pod transcripts etc. I need a place to dump all my notes and thoughts to easily find them again. I’ve used other personal wikis before and Obsidian is my current favorite. You can tag, cross-reference between notes etc. Obsidian is great for this, and it’s possible to keep a vault in iCloud to sync between devices. Highly recommended.

Building a small travel-app

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A friend of mine had an app request for daily commuting to/from work. The use case is simple, you’re getting ready to leave for work/home and want to know when the next train/bus leaves and if you should hurry or not. I implemented this today in a few hours with Cursor and thought I’d write about it.

App specification

A simple iOS app where you can see when the next train/bus for your saved routes, simple view with “In X minutes”.
Search for a route and save it, incuding choosing different travel options if available.
Swipe/click on a route and see the next-next departure.
Click on the route to get more information, such as arrival time and details if the route has several steps.
The app uses your current location to figure out in which way you’re travelling, so it shows the right direction of the route.
Using SL:s open API available here

I quickly added some feature requests of my own:

On my reading list right now

Fri, 27 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I love books. I usually read 30–55 books a year. It’s usually a mix between non-fiction and work related books: leadership, neuroscience, communication and engineering, and books just for fun, mostly fantasy and science-fiction.

Last year I read (and finished) 36+ books, mostly fantasy, since I decided to get my mind off work more during my free time. My favorite work related book last year was Supercommunicators by Charles Duhigg. I found it interesting and a good reminder of what to think about when having conversations. I often tell my colleagues that what you say and the other person hears, can be two very different things. Charles Duhigg also describes how two people might be in the same conversation but with completely different goals and view of what the conversation is about. Is it a conversation where you’re trying to solve a problem and come up with actions, or just vent and rant?

Building a learning app

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

When I was helping my son study for an exam a week ago, I thought that a flashcard app would be helpful.

I looked at Anki and other flashcard apps that already exist but thought they were quite ugly. I wanted a more appealing app with an algorithm for spaced‑repetition learning effectively. This felt like a very small and easy project to build myself with my trusty companion, Cursor.

I decided to keep track of the changes and take some progress pics this time and this is the post where I describe what I did, step by step. This is just how I did this specific quick app and isn’t necessarily the ultimate way of doing it.

My adventures in vibe-coding (1/3)

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Over the past few months I’ve been vibe‑coding several apps with Cursor. It has been the most fun I’ve had in years, I have learned a lot, and I’m really happy with my apps. I thought I’d write about it, to gather my own thoughts and in case my learnings help someone else.

I’m planning three blog posts on this topic: one about developing with Cursor and tips and tricks (this one) and then one per app. Three quick notes before we get started: