Teamwork on Og Maciel's Journal

Not a Pitch

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Not a Pitch

The Best Teams Form Around Truth, Not Persuasion

Not a Pitch

It was February 2019 when I was offered the opportunity to become Director of Quality Engineering for the organization where I worked—a role I had spent nearly eight years working toward. It should have felt triumphant. Instead, it felt complicated.

At the time, Quality Engineering was a pillar of its own, separate from Software Engineering, which had its own pillars, directors, senior directors, and vice presidents. The Quality Engineering organization stood alone, and I was one of four or five directors. Above us was a Senior Director—soon to become a Vice President—overseeing a team of roughly 1,300–1,400 software quality engineers.

Crawl, Walk, Run—Rest

Wed, 29 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday was a day of quiet time and reflection for me—a forced slowdown after my body decided it had had enough of my constant multitasking and ignored warnings. This entire year has been a relentless stretch of challenges and tight deadlines. Every time someone said it would be impossible to complete a project by a certain date, my response was always the same: hold my beer. Yes, the chaos was self-inflicted. I own that. But what can I say—I have an almost reckless amount of belief in what can be achieved when a group of capable, autonomous engineers who trust each other come together around a shared purpose.

Oops… Did I Really Say That?

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Have you ever had one of those days when you say one thing, hear yourself say that one thing, but later realize that you had been saying something completely different all along?

A Gloomy Day, A Bigger Mistake

Today, another gloomy and rainy day, and after my morning routine of exercising and showering, I was full of energy and ready to go carpe some diem, right? Well, let’s just say that things took a weird turn when I realized a deadline I had been communicating all along (this is the thing I heard myself verbally telling everyone) was off by eight days (the thing everyone else heard me say). Eight days off.