Two Field Guides You Can Print and Post
The Tradeoff Principles and the CTO’s Operating Principles from The Code Takes Care of Itself, formatted to print.
Companion to The Code Takes Care of Itself · Updated 2026-09-29
Each chapter argues its point at length, with the evidence and the exceptions. These two pages compress that argument into something you can scan in a few minutes.
- Post Twelve Tradeoff Principles Where Your Team Argues condenses “Every Real Decision Gives Something Up” to one wall-sized page.
- Scan the Operating Principles Before a Hard Conversation holds the durable core of every chapter in one place.
In this section
- Post Twelve Tradeoff Principles Where Your Team Argues
Twelve principles that settle arguments over technical decisions, condensed from the chapter on tradeoffs and formatted to print.
- Scan the Operating Principles Before a Hard Conversation
One durable principle from every chapter of The Code Takes Care of Itself, plus four ideas that run underneath all of them, for scanning before a planning cycle, a reorg, or a hard conversation.