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# Lessons from Kellan Elliott-McCrea
- URL: https://www.antoinebuteau.com/lessons-from-kellan-elliott-mccrea/
- Published: 2026-05-30T18:20:29.000Z
- Updated: 2026-07-18T21:57:06.000Z
- Description: Kellan Elliott-McCrea, formerly an engineering leader at Etsy, Dropbox, and Flickr, helped normalize continuous deployment and blameless post-mortems. His writing examines managing up, technical debt, and the trust required to build healthy engineering cultures.
- Author: Antoine Buteau
- Tags: Profile, Tech Entrepreneurs & Founders Profiles

![Visual summary of operating lessons from Kellan Elliott-McCrea.](https://www.antoinebuteau.com/content/images/2026/05/lessons-from-kellan-elliott-mccrea-profile-infographic.webp)

## Lessons from Kellan Elliott-McCrea

Kellan Elliott-McCrea served as CTO of Etsy, VP of Engineering at Dropbox, and Architect at Flickr. He helped normalize continuous deployment and blameless post-mortems across the industry. This profile gathers his most practical writing on managing up, handling technical debt, and building engineering cultures based on trust.

### Part 1: On Engineering Culture and Organization

1. **On Culture as Celebration:** "Culture is what you celebrate. Rituals are the tools you use to shape culture." — [*Source: \[kellanem.com*](https://kellanem.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
2. **On Modern Software Development:** "Modern software development is an operational challenge of creating an environment for shared vision, decent technical decisions, and constant measurable progress." — [*Source: \[kellanem.com*](https://kellanem.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
3. **On Code as Craft:** "We who cut mere stones must always be envisioning cathedrals." — [*Source: \[Etsy Code as Craft*](https://www.etsy.com/code-as-craft?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
4. **On Misaligned Teams:** "The team isn't working hard enough is never the problem. It is usually a symptom of a lack of clear goals, cascading down to a lack of ownership." — [*Source: \[kellanem.com*](https://kellanem.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
5. **On Slow Delivery:** "Slow teams are misaligned teams." — [*Source: \[laughingmeme.org*](https://laughingmeme.org/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
6. **On Push and Pull:** "Processes often fail when they are all 'Push' (mandate) and no 'Pull' (demand for the output)." — [*Source: \[kellanem.com*](https://kellanem.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
7. **On the First Law of CMS:** "You should never build a CMS." — [*Source: \[laughingmeme.org*](https://laughingmeme.org/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
8. **On the Second Law of CMS:** "You will eventually build a CMS." — [*Source: \[laughingmeme.org*](https://laughingmeme.org/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
9. **On Generative Culture:** "A generative culture emphasizes high trust, information sharing, and learning from failure over punishing individuals." — [*Source: \[Etsy Engineering Blog*](https://www.etsy.com/code-as-craft?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
10. **On Questioning Practices:** "Nothing we 'know' about software development should be assumed to be true; most practices are remnants of an era of solo practitioners, whereas modern software is a team sport." — [*Source: \[kellanem.com*](https://kellanem.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*

### Part 2: On Management and Leadership

1. **On the Management Trap:** "We promote the most competent engineer and wonder why they aren't great at management." — [*Source: \[InfoQ*](https://www.infoq.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
2. **On Getting Comfortable Not Knowing:** "For many leaders the hardest job they have is getting comfortable with not knowing." — [*Source: \[kellanem.com*](https://kellanem.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
3. **On the Omniscience Expectation:** "It is natural to feel like you have to understand everything about the area that you lead. And that's a feeling that often cascades down through hierarchies." — [*Source: \[kellanem.com*](https://kellanem.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
4. **On Seagull Management:** "Leaders often disempower their teams by swooping in to make decisions without full context, instead of maintaining team autonomy." — [*Source: \[kellanem.com*](https://kellanem.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
5. **On Leading with Curiosity:** "When leading, advocate for leading with curiosity rather than authority." — [*Source: \[First Round Review*](https://review.firstround.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
6. **On Caring and Detachment:** "Leaders must balance deeply caring about the work with maintaining enough detachment to remain objective and avoid burnout." — [*Source: \[First Round Review*](https://review.firstround.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
7. **On Annual Planning:** "Annual planning in tech often fails. Bottom-up processes don't work, and the rule of thumb is simply to do fewer things." — [*Source: \[kellanem.com*](https://kellanem.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
8. **On the New Manager Path:** "Transitioning from engineer to manager requires an entirely new skill set, notably prioritizing communication and alignment over code." — [*Source: \[kellanem.com*](https://kellanem.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
9. **On Building the Team:** "In 100% of the engineering teams I talk to they aren't spending enough time on building a team." — [*Source: \[kellanem.com*](https://kellanem.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
10. **On Information Cascades:** "When leaders act as if they must know everything, it creates an environment where failure to know is penalized, halting learning." — [*Source: \[kellanem.com*](https://kellanem.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*

### Part 3: On System Architecture and Scaling

1. **On Sharded Architectures:** "At Flickr, we used a sharded MySQL architecture to handle billions of queries, with each shard holding data for around 400,000 users." — [*Source: \[High Scalability*](http://highscalability.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
2. **On Master-Master Replication:** "Active-Active Master-Master Ring Replication allowed us to take servers down for upgrades without site downtime." — [*Source: \[High Scalability*](http://highscalability.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
3. **On the Trouble with Polling:** "Polling sucks. Polling for data updates is inefficient and should be replaced with Push/PubSub models." — [*Source: \[O'Reilly*](https://www.oreilly.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
4. **On Data Federation:** "Application logic should manage the complexity of connecting to the correct shards rather than relying on expensive cross-shard joins." — [*Source: \[High Scalability*](http://highscalability.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
5. **On Global ID Generation:** "Ticket servers using dedicated MySQL instances are an effective way to generate unique, non-colliding IDs across a distributed sharded environment." — [*Source: \[High Scalability*](http://highscalability.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
6. **On Data Ownership:** "Users should be able to programmatically retrieve every piece of data they upload, which was the driving philosophy behind early APIs and the OAuth standard." — [*Source: \[laughingmeme.org*](https://laughingmeme.org/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
7. **On the Illusion of Correctness:** "Software development is a cycle of learning, not a search for absolute 'correctness.'" — [*Source: \[kellanem.com*](https://kellanem.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
8. **On Aspirational Complexity:** "Teams often adopt complex architectures, like microservices, long before they actually need them." — [*Source: \[laughingmeme.org*](https://laughingmeme.org/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
9. **On the Easy Part of Software:** "Code has always been the easy part of building software." — [*Source: \[Simon Willison's Weblog*](https://simonwillison.net/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
10. **On Shipping and Learning:** "If you aren't shipping, you aren't learning." — [*Source: \[Etsy Engineering Blog*](https://www.etsy.com/code-as-craft?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*

### Part 4: On Continuous Deployment and Operations

1. **On Blameless Post-Mortems:** "Instead of punishing individuals for mistakes, shift the focus to understanding the systemic failures that allowed the mistake to happen." — [*Source: \[Etsy Engineering Blog*](https://www.etsy.com/code-as-craft?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
2. **On Just Culture:** "A Just Culture encourages engineers to be honest about failures to facilitate true organizational learning." — [*Source: \[Etsy Engineering Blog*](https://www.etsy.com/code-as-craft?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
3. **On Detection over Prevention:** "It is impossible to prevent all failures in complex systems; optimize instead for rapid detection and response." — [*Source: \[Etsy Engineering Blog*](https://www.etsy.com/code-as-craft?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
4. **On Continuous Deployment:** "Deploying code to production multiple times a day is a sign of a healthy, learning-oriented engineering culture." — [*Source: \[O'Reilly Velocity*](https://www.oreilly.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
5. **On Config Flags:** "Use config flags to decouple code deployment from feature launches, enabling dark launching and safe production testing." — [*Source: \[Etsy Engineering Blog*](https://www.etsy.com/code-as-craft?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
6. **On Global Optimization:** "A culture of learning is built by optimizing for the team—sharing tools and beliefs—rather than isolating individual pockets of brilliance." — [*Source: \[kellanem.com*](https://kellanem.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
7. **On the Reality of Technical Debt:** "What we call technical debt is often just necessary maintenance work to keep a codebase healthy." — [*Source: \[kellanem.com*](https://kellanem.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
8. **On Dependencies Resisting Change:** "Being stuck on old versions of libraries or frameworks is a distinct category of technical debt that actively resists upgrading." — [*Source: \[kellanem.com*](https://kellanem.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
9. **On All Code as Liability:** "To borrow from Peter Norvig: all code is a liability. Intentional shortcuts for speed are rarer than code that simply resists change over time." — [*Source: \[kellanem.com*](https://kellanem.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*

### Part 5: On Managing Up and Communication

1. **On the Myth of the Apolitical Engineer:** "Engineers cannot be hyper-rational and avoid politics; collaboration, coordination, and communication are the work." — [*Source: \[InfoQ*](https://www.infoq.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
2. **On the Nature of Managing Up:** "Managing up is fundamentally about making your manager’s job easier so they can better support you." — [*Source: \[InfoQ*](https://www.infoq.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
3. **On Manager Skill Gaps:** "Because the demand for engineering managers outpaces supply, individual contributors often need to manage up to help their managers succeed." — [*Source: \[InfoQ*](https://www.infoq.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
4. **On Studying Your Manager:** "Get curious about your manager’s goals, how they are evaluated, and what they value—whether it is product, business, or operational excellence." — [*Source: \[InfoQ*](https://www.infoq.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
5. **On Upward Alignment:** "Ensure your priorities match your manager's and equip them to speak fluently about your work to their own bosses." — [*Source: \[InfoQ*](https://www.infoq.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
6. **On Moving Past Status Updates:** "Building a relationship with leadership means moving beyond raw status updates to a true partnership based on trust." — [*Source: \[InfoQ*](https://www.infoq.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
7. **On Communication as a Core Skill:** "Communication is hard and people don't prioritize it, but no one says, 'I got a communications degree so I could become a startup founder.'" — [*Source: \[kellanem.com*](https://kellanem.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
8. **On Isolation vs. Collaboration:** "Technical solutions proposed around the idea of 'I don't want to talk to my coworkers'—like microservices sometimes are—miss the point that you should want to talk to your coworkers." — [*Source: \[Simon Willison's Weblog*](https://simonwillison.net/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
9. **On Legibility of Work:** "Your work is only as valuable as your ability to make it legible and understandable to the rest of the organization." — [*Source: \[InfoQ*](https://www.infoq.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*

### Part 6: On the Reality of Modern Software Development

1. **On the End of Cheap Money:** "The decade of low interest rates allowed companies to over-hire and ignore inefficiencies, making the shift in the macroeconomic environment a painful re-evaluation." — [*Source: \[laughingmeme.org*](https://laughingmeme.org/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
2. **On Rising Standards:** "Software is harder to build today because of significantly higher baseline expectations for security, accessibility, and performance." — [*Source: \[laughingmeme.org*](https://laughingmeme.org/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
3. **On the Explosion of Choices:** "The overwhelming number of tools and frameworks available today contributes directly to the complexity and frustration of modern engineering." — [*Source: \[laughingmeme.org*](https://laughingmeme.org/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
4. **On the Loss of Magic:** "The 'magic feeling' of startups, where a small team could quickly disrupt an industry, has become much harder to achieve as systems have grown complex." — [*Source: \[laughingmeme.org*](https://laughingmeme.org/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
5. **On Rising Talent Costs:** "As tech talent has become significantly more expensive, the pressure to deliver flawless enterprise-grade software has proportionately increased." — [*Source: \[laughingmeme.org*](https://laughingmeme.org/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
6. **On Changing Labor Relations:** "There is growing friction between management and engineering teams as the expectations of the work environment fundamentally change." — [*Source: \[laughingmeme.org*](https://laughingmeme.org/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
7. **On Soul-Sucking Code:** "There is a category of code choices that simply 'sucks the will to live,' making the developer experience miserable even if the code functions perfectly." — [*Source: \[kellanem.com*](https://kellanem.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
8. **On Operability Choices:** "Decisions that make a system difficult to run, monitor, or scale in production are often incorrectly labeled as mere technical debt." — [*Source: \[kellanem.com*](https://kellanem.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
9. **On Unnecessary Modularization:** "While poor modularization resists change, too much modularization can also create rigid systems that resist adaptation." — [*Source: \[kellanem.com*](https://kellanem.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*

### Part 7: On Diversity and Team Building

1. **On Inclusive Environments:** "Better software is written by diverse, kind teams who care about each other." — [*Source: \[First Round Review*](https://review.firstround.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
2. **On the Brilliant Jerk Archetype:** "The industry must challenge the 'brilliant jerk' archetype; building an inclusive culture is a direct path to higher quality engineering." — [*Source: \[First Round Review*](https://review.firstround.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
3. **On Interviewing:** "Interviewing is \~10% of the success of hiring. It's also extremely low information." — [*Source: \[kellanem.com*](https://kellanem.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
4. **On the Candidate Experience:** "Because interviews are low-information, you should optimize your interviews for a great candidate experience rather than an exhaustive technical audit." — [*Source: \[kellanem.com*](https://kellanem.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
5. **On Culture Driving Technology:** "Great technology is the byproduct of a great culture. Culture creates certainty in the face of the yawning shapeless void of possible solutions." — [*Source: \[kellanem.com*](https://kellanem.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
6. **On the Value of Empathy:** "Empathy in engineering is not a soft skill; it is a structural necessity for building resilient, highly available systems." — [*Source: \[First Round Review*](https://review.firstround.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
7. **On Building Learning Organizations:** "When you transform organizational culture, you must prioritize creating an environment where engineers can take risks safely." — [*Source: \[Code for America*](https://codeforamerica.org/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
8. **On Diversity as a Strategy:** "Improving gender diversity in an engineering org requires specific, non-obvious tactics, not just generic goodwill." — [*Source: \[First Round Review*](https://review.firstround.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
9. **On the Team as the Unit of Delivery:** "The individual engineer is no longer the atomic unit of software creation; the team is the fundamental unit of delivery." — [*Source: \[kellanem.com*](https://kellanem.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*

### Part 8: On Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Coding

1. **On the Falling Cost of Code:** "As AI tools lower the cost of writing code, it creates entirely new bottlenecks in review processes and architecture." — [*Source: \[laughingmeme.org*](https://laughingmeme.org/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
2. **On the Skepticism of Code Review:** "Most senior engineers and engineering leaders have always been quietly skeptical of the value of code review; it's expensive, and the data on defect detection doesn't justify the cost." — [*Source: \[laughingmeme.org*](https://laughingmeme.org/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
3. **On AI-Assisted Code Review:** "With AI generating more code, traditional human code review may be losing its remaining value and becoming unsustainable." — [*Source: \[laughingmeme.org*](https://laughingmeme.org/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
4. **On Agentic Coding:** "Using agentic coding tools makes it entirely feasible to build and deploy real software from a mobile device while on vacation." — [*Source: \[laughingmeme.org*](https://laughingmeme.org/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
5. **On Bushy Codebases:** "LLMs contribute to 'bushy' codebases—sprawling architectures where maintaining a clear mental model of the code becomes the primary leadership challenge." — [*Source: \[laughingmeme.org*](https://laughingmeme.org/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
6. **On Adapting Leadership for AI:** "Engineering leadership must change its practices in the face of LLMs, shifting focus from code production to system comprehension." — [*Source: \[laughingmeme.org*](https://laughingmeme.org/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
7. **On the Illusion of AI Understanding:** "Just because an AI can generate functional code does not mean the organization understands the systemic implications of that code." — [*Source: \[laughingmeme.org*](https://laughingmeme.org/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
8. **On the Velocity Shift:** "The speed at which AI can produce boilerplate shifts the engineering burden heavily toward validation, testing, and operational readiness." — [*Source: \[laughingmeme.org*](https://laughingmeme.org/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
9. **On the Future of Engineering Work:** "The role of the software engineer is moving away from syntax generation and toward complex system orchestration and alignment." — [*Source: \[laughingmeme.org*](https://laughingmeme.org/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*