About MacroStack
The most expensive decisions in technology aren’t technical.
What to build versus buy. When to hire, and who. Which bet is worth making, and which one quietly sinks you six months later. These are the calls that decide whether a product ships, a team scales, or a budget evaporates — and they rarely come down to code.
MacroStack is for the people who make those calls and have to live with them: tech leads and engineering managers responsible for a team and its direction, senior engineers stepping into that role, and founders making technology decisions without an engineering background. Different chairs, same hard problem — judgment under uncertainty.
Once a week, I write one essay on how the best technical minds actually think. Not tutorials, not “10 tools” lists — the frameworks, trade-offs, and mental models behind real decisions, drawn from the times I got them right and the times I didn’t.
What I believe
Software is built by systems — and every system is built by humans. Most people hit a ceiling not because of their technical skills, but because they stop seeing the bigger picture: the connections between code, systems, people, and strategy. MacroStack is about widening that view — moving from the micro-task in front of you to the system around it.
What you’ll find here
MacroStack is organized around seven layers — the dimensions of thinking that separate someone who executes from someone who leads:
System Mindset — see the bigger picture, from code to company.
Strategic Engineering — build things that last, not just things that ship.
The Leverage Path — grow beyond your own output.
The AI Layer — use AI to extend your craft, not replace your judgment.
The Human Stack — because every system has humans inside.
The Product Layer — bridge technology and value.
The Advisory Edge — what every leader should know before making a technology bet: build vs. buy, evaluating vendors, when to hire, where AI earns its keep.
Who’s writing this
I’m Irwan Setiawan — an engineer turned founder and advisor with 17+ years building products, from ad-tech platforms at scale to zero-to-one startups (one acquired). I’ve been a software architect, a CTO, and a product owner, with an Executive MBA layered on top of the engineering — which is really just a long way of saying I’ve made most of these decisions myself, and paid for the bad ones.
Today I co-found and build companies, and I run FusionOne — a technology advisory that helps growing businesses make smart technology decisions: strategy, product, AI, and team building, without the expensive mistakes. If MacroStack is where I think out loud, FusionOne is where I help businesses put it into practice. If something here resonates and you’re wrestling with a real decision, that’s the door.
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New essays land weekly. Subscribe, and if a piece is useful, forward it to the person who needs it — the co-founder, the boss, the teammate about to make the call.
