About the journal
A slow journal about work that has to hold up over time.
Fieldnotes started in 2021 as an internal document nobody outside the team was supposed to read. It was a place to record what we had learned the expensive way, so the next project would not repeat it. Enough people asked for a copy that we made it public.
How we publish
Written by people who did the work
Every piece comes from someone who shipped the thing they are describing, including the parts that went badly.
One piece a week, at most
We publish when there is something worth reading. A quiet week is better than a filler post nobody finishes.
Specific over universal
No ten-step frameworks. We describe what we tried, what it cost, and where it would not apply.
Who writes here
Daniel Okafor
Product Writer
Daniel documents how products get made, mostly by asking teams what they would do differently.
Elena Marsh
Editor in Chief
Elena has spent fifteen years between newsrooms and design studios. She writes about the habits behind durable work.
Priya Raman
Staff Engineer
Priya works on platform infrastructure and believes most performance problems are really organisational problems.
Tobias Reid
Design Lead
Tobias builds design systems for teams that ship fast. He is unreasonably interested in type scales and spacing units.
Pitches and corrections
We publish two or three outside contributors a quarter. If you have a piece about something you built, send a paragraph on what happened and what you learned. Corrections are welcome and we note them at the bottom of the piece.
One piece a week, in your inbox
No roundups, no sponsored links. Just the new essay and a short note on why we wrote it.