Writing
Field notes for the parts nobody teaches.
Essays on interviewing, mobile architecture, leadership, AI and the career systems behind senior engineering work. Most books start here, as field notes, before they become a chapter.
See the books these notes became
Featured essay · Staff Engineering
5 min read
Staff iOS Engineer Is Not Senior Plus
The staff role is not just harder tickets. It is scope, leverage, decision quality and making other engineers more effective.
Read the essayInterviews
3
Senior iOS Interviews Are About Risk
The strongest candidates do not just answer the question. They show how they think about production risk, tradeoffs and recovery.
Pass Interviews
Resume Bullets For Senior iOS Engineers
How to turn mobile engineering work into evidence of scope, judgment and impact without exaggerating.
Get Hired
A Modern Swift Concurrency Interview Map
A senior interview map for async/await, actors, cancellation, task lifetime, Sendable and the bugs hidden around awaits.
Pass Interviews
Mobile architecture
5
Mobile System Design Is Not Backend System Design
Why offline, device constraints, sync, app lifecycle and platform boundaries change the interview and the architecture.
Design Systems
Why iOS Apps Feel Slow Even When The API Is Fast
A practical look at the client-side bottlenecks that make mobile apps feel slow after the backend has already done its job.
Design Systems
Swift Concurrency Bugs That Pass Code Review
The concurrency mistakes that look reasonable in a pull request but fail under scrolling, cancellation, reentrancy or stale user intent.
Pass Interviews
How To Review A Mobile Architecture Proposal
A practical review framework for mobile architecture decisions: constraints, reversibility, ownership, migration and production proof.
Lead Teams
SwiftUI Architecture Is Mostly State Ownership
Why production SwiftUI architecture is less about folder names and more about ownership, identity, effects and boundaries.
Design Systems
Independent consulting
1
FAQ
About the writing
What is the Salari writing section?
Field notes on interviewing, mobile architecture, staff engineering, independent consulting and AI-era engineering, the working notes behind the books.
Who writes these articles?
Mike Salari, a Staff Mobile Engineer and Mobile Architect, drawing on real production work and hundreds of technical interviews.
Are the articles iOS-specific?
Many examples are iOS, but topics like system design, code review, staff scope and positioning apply across mobile and senior software roles.
How is the writing organized?
Into sections: Interviews, Mobile architecture, Staff engineering, Independent consulting and AI-era engineering.
Do the articles connect to the books?
Yes. Most books start here as field notes, then grow into chapters once an idea proves itself in real interviews, reviews and production systems.
What is mobile system design?
Designing the whole system around a mobile app: offline behavior, sync, caching, backend contracts, performance and failure modes, not just the client code.
How is staff engineering different from senior engineering?
Staff is about scope, leverage and decision quality, making other engineers more effective and owning ambiguous problems, not just handling harder tickets.
Is the writing free to read?
Yes. Every article is free.
These notes become books.
When a field note proves itself in real interviews, reviews and production systems, it grows into a chapter. Start with the books built from these notes.
