Carl M. Lane
I build high-performing engineering teams that ship fast and are always learning. Currently I'm scaling Marqii to infinity and beyond. My path from support rep to VP taught me that the best engineering leaders never lose touch with the people they build for. I build teams that prioritize learning velocity over perfection because the team that figures things out fastest is the team that wins.
// at a glance
Born in the Bay Area, went to high school in San Diego
Lived in Madrid, Spain after high school
Before obsessing over software, dreamed about spaceflight and aviation
Studied aerospace engineering at St. Louis University Parks College
Using computers since 1990, writing code since 1998
Spent nearly a decade at Wix.com
VP of Engineering and Product Development at Marqii
// philosophy
Build customer obsessed teams that own outcomes, not tickets. Hire for curiosity, invest in growth, and create the conditions where people are inspired to do their best work.
—Small, high-IQ teams beat large, bureaucratic ones every time.
—Engineering is a business lever, not a cost center.
—Speed is the only sustainable competitive advantage.
—Sincere enthusiasm is contagious.
// inspirations
—Marie Curie — Pioneered radioactivity research, first woman to win a Nobel Prize, first person to win a Nobel Prize twice, and the only person to win in two different fields.
—Manuel Azaña — Writer and liberal reformer who modernized Spain — expanding secular education and curbing military and Church power.
—Chester Nimitz — Engineered modern naval underway replenishment, keeping fleets supplied without returning to port. Led the Pacific Fleet through WWII with calm, strategic brilliance under enormous pressure.
—Federica Montseny — Intellectual who became Spain's first female cabinet minister. Drafted abortion laws, expanded public health, and fought for women's liberation — all while a civil war raged.
—Grace Hopper — Invented the first compiler and championed the idea that code should read like English.
—Alan Shepard — First American in space — grounded by illness, fought his way back, and walked on the Moon.
—Chuck Yeager — Broke the sound barrier with broken ribs. Pure fearlessness backed by skill.
—Gene Kranz — Mission control legend who defined what it means to be accountable. "Failure is not an option."
—Margaret Hamilton — Wrote the Apollo guidance software and coined "software engineering" as a discipline.
—Slavoj Žižek — Makes philosophy accessible and provocative — challenges you to question what you take for granted.
—Steve Wozniak — Built the Apple I and II essentially alone. Engineering for the pure joy of it.
—Linus Torvalds — Created Linux and Git — two tools that fundamentally shaped how software is built.
// writing
Why S3Queue Alone Won't Deduplicate Your ClickHouse Data
S3Queue reads each S3 file exactly once. That is not the same as a deduplicated table. The four-object pattern that makes incremental ClickHouse ingestion safe.
Can a JavaScript Monorepo Be Fast and Supply-Chain-Resistant?
Sonatype counted 454,600+ new malicious npm packages in 2025. pnpm and Nx are the defense that survives contact with engineers — because it's also faster.
Why Assertiveness Should Be the Default for Engineering, Product, and Design Leaders
Assertiveness is the right default for cross-functional leadership — but the same trait that makes you decisive makes you prone to climbing the Ladder of Inference too fast. Here is how to stay assertive without becoming overbearing.
View all posts →// elsewhere
Based in San Francisco with my wife and our little one. Away from the keyboard, I'm usually in the kitchen chasing a new recipe, skinning uphill or riding a chairlift somewhere in the Sierra, or experiencing live music with friends.