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Working notes

Principles for AI, platforms, and scaling engineering teams.

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Your GenAI Strategy is Theater

Your board wants to know what you're doing about AI. Your CEO forwarded another breathless LinkedIn post about autonomous agents. A VP just IMed you asking if we should build with Claude or go all-in on GPT-5. Here's what you should tell them: We don't have a GenAI strategy, and that's intentional. Not because AI doesn't matter. It does. But because the question itself reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of where we are in this cycle, what these tools actually do, and how technology adoption works in organizations that ship real products to real customers.

AI Strategy Leadership Culture Tech Debt 12 min read

Is Gen AI Approaching Bubble Territory?

There's a fine line between revolution and bubble, and Gen AI is doing both at once. It's the internet, cloud, and crypto rolled into one. Except it's faster, bigger, and way more expensive. Everyone's betting big. But when you peel back the hype, a harder question emerges: is this transformation, or just the most expensive game of follow-the-leader in tech history? Let's separate signal from BS.

AI Software Engineering Leadership Future of Work Tech Bubbles 10 min read

What Everyone Gets Wrong About AI and Junior Devs

AI won’t close the door on junior developers — it’s widening the hallway for all of us. Beginners will onboard faster. Seniors will mentor with sharper tools. Managers will scale teams with less friction. Executives will rethink how value gets created. Far from ending careers, AI is redrawing the developer journey into something bigger, faster, and more connected. From first jobs to executive seats, AI is shifting the developer journey, not ending it.
AI Engineering Leadership Future of Work 8 min

First Principles of Building Software

Most engineering leaders fail because they mistake motion for progress. Big Tech glorifies complexity, Google-scale infra for a team of five, ML pipelines for a product with no users, microservices because “monoliths don’t scale.” This isn’t engineering. This is cosplay. The first principle: define the real problem (outcome > output). Shipping 10,000 lines of Kubernetes YAML that no customer notices is not progress. A two-line script that saves a customer $10M is.

Principles Software Engineering 9 min