AI
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Useful AI skills for Engineering Leaders
→: Useful AI skills for Engineering LeadersThe volume is up. More PRs, more pings, more incidents, more asks coming from more directions. I used to have 8 directs that dealt with most things, and organized and routed information to me for what I had to help them with, but since embarking on a new adventure, I’ve been rebuilding a different system…
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The Joy of Scope Creep
→: The Joy of Scope CreepI’m disciplined about scope. Ship the smallest thing that moves you forward. The feature you don’t build is the feature you don’t maintain. When I was running a team, holding the why was the job. Keeping us focused on the things that actually mattered, and away from the things that didn’t. In Navigating the AI…
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High Throughput, Low Completion
→: High Throughput, Low CompletionI have never been someone who organises things. I have a great memory and a high tolerance for ambiguity, and I evolved to match the era of the internet where searching things by keyword was sufficient. I documented, extensively. But I did not really organize. Not myself, nor – despite my job – other people.…
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Announcing: Navigating the AI Shift
→: Announcing: Navigating the AI ShiftFor a lot of people, AI started out as a net negative. You’re reviewing documents someone couldn’t be bothered to write themselves. You’re having your time wasted by PRs generated by someone who never tried to understand the problem. The efficiency gains everyone keeps talking about haven’t really shown up in your week – but…
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Who’s the Admin, Me or Claude?
→: Who’s the Admin, Me or Claude?There’s a lot of conversation right now about “context engineering” for dev work; structuring what you feed an LLM so it can do useful things. It’s fantastic, we use this approach for DRI Your Career – to the point where we moved our course development out of Google Docs and into GitHub. But – Jean…
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What Does Claude Need to Be My Social Media Manager?
→: What Does Claude Need to Be My Social Media Manager?I have a problem that I suspect others reading this share: my content is spread across too many places, and I have no coherent picture of what’s actually working. I post on Mastodon, Bluesky and LinkedIn. I write a weekly blog post. I have two newsletters — one monthly, one “when I leave somewhere.” I…
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Ground Decisions
→: Ground DecisionsPlanes don’t fly themselves – they just cruise themselves. Takeoff, landing, and the big decisions happen with humans. Same with AI. What are the ground decisions in the software factory era?
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The Spreadsheet: Using AI to Understand How I Spend My Time
→: The Spreadsheet: Using AI to Understand How I Spend My TimeFor years, I’ve known intellectually that my best days aren’t my busiest days. That sustainable productivity requires balancing multiple priorities. That beating myself up about not accomplishing “enough” is counterproductive. But knowing something intellectually and remembering it when you need to are very different things. So a couple of months ago I started trying something…
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What Raccoon Are You Quiz (and some thoughts on vibe coding)
→: What Raccoon Are You Quiz (and some thoughts on vibe coding)Raccoons are very much part of my brand, so many friends (and my boss) sent me the latest adventures of the drunken raccoon in the liquor store. The past couple of years I’ve also been framing my talks about tech as we used to be instagram raccoons – and now we all live in Toronto.…