The Secret of Joyful Discovery
The fear of the unknown is not a universal rule. It’s conditional. Starting a new job can be scary, opening a present is not. The difference between the two is choice. One is an unknown you may be forced to…
Launch Control: The Point of No Return
We just did a major launch and you know what? No one noticed. Yet! And that’s just how we wanted it to be. It’s like a secret marriage between our production backend and the upcoming big release. No announcements. No…
AI: Reality Check
If you read some of the AI articles circulating these days, you’d think we’re living in a technological utopia. Apparently, people are designing entire operating systems between rolling out of bed and their feet hitting the floor. Websites are being…
The Zoo of Corporate Failure: The Nanomanaging Newt
There is the Micromanager, and then there is his more terrifying, atomic-level evolution: the Nanomanaging Newt. His aim is to control every breath you take and every move you make. You’ll spot him scurrying between desks, not just checking your…
The Zoo of Corporate Failure: The Customer Journey Jaguar
Next stop in our tour through the graveyard of corporate culture: The Customer Journey Jaguar, and he is hunting you. You will spot his glowing eyes in the darkness of analytics dashboards, tracking every pixel of your movement with the…
The Zoo of Corporate Failure: The Meeting Meerkat
Next stop in our tour through the graveyard of corporate culture: The Meeting Meerkat. You’ll find him constantly popping his head up, scanning the horizon for the next scheduling opportunity. His natural instinct isn’t fight or flight, it’s “meet and…
What is The Zoo of Corporate Failure?
It’s fictional. Mostly. These characters are drawn from real experiences across multiple organisations where business objectives weren’t clearly communicated or anchored throughout the company. When strategic direction becomes murky, people create their own realities. Without proper guidance and mentorship, emerging…
The Zoo of Corporate Failure: The Buzzword Baboon
Welcome to the Zoo of Corporate Failure, and our tour through the graveyard of corporate culture. Our first stop: the Buzzword Baboon. You will spot him instantly. He is the one turning a simple “How’s the project going?” into a…
Why AI will never replace LinkedIn posters
Friends, colleagues, fellow organic intelligence units, Lately, my LinkedIn feed has been awash with breathless pronouncements about the imminent AI takeover of… well, everything. But the one that really grinds my gears, the digital fingernail on the metaphorical chalkboard of…
Don't Serve Software Bolognese
You are the expert. Don’t hand over product development to those you’re supposed to be serving. Think of a top restaurant. Diners don’t write the menu—and they certainly don’t wander into the kitchen to instruct the chef. Why? Because left…
AI: The Age of the Junior Developer
Everyone and their uncle’s niece seem to be claiming AI will replace junior talent. With my 25 years of experience building and mentoring engineering teams, my take is the exact opposite: That with AI help, we are actually entering the…
Taking Your Software Project through Airport Security
Have you ever noticed how airport security catches things you completely forgot you had? That random bottle of water, the forgotten pocket knife, the mystery liquid from three trips ago? Software deployments need the same rigorous checkpoint system. 🧥 Empty…
Programming AI: The Bedtime Story Trick That Will Change How You Work With LLMs Forever
Most people treat AI prompts like magic spells — type something in, cross your fingers, and hope for brilliance. The result? Inconsistent outputs, endless tweaking, and disappointment. The real secret isn’t in what you ask. It’s in the frame you…
"Peak AI" and the “Good Morning” Problem
People talk a lot about “Peak AI” — but consider this challenge: can AI give you a genuine “Good morning” greeting? Not just parroting “Good morning”, but doing so knowing what that entails for you, reflecting on why and letting…
The culture of collective responsibility: Avoiding the SEP field and building highly performant teams
In Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, he introduces the concept of the SEP — “Somebody Else’s Problem” — field when describing how an alien spaceship lands at Lord’s Cricket Ground, yet no one reacts because they’re convinced it’s…
Super AI Developer Mode
I’ve had a revelation, and it’s this: the single biggest bottleneck in software development is the developer. The meetings, the “creative” ideas, the typos, the opinions. It’s all friction. So, we eliminated it. I’m thrilled to unveil our latest internal…
Developing countries: Building truly global tech teams
Let’s be direct. The tech industry has a bias: we claim to be global, but would you honestly hire a developer with experience only from local businesses in a developing country? The immediate answer for most is “no.” Why? Because…
Real business insight at the speed of curiosity
The fastest way to get smarter about your business is to remove the wait between questions and answers. It starts simply: give an AI contextual access to your live data. No more waiting in the reporting queue. No more setting…
The Future of Custom Software: Beyond Compromise
We’re at a unique moment in the evolution of business software. For years, companies have faced a tough choice: either use an off-the-shelf system that doesn’t quite fit their needs or build a custom solution from scratch, which is expensive…
Culture: The key to tech success
When I’m asked about the single most critical factor for a high-performing tech organization, my answer is always the same: culture. It’s the invisible architecture that holds everything together. A strong culture isn’t about happy hours and beanbags. It’s about…
Repeal the JSON tax
GPT-5 is here. Its potential is extraordinary—and its impact will be felt across industries. But real progress isn’t just about smarter models. It’s about smarter foundations. Structured output—JSON schemas, function calls, predictable patterns—isn’t just for developers. It’s the invisible framework…
AI: The new programming language
Having architected systems from assembly in the ’80s to today’s cloud-native platforms, I see AI-assisted development not as a mystical leap, but as a logical evolution — the next step in our journey toward higher abstraction. Just as object-oriented programming…
AI: Building reliability
In the travel industry, reliable information is everything—whether you’re surfacing destination insights, evaluating venue details, or curating activity recommendations. But with data coming from everywhere—static databases, user-generated content, vendor feeds, and now multiple AI models—the challenge isn’t just finding facts.…
AI and premature regulation
There’s a lot of talk right now about regulating AI. Much of it is driven by fear, uncertainty, and misunderstanding — not just about what AI is, but about where it’s heading. But let’s be clear: this is still a…