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He’s a vegetarian, I aint f*cking scared of him

Been a funny old week really. Bit all of the place really full of lots of things and nothing all at the same time. I mean work for example has been a bit of a joke this week; the microwave bridge has turned back up from Germany so the group is operational again which is good. We have been billed £700 for that plus courierage, but then the engineers report is a line and a half, and says that they soldered one joint back together and turned one dial. So I’m not sure what you get for your money there 4 pence worth of solder plus 32 pence for a dial = £700. You do the math and see what you get. I mean you wouldn’t pay £700 for an MOT where the mechanic tells you that he had to change 3 screws.

Not that it matters really, cause my concentrated protein that has now been harvested from my former bugs, on Tuesday was set to do the final step of purification. However, some fool had tampered with the equipment, meaning that instead of my protein being pumped onto the purification column it was pumped into essentially a slightly diluted container of chlorine. So that’s a write off. And despite the machinery now being back and operational everything I’ve done since Christmas was in vain. Ca la vie.

But I should have known really it was going to be a strange week after Jason’s birthday party at the weekend, which shall only be referred to in the usual Vietnam style. “You werent there man! You werent there!”

But seriously, it was just one of those events where there were photos, but it’ll be a night that remains in peoples’ memories. I mean at how many parties do you have 3 people throwing up in various vessels in a bathroom at once? Or have someone lock themselves in a toilet then fall asleep? Or get so drunk that they think that phoning their entire office answerphone and then getting everyone to leave a message was a good idea? Or get to share my bed with a drunken Dave, that was so drunk he’d gone for a dump in front of people, yet no one had seen him wipe, only to be woken up a few hours later with him shouting “THERES SOMEONE IN MY BED”? Yes Dave that would be me. Remember? My bed, my house?

Just seems that some people cant take their tequila like men.

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2025-03-30

French

I think that I’ve reached a new milestone. I had my first dream in French. Well actually, I distinctly remember having two dreams in French last night. Not that I remember anything about the dreams themselves, or even how coherent the …

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2025-03-23

It’s been a while since I’ve sat down and just checked in, despite all good intentions. Nearly every weekend, Saturday and Sunday, I wake up intending to make a coffee and write a little summary of the week.

Today, however, I suddenly looked up, and …

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2025-01-14: Surgery day

Today was the day when we were to find out whether our youngest would need brain surgery.

Just getting there

We left home around 930 for a 1030 appointment, a 20 minute drive away. After 45 minutes of queuing in traffic we were nearly on hospital …

LEADERSHIP, SCALE, AND THE HUMAN ELEMENT

Principles & Perspectives

How do you define successful engineering leadership?

The Philosophy

Many view technical leadership as being the “smartest architect in the room.” I see it as the opposite. My job is to build a room where I don’t have to be the smartest person because the systems, culture, and communication are so robust that the team can out-innovate me.

The Strategy

  • Alignment: Does every engineer understand how their sprint task impacts the company’s bottom line?
  • Velocity vs. Stability: We aren’t just “shipping fast”; we are building a predictable, repeatable engine that doesn’t collapse under its own weight at the next order of magnitude.
  • The Human Growth Curve: Success is when the engineering team’s capability evolves faster than the product’s complexity. If the team feels stagnant, the tech stack will soon follow.

What is your approach to scaling technical organizations?

The Philosophy

Scaling isn’t just “hiring more people” - that’s often how you slow down. Scaling is about moving from Individual Heroics to Organizational Systems.

The Strategy

  • The 3-Continent Perspective: Having managed global teams, I focus on “High-Signal Communication.” As you grow, the cost of a meeting triples. I implement “Asynchronous-First” cultures that protect deep-work time while ensuring no one is blocked by a timezone.

  • Modular Autonomy: I advocate for breaking down monolithic teams into autonomous units with clear ownership. This reduces the “communication tax” and allows us to scale the headcount without scaling the bureaucracy.

  • Automation as Infrastructure: At petabyte scale, manual intervention is a failure. I treat the developer experience (CI/CD, observability, self-service infra) as a first-class product to keep the “path to production” frictionless.

How do you balance high-growth velocity with technical stability?

The Philosophy

Technical debt isn’t a “bad thing” to be avoided; it’s a set of historical decisions that no longer serve you. Like any loan, leverage can accelerate growth when investments payoff. But if velocity and returns are slowing you need a payment plan before the interest kills you.

The Strategy

  • The ROI Filter: I don’t refactor for the sake of “clean code.” I don’t refactor a micro-service with no users. I refactor when the pain on that debt - measured in bugs, downtime, or developer frustration - starts to exceed the cost of the fix.

  • Zero-Downtime Culture: Especially at scale, stability is a feature. I implement “Guardrail Engineering” where the system is designed to fail gracefully, ensuring that a Series B growth spike becomes a success story rather than a post-mortem.

  • The 70/20/10 Rule: I typically aim to dedicate 70% of resources to new features, 20% to infrastructure/debt, and 10% to R&D. This ensures we never stop innovating, but we never stop fortifying either.