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2023-10-19

Didn’t quite make it to writing a journal entry last night. Truth is I was doing a different sort of writing until around 9 o’clock in the evening. And at that point, I had to put it down because my eyes were going square.

But I’m a little nervous about this request for proposal. It’s worth an absolute boat load of money and could unlock another five years of engagement with this client. It would be very cool. And my ego would love to have another big win placed on my shoulders.

The fear comes from what feels like a lack of coordination. I feel like I’ve been putting a lot of effort in without knowing what the user interface or science team are doing. We might all be putting in a lot of work but shooting at different targets.

At best, I feel like someone is going to be burning the midnight oil trying to bring it all together into one coherent narrative.

C’est la vie! Maybe that’s not my problem.

In other news, I might have done something extraordinarily silly today. I actually dialled into the AGM for the university’s daycare and after listening to the financial statements I found myself elected onto the board of directors.

I was asked to introduce myself to the crowd and dutifully did so as the engineering manager of an AI consulting firm currently working with companies x, y and z - making them slightly better at separating you from your hard earned money. And that maybe my interest in the daycare was to try and put some good back into the community before the little ones succumb to the evil corporations like I did.

Evidently, I said something they liked because I was immediately nominated to be vice president. However, I declined stating that one of the board members with some experience should probably take that whilst I’m still learning the ropes.

Instead, I’m now the Secretary to the board. Which apparently gets me signing power on cheques and contracts. Blimey!

Not only that, I’m now chairing the communications committee. Maybe that just means emailing out a newsletter. Maybe that’s more. Who knows? But you know what corporate comms is a bit of a slide spot, and I’m in this to get out of my comfort zone and learn some new things. So why not?

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2023-10-17

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2023-10-22

Further reading for leaders

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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 …

Blog
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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.