Field notes
Expert opinions. Independent views.
Real experiences from operators building with AI in the SDLC, including what worked, what failed, and what changed. We freely give our content. Our only requirement is that you attribute it to here.
Articles
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Customer Zero: Two Engineers. One Year. More Output Than Ten.
Executive Deck ↗Listen ↗Nathan joined a scale-up as CTO with a mandate to hire ten engineers. He hired zero. Twelve months later, he and one existing associate engineer had…
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The People Conversation
Executive Deck ↗Listen ↗Every executive conversation I have starts the same way. Tooling budgets. Adoption dashboards. Training roadmaps. All of it oriented around the technology. None of it oriented…
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The Quiet Gift of 2025: Three Models That Changed Everything
Executive Deck ↗Listen ↗Three frontier AI models from Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI arrived in December 2025. The gap between engineers using AI to reason through problems and those using…
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The Use Case Is Building Software and the Best Practice Is Today
Executive Deck ↗Listen ↗Stop asking about AI use cases. The use case is your entire SDLC. Learn why executives must build with AI tools themselves to lead the transformation.
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If Your Engineers Only Get Thirty Minutes to Learn, That Is Not Their Failure. It Is Yours.
Executive Deck ↗You called to talk about AI adoption. But you do not know your value streams, your engineers get thirty minutes a week to learn, and you…
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Congratulations: You Just Reinvented Peter Gibbons from Office Space
Executive Deck ↗Listen ↗A 2025 parody exploring how enterprise AI adoption recreated Office Space. Your measurement systems train top performers to do just enough. That is not their failure.…
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The 2028 Problem You’re Creating in 2025
Executive Deck ↗Listen ↗Your 2025 AI decisions shape your 2028 reality. Learn why waiting for clarity is the riskiest strategy and how to build for capabilities that don't exist…
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Stop Asking for “Advanced” AI Training
Executive Deck ↗Listen ↗Advanced AI training is a status marker, not a learning objective. Discover what you actually need to know based on your role and current skill level.
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If Your Vendor Doesn’t Ask These Three Questions Before the Demo, Politely Ask for a Field CTO Who Will
Executive Deck ↗Listen ↗Before your next AI vendor demo, make sure they ask these 3 critical questions. If they don't, you're getting a performance, not a partnership.
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If You Want to Measure Macro Results, Answer These 3 Questions Before AI Touches Your SDLC
Executive Deck ↗Measure AI impact at the macro level by answering three critical questions before implementation: what you're solving, how you'll measure it, and who owns results.
Essential or Ornamental
Three companies. Three choices. One satisfactory ending.
One does nothing. One maps the waste. One bets everything on twelve people in a warehouse.
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