FEATURE COMPLEXITY
There are three things that happen when you put a complex, risky feature at the front of your development pipeline. You kill your team. You block everything behind it. Or you spike an external team to build it and hand the code back to people who’ve never seen it. None of these are good. The fix is obvious in retrospect.
HOW TO UN-FIXATE AN ALGORITHM
I accidentally bought sugar-free Heinz beans on Amazon. Then I bought them again. Then, in a moment of discount-induced madness, I ordered a case. I still have fifteen tins to get through and Amazon is still recommending reduced-sugar condiments. This is a story about feedback loops with no exit.
4DX VS OKRS
By 2021 I had read both books, set up both systems, and was running a business using a mixture of the two. One of them changed what I did on a Monday morning. The other produced some excellent documents I never looked at again — and got worse the longer we used it.
THE OBR'S WEBSITE PROBLEM WAS ALWAYS GOING TO HAPPEN
I was in the room — or close enough — when the OBR was asked to move to GOV.UK and declined. Thirteen years later, that decision cost someone their job.
MISTER START PANTS
A new starting point for the internet
AI AGENTS
Just a roundup of AI Agents that might be worth a look
EX-TWITTER: A HALF-DAY-ONLY PROJECT
X-Twitter is now a cesspool. Here’s my exit from that cesspool.
LINKEDIN: IS IT IMPERSONATING YOU?
Not yet, but not not-ever
FRACTIONAL? PART-TIME? UNEMPLOYED?
I was asked on a call last month… “Are you really fractional? Or are you just out of work?” [1]
LINKEDIN LOGIN HACK
My LinkedIn account was hacked this morning. To my small reader base: If we’re supposed to get coffee the week of the 19th, let’s arrange where, by email.