Newsletter

In software, there's a lot of debate around "Vendor Lock-In". A simple example would be using services such as a "Queue" as opposed to using an open-source or custom built "Queue". Those in favor of the service correctly point to how it speeds up deployment, allows focus to be on higher level con...

What's the mark of successful code? Many would assume it's code that remains untouched for years. If the code hasn't touched, it must mean that it works and works well, right? Perhaps surprisingly, I consider code longevity to be a potential flag of systemic weakness rather than strength. What's...

In software, there have always been 2 camps: 1. The best software engineers are able to crank out the most features. 2. The best software engineers are able to build features right. With generative AI, 1 has never been easier. If you believe having the most features / your product is what will s...

Change is necessarily risky. No matter how bad your existing system / process might be for doing something, changing it invites a risk. That risk increases with the complexity / complicatedness of your system. When dealing with incredibly complicated systems, it becomes increasingly tempting to...

My entry into the software world was a bit odd. 1. I applied to 75 jobs after 1 semester of a Computer Science degree. I landed exactly one interview, and somehow made it in. 2. I ended up across the street from where one of my relatives worked. 3. He complained about processes at work, I pitched ...

It's a new year. And, for whatever reason, psychologically, it's the the easiest time for some introspection. For me, when figuring out my business plans for the year, I keep it extraordinarily simple: 1. Who do I help (and picture them in my mind)? 2. What problems are they facing? 3. How can I...

The biggest problem I see with AI as it stands today isn't that it will destroy jobs. Instead, the problem with it is it will destroy problem solving. If I had AI available to solve 95% of the issues I ran into during the last 5 years, would I be as good in my field as I am now? Would I know how...

Progress is frequently paralyzed by a simple thought: > What if trying this out makes me look stupid? We hide this in layers of justifications, but when it's all stripped to it's core, the fear of looking stupid remains. Ironically, when we finally do what we've wanted to do for ages, we feel st...

I've observed a common tug-of-war situation within myself. The logical part of me wants to just put my head down, work with the knowledge and situation at hand, and push progress. The less logical, more excited part of me wants to just torch everything that has been done, rebuild with a new aware...

This week seems to have had a recurring theme: > How do I inspire change? I think it's probably part of the shared human experience to see incredible potential in a person, project, or team, and then have some kind of disappointment happen. It's terribly difficult when you see it not just happen...

Here's a fun exercise - what would it take to replace your software's interface with a single chat box? Here's my thoughts working through it: ### Define all the "Commands" For this AI Chat Box to work well, it needs to have an appropriate understanding of all of the available commands / mutatio...

So much of "technological advancement" is eerily similar to Tom and Jerry. Consider how marketing has been impacted over the years: - Internet 1.0 => Spammy Website "Brochure's". - Email => Spammy ads sent directly to your email instead of just your physical mailbox. - Social Media => Spammy "pos...

Is it more important to represent your business as it stands today perfectly? Or, is it better to represent your business imperfectly with the right primitives? I'd argue for the primitives: 1. Your business is not static. Today's representation will be wrong tomorrow. 2. Focusing on correct pri...

Recently, Dario Amodei, the CEO Anthropic (company behind Claude) claimed that AGI would be coming in either 2026 or 2027. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI claims AGI is expected sometime in 2025. Regardless on whether you believe AGI is truly around the corner, or whether this is just an attempt to...

I remember the first time I saw "The Karate Kid". I thought it was incredibly stupid haha! I mean, who could actually belive learning how to wax cars and paint fences would ever actually translate into being able to hold your own in a karate championship? Obviously, I missed the bigger principle....

Here's a simple way to evaluate the value of software: 1. What is it's purpose? 2. How well does it fulfill that purpose? The problem we run into, however, is focusing on the solution space rather than the problem space. We say, the software is supposed to generate invoices when the green button...

I've had the opportunity to work on a lot of different software projects with a lot of different teams. What's become clear is that a critical, underdeveloped skill is creating not just clear boundaries but clean boundaries. What makes a boundary clean? 1. Anything the entity is responsible for,...

Love it or hate it, it's looking like AI is poised to massively disrupt industries. Why? It's raising the mediocrity bar. Raising the mediocrity bar isn't anything novel - it frequently happens anytime we make a technological advance. Consider photography. 20 years ago, if you wanted wedding p...

With the industrial revolution came a concept which radically changed the way we work: Interchangeable Parts. And, it appears that we used this principle everywhere. - Standardized parts. A Phillip's Screwdriver will work the same as any other Phillip's Screwdriver. - Standardized processes. Thi...

What's the value of automating a process? Let's explore a true story: Attorneys go to a variety of hearings. These hearings can be presented as evidence in future hearings and contain orders from judges that the attorney needs to comply with. Traditionally, after a hearing is completed, the attor...

Does using a calculator make a mathematician less of a mathematician? Does it make your opinion of them lessen? Does it make you think they aren't a "real" mathmetician? Or... do you think it helps them to focus on the creative side of math? Do you consider that maybe multiplying 658 with 762 i...

> The most important step a man can take. It's not the first one, is it? > It's the next one. Always the next step. ~ Brandon Sanderson It's so easy to get caught up in firsts. First time opening your doors as a business. First client. First successes. First failures. They capture our imaginat...

Operation complicated-ness largely comes from inboxes: - Who can get work from whom? - How can that work get there? - How long does it take for the work in there to get noticed? Taming the inboxes is critical to make operations understandable. Making operations understandable is critical to impr...

What is the smallest effective unit within a business? It's a team. How large are your teams? On paper, it might be 3+ people. In reality, it might actually only be 1 person. True teams will optimize the success of the team, even if it means that individuals within the team might be "sub-optim...

For 6 years now, I've struggled with my business. > What the heck do I do? > What problems do I solve? > Who can I best serve? And... for each of those years, I've ultimately just shrugged my shoulders and said, "who the heck knows?". So, I built apps and automations, ran workshops, conducted ...

In business, in school, and in our own personal lives, we love to put things into boxes. We pretend that the boxes are independent. They have no bearing on any other boxes. This creates perceptions of unfairness or of "balance". We believe there is a perfect "balance" between the boxes of persona...

In manufacturing, after assembly lines comprised of replaceable robots and human labor, the end products need to pass through one final stage: Quality Control. Once again, a mix of human labor, computer vision, and other machines examine the end products, perform a series of acceptability tests, a...

--- Warning... this is a continuation from the last email... catch up here if you missed it: [https://theaidia.com/newsletter/2024-04-22/](https://theaidia.com/newsletter/2024-04-22/). --- Estimates are a joke. Building without knowing costs is also a joke. So, how do you resolve the discrepan...

When you are planning out a large software endeavor (or even a small one!), you want to make sure you get the most bang for your buck. Typically, this results in a long spec sheet with desired features of the software, which is then passed to the development team (contract or in-house). The team ...

In software circles, there's a lot of talk about the "10x Engineer". This legendary engineer, however, doesn't appear to have a standard definition. Some claim she can solve any problem thrown her way. Some claim he is the only one who can truly make software reach it's performance potential. Ot...

One of my favorite clients pointed out this morning that I have not sent out a post in a minute. And wow... they were right! And... I was happy to hear that someone actually reads these haha! So, I'll get back to writing about the intersection of tech, strategy, and entrepreneurship... tomorrow. ...

Do you want to be more eff...icient? Or, do you actually want to be more eff...ective?...

First, what's a system? Put simply, it means you have different entities working together for some unified goal. So, a sociotechnical system is simply a system comprising of both social (human individuals, teams, businesses, etc) entities and technical (software, robots, AI, etc) entities working...

What's the sign of a powerful system? It creates change. However, not all change is necessarily good. Does the system you are building enable your team to focus on what they are best at? Does it encourage them to grow? Does it lift them? Or, does it reduce them to be less than human? Nothing mo...

Systems and innovation have a tricky relationship. Systems create efficiency and standardization. They ensure a certain level of quality, and enable repeatable results. As a result, typically more can be done in less time. Innovation, to a certain degree anyways, creates chaos. It disrupts what w...

Nor an app. Nor employees, programs, SEO, or much of anything else really. What you need is simple: 1. The ability to sell to your target market. 2. The ability to decrease the your costs (time, money, stress, etc) associated with selling. 3. The ability to increase the value of what you sell. I...

One of the hardest truths to accept is that you are not an exception. Ignore the rules at your own peril....

Business is easy: 1. Find a way to make someone specific incredibly happy. 2. Find where you can find that kind of person. 3. Sell. When we start bolting on employees, processes, systems, and everything else to support that, we lose sight of the simplicity. How do you deal with that? Bring it b...

Oddly enough, when you cast a light onto your fear, a few things become clear: - The actual potential loss isn't as high as it felt - The actual probability of a loss isn't as likely as it felt - There are actual contingency plans which would make the risk far smaller which wasn't how it felt Fea...

Being busy is not a sign that things are well in the business. Rather, it's a sign that it's a time to offload the parts of the business that you should not be doing. How? 1. Remove. 2. Standardize. 3. Automate. 4. Delegate....

1. Fail Fast 2. Fail Often 3. Fail Cheap But, above all, fail with intention....

Most of what we call maps in business are actually graphs. Consider a business process map: ``` [ invoice sent ] --- [ customer pays ] ``` We can draw it like this, and it means the same thing: ``` [ invoice sent ] | | | [ customer pays ] ``` Graphs focus on the relatio...

Being data-driven is an incredibly lofty goal. Many companies want to get to the point where the data leads them precisely where they need to go. Here's the problem: The data you choose is relevant to track, by definition, will influence what decisions then bubble up. Here's a simple example: L...

When we think about the resources available to us, typically we come up with the following: 1. Cash 2. Connections 3. Time There's one more resource which I frequently fail to consider: Energy. There are some things in business which are completely draining. They leave you on your knees, wonderi...

What is alignment? It's removing conflict, unifying purposes, and becoming whole. Alignment (and non-alignment) can happen at many levels. You can be aligned internally, with a partner, within your organization, with your clients, with governments, with entire continents. On an individual level, ...

Perfectionism is inherently self-destructive. Especially so in software. There can always be more features added, more polish added to the user interface, more speed squeezed out, more, more, more... Until you have a paying user, more does absolutely nothing for you. Perfectionism, more often th...

It's really easy to get into a "chicken / egg" situation with time. 1. I want more time. 2. Getting more time requires an upfront investment of time. 3. I don't have enough time to make that investment. So... you end up feeling trapped and stuck. How do you deal with this? You start with a simp...

I encountered a post that claimed this: - The poor spend time to save money. - The rich spend money to save time. I'll add one more to the list: - The happy spend time and money on what they value. So... what do you value? More importantly, is that where your time and money is going?...

When you have a problem, you can: 1. Fix it. 2. Distract yourself from it. 3. Change the context so it is not a problem. 4. Fix what caused the problem. When your customers have a problem, and meet you, which of the 4 are they coming to you for?...

In business, we run into all sorts of situations. A majority are complicated, some are complex. The way we need to deal with both is completely different. Complicated problems typically involve many moving pieces, but ultimately can be tackled by using common problem solving skills. In essence, i...

While in uni, I took a "arts sampling" class that allowed me to visit museums, attend plays, and enjoy concerts around campus for credit. During a Jazz concert, the professor of Jazz History was invited to come up. He excitedly whipped his guitar around, and you could see the beads of sweat trickl...

I used to think risk and probability were the same thing. After all, on the surface, they look identical: > There's a 20% probability we are successful. > There's a 80% risk we lose our initial investment However, the key distinction is that probability is solely related to the percentages, whi...

So, what if it goes all wrong? 1. What's the absolute worst that could happen? 2. How likely is it to happen? 3. What can you do to make it less likely? 4. What can you do to make the impact smaller? 5. Repeat. Asking, "What if it goes wrong" is not a bad thing. Being afraid of the answer and fo...

Being seen as authentic is not the point. Being authentic is. ...

I have a confession to make. I completely missed yesterday's email. Maybe you noticed, maybe you didn't. However, it was pretty disappointing for me. Failure is a given. All goals, resolutions, systems, habits, kpis, okrs... we will screw them up at least once. Guaranteed. And, when we do, brush...

A lot of people think that strategy is all about what you will do. And, yes, that's part of it. More important frequently, though, is what you will *not* do. - What will you not do today? Tomorrow? - What will you never do to your clients? To your family? To yourself? - What is outside of your w...

When in business, it's easy to fall into a trap of thinking: > I want to be everything to everyone. But the very attempt of doing so has wrecked countless businesses. Why? Inevitably, it means doing more and more work which costs rather than grants energy. It dilutes people's understanding of y...

While talking with one of my former professors yesterday, I had an unusual realization. Organization is recursive. Which is, to say, that if you look at the way things interact all the way down to the microscopic level, you will see the large behaves like the small, the complex like the simple, a...

A few years back, my wife encouraged me to set up an Instagram. > Everyone has one, FB is dead. This is the new way to connect with people! So... I entered I was a 20-something male and immediately was bombarded by images and videos I wouldn't want my kids to see. I went to delete my account, bu...

Exponential growth happens slowly, then all at once. To the outside world, it looks like you came out of nowhere. They see an immediate brilliance. You see the opposite. The hours upon hours of work, sweat, inspiration, and failures. If a single straw can break the camel's back, a single spark c...

We've all probably heard about chaos theory. A butterfly flaps it's wings in Ontario, causing a hurricane in Louisiana. Sounds pretty negative, doesn't it? The inability to predict third, fourth, and fifth order effects doesn't always mean that those effects are necessarily bad. Sometimes, you j...

Pain causes us to choose. We can choose more distraction, more entertainment, more cut corners. Or... We can choose to change. This year, what will you choose?...

> I really want to be there, I just don't feel motivated to do it. Can you see the paradox? Motivation, is the desire for some change. And so, when we say things like the above, we are really saying, I'm motivated, but I'm not motivated. If we dive deeper into what we are truly feeling, we come ...

Consider the difference between these two: > I want to lost 10 pounds this year. and > Every day, I will run for a distance. To begin with, it will be a quarter mile. Every week, I will increase the distance by a quarter mile. The first could be accomplished last minute by an extreme diet. The...

What is the single most powerful enabler within a team and an organization? Trust. If your team has no trust, it is not a team. It is a group of individuals who are all working on the same thing. There will be failures in communication, redundant work, bickering, and an increase in beuraucratic r...

... everything looks like a nail. And we use that expression incredibly negatively. However, we have a family friend who has a chain saw (or five haha). And... he uses his chain saw to cut down trees of course. But, he also uses it to carve incredibly beautiful and unique wood sculptures. Maybe ...

At the end of the day, what do you want? Do you want to be managing a bunch of employees, working 80 hour weeks, taking burn-out vacations every quarter? Or, do you want something which runs itself, bringing in enough to provide for your family and some fun? You work when you want to, and it's so...

If you are operating in a low-trust environment, you need to have red tape up the wazoo, approval processes, and strict guidelines on what is and is not acceptable. What would a high-trust environment look like? Maybe more importantly, how can you increase the trust in your environment?...

In programming, we are constantly naming things. As a kid, I pictured people like Darwin and other great explorers discovering new plants and animals, and I thought, "How cool would it be to name these things?" Turns out it's really hard. How do you name it? Do you make it similar to other, seem...

In general, there are 2 camps of people: 1. The Risk Averse. 2. The Thrill Seekers. Interestingly enough, you may fall into one camp in particular contexts, and in a different camp in other contexts. And, depending on the context, you feel fully justified in your camp. Is there a better way? T...

I haven't been able to write much this week here: I've been completely reworking my training materials from scratch. Check them out at the [github repo](https://github.com/Aidia-LLC/training). It covers some valuable insights into my personal thoughts on the theory of software, it's components, a...

Is it better to be an opportunist or an altruist? Alone, neither are great: a pure altruist has nothing to give, and a pure opportunist gives nothing Paradoxically, the most goodness comes from those who have both. Become an opportunistic altruist. See problems in the world, and see the opportu...

I used to be really uncomfortable with selling myself. Everything I knew about sales came from stereotypes of sleazy car sales people: Selling was twisting the truth, hiding cons, being extraordinarily pushy, and so on. Turns out that everything I knew about sales was completely wrong, especially...

> Complexity is the enemy! No. Complexity is not the enemy. The problem is the enemy, and complexity is a road block to solving it. With that understanding, let's dive into some types of complexity that come up: --- ### Complicated Complexity Complicated complexity is complexity which I most f...

What is a valuable business? Is it just a business that generates a lot of cash? Value is subjective, so no... but what else is there? Consider these questions: - How much good is put into the world as part of the business process? - How much time is spent working on the business vs in the busi...

In any organization, you are going to end up with different divisions. These divisions each have well-defined areas of stewardship... Until you take a hard look at the boundaries. For example, take a look at AI. Within an university setting, you might see the business school take AI on within the...

> You are here to be their friend. Not their pal. President Ivory, my church mission president, continued. > Pals are happy just hanging out. Pals get along great and always avoid the tough conversations. Pals don't create change. > > Friends will tell you when you are on the wrong path. Friends ...

Growing up, I'd always thought that success was the quantity of money you had in hand and the quantity of money you had coming in. Maybe it's the American culture I grew up in, maybe it's from playing too much Monopoly or Life, maybe it's from something else, but success always seemed to be ingrain...

I was so frustrated. I'd started working on learning a new challenging (for me) piece of music in my piano lessons as a kid, and I came up with something clever: > I'll split the song into different chunks and practice each separately. Then I just need to put them together and I'll have this do...

At first it looks like a contradiction - doesn't faster mean sooner too? Not necessarily. Consider the following 2 situations: --- ### 1. Faster Company needs 3 widgets. They work on all 3 widgets at the same time. All 3 widgets are completed in 3 weeks. ### 2. Sooner Company needs 3 widget...

I remember moving into an old home. The water heater was clear in the basement, and I took showers in the bathroom upstairs. I'm pretty sure the plumbing must have been wild - I would adjust the temperature and would need to wait a good 2 minutes or so before it came back up! As I'm sure you can i...

When meeting with entrepreneurs exploring a new digital venture, we typically go through a process which looks like this: 1. Initial Excitement and Huge Expectations 2. Technical Exploration 3. MVP / MVBP Refinement 4. Quote Review 5. Realization of Risk Once you see the complete numbers of what ...

There are times when we make a huge pivot in our lives. We make a bet, take a risk, go all in on something uncertain. The expectations are huge, the excitement is tangible, and we blaze a path forward. And then... we fail. We don't just fail once - we try again, and fail. So we dust ourselves off...

Let's chat for a minute about rebels. Depending on your upbringing (including how much Star Wars you grew up with), rebel may either have an extraordinarily positive or negative connotation with it. And that's fine. For me, rebels bring a mixed bag of feelings. I'm incredibly grateful for the reb...

Every industry has best practices. Some of these best practices have been around for literal centuries. For example, double entry in accounting has been around since about the 13th century. It's battle tested, it's effective, and it will likely be around for at least another seven centuries to come...

After talking with dozens of entrepreneurs, business owners, and people with big ideas, it became clear that there's a great divide in opinions. One group is passionate that execution beats strategy any day. They have their heroes, case studies, and best practices. The other group is passionate t...

I originally was in college for economics and finance - I'd never touched code in my life. And, my first semester, I had a crazy libertarian economics professor hand out bags of candy to all 150 students in the class. He then asked us to write down what we would pay for that bag of candy. I ended...