Don't quit at night

Last year I started participating in long distance cycling events. This came out of a conversation with a co-worker at lunch, who was telling me about how he would be riding the one way course of the Berlin-Munich-Berlin Super Brevet in July and I (half-jokingly) said I’d join him. To be honest, I doubted that I’d have the resolve to follow through on that. I liked riding my bike, but 850km in 64 hours was a different game entirely. I signed up anyway.

Boundaries and AI hype

Here I am writing another ranty draft about AI. Perhaps this time I’ll make it public.

After a tense and frustrating meeting today to discuss the “AI first” / agentic coding future of the engineering department, I’m again thinking about my boundaries as a professional.

Over the last year or so, I’ve observed this intense thirst from leaders in organisations to ‘see the light’; their networks are full of people in similar roles that have been baffled as to why some engineers aren’t as excited about the future of software development, or are at least approaching it more cautiously. I can’t shake the feeling that whatever is driving this thirst is at least somewhat disconnected from reality (or, at least most of our realities), and it means anyone who doesn’t share that view has the pleasure of being gaslit on a daily basis.