The Applicable Bytes Career & Growth, Technical leadership & AI for developers You can have 100 projects of five years of experience in one company, and still not be senior. Because repetition is not the same as growth. That sounds obvious when you read it. It was not obvious when I lived it. After five years of programming, I looked strong, on paper: around 100 projects, a team lead title, and forum administrator credibility from the old PHP days. Those things helped me get my foot in the...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
The Applicable Bytes Career & Growth, Technical leadership & AI for developers 20 years have passed since I got paid to code for the first time. Here are few things I’ve learned along the way. Most programmers think a career grows with time. Get a job. Complete projects. Stay long enough. Become senior. I did that. I worked on around 100 projects, became a team lead, moved to Norway, and arrived confident that my experience would open every door. Then I discovered I was a junior developer...
2 months ago • 3 min read
The Applicable Bytes Career & Growth, Technical leadership & AI for developers In this email I reflect on my recent interview with another fellow "Director of AI", Courtney Kingsbury, and we talk about common problems, fears and challenges that adoption of AI brings in two different companies. You might be the only person at your company who gets AI, then you already know the quiet weight that comes with it. Nobody above you understands what you actually do, nobody beside you can check your...
3 months ago • 2 min read
The Applicable Bytes Career & Growth, Technical leadership & AI for developers Most developers still treat code as the source of truth. Not the documentation. Not the architecture diagram. Not the specification. The code. Code was not just code And for a long time, that made sense. If the documentation was wrong, we changed the documentation. If the diagram was old, we ignored the diagram. If the business rule was unclear, we opened the code and checked what the system actually did. Code was...
4 months ago • 1 min read
The Applicable Bytes Career & Growth, Technical leadership & AI for developers Code is cheap. Not because engineering is suddenly easy, but because AI has dramatically reduced the cost of producing code that looks correct. And that changes the game. I’m a Director of AI today, but before that, I spent 18 years as a developer. For the past three years I’ve been deep in AI adoption, watching some developers thrive with AI, and watching others get stuck, unsure what their value is supposed to be...
7 months ago • 3 min read
The Applicable Bytes Career & Growth, Technical leadership & AI for developers 20 years ago I’ve worked at a car wash to pay my rent. Then as a tech guy I’ve worked as junior, senior, tech lead, managing consultant, principal and now a director of AI, and yes I can confirm it, becoming a manager is hard. But becoming the manager of your “former” peers? That’s a whole different level. This transition is one of the most uncomfortable transitions in any tech career because boundaries shift,...
9 months ago • 3 min read
The Applicable Bytes Career & Growth, Technical leadership & AI for developers It started on an existing NodeJS project, with little to no existing documentation. Obviously delivery deadline was very close (4 weeks), so we decided to use AI to help us. I actually never worked on NodeJS before, so Windsurf was very useful at explaining how things work, and why are they structured as they are. This was actually the best part of this exercise, as I could ask deep questions about concrete parts...
12 months ago • 3 min read
The Applicable Bytes Career & Growth, Technical leadership & AI for developers Many developers are not sure where to start a project - use this "pyramid framework" to start properly every time. Myths & Mistakes First, unlearn these myths and avoid these mistakes: Do not: Start with login, database, or Docker. These are plumbing. They don’t prove your product makes sense. Do not: Pick the framework first. Architecture decisions should follow validated requirements, not familiarity or hype. Do...
about 1 year ago • 3 min read
The Applicable Bytes Growth in programming, technical leadership & AI for developers In this newsletter I will talk about the most important skills to master when becoming a senior in your team, or when getting the official Tech Lead role. If you want to step confidently into your new Tech Lead role but don’t know where to begin, this might help you. I’ve successfully led tech teams for over 15 years and learned (often the hard way) exactly what works. (not interested in this topic? Choose...
about 1 year ago • 2 min read