2025-08-05 Sunday - My True North

 

[Isla San Martín, on a sailing sabbatical in 2004, Baja California, Mexico]

Today's meditation:
My True North, throughout my professional life - has NOT been...
- to be rich 
- to dominate anything 
- to crush the competition
- to win at all cost
- to be #1 

It has simply been to...
- work on interesting problems.
- feed my insatiable curiosity for learning. 
- make a decent living.
- be of service to my clients. 

I consider myself fortunate, that I learned early...the value of needing little, and recognizing what is enough. 

Decades ago, I decided to exit the never-ending treadmill of corporate life...of annual reviews...and existing within the rigid maze of structured hierarchies, that more often than not - limited my options. 

There are corporate rewards I purposefully chose to not pursue.
Titles held little appeal to me, for the shackles they would entail - were too costly.

Instead, I chose to start my solo consulting practice. 

To work as an outsider - offers a freedom to give advice, unencumbered - without the fear of annual review/bonus/promotion ramifications, or repurcussions. It is essential to being able to say what needs to be said, and not just what folks may wish to hear. 

My experiences have been many and varied...offering many opportunities to work across many diverse cultures, industries, technologies, and companies. 

I work when I want, and I decide which clients I will accept. 
I set my own rates - priced fairly, for the value I help create. 

In my life's work, I have found a degree of the freedom that I first discovered sailing upon the ocean. 

Freedom is a potent wine. 

My companion post on LinkedIn

2025-08-03 Sunday - The Icarus Strategy

Jacob Peter Gowy's The Fall of Icarus (1635–1637) - source: Wikipedia

 

 

“In Greek mythology, Icarus was the son of the master craftsman Daedalus, the architect of the labyrinth of Crete. After Theseus, king of Athens and enemy of King Minos, escaped from the labyrinth, Minos suspected that Icarus and Daedalus had revealed the labyrinth's secrets and thus imprisoned them—either in a large tower overlooking the ocean or in the labyrinth itself, depending upon the account. Icarus and Daedalus escaped using wings Daedalus constructed from birds’ molted feathers, threads from blankets, the leather straps from their sandals, and beeswax. Before escaping, Daedalus warned Icarus not to fly too low or the water would soak the feathers and not to fly too close to the sun or the heat would melt the wax. Icarus ignored Daedalus's instructions not to fly too close to the sun, causing the beeswax in his wings to melt. Icarus fell from the sky, plunged into the sea, and drowned.”

~ Wikipedia

 

A meditation today, after reading yet another Agentic AI / LLM / GenAI Tech Bro Vibe Coding Dependent "success" story...  

Based on the observed statements (and collective behavior) of quite a few companies, one might surmise that the following are core tenets of how they operate... 

The Icarus Strategy  - Core Tenets:

1.      “It’s different this time.”

2.      “Gravity doesn’t apply to us.”

3.      “Growth at all costs.”

4.      “Reliability is a nuisance.”

5.      “Quality is an afterthought…but only if we have some spare time.”

6.      “Consequences are for peasants.”

7.      “Releasing half-baked products IS our product strategy.”

8.      “Don’t bother me with your piddly-ass security concerns.”

9.      “Liquidity events/exits are more important than building for sustainability.”

10.  “Disciplined Software Engineering is a boat anchor - for others.”

11.  “Shortcuts don’t have consequences, and if they did, they don’t matter - for us.”

12.  “Who cares if the underlying algorithms, tools, infrastructure, architecture are unreliable?”

13. "Everyone else's intellectual property must be sacrificed for the greater good...really, we couldn't operate without it."

14. "Growing junior devs into senior devs - that's someone else's problem". 

15. "All must worship at the feet of the great stochastic parrot."  

 

 

[image credit: Couleur on pixabay.com]

 

 My companion post on LinkedIn