About me
Twelve years between engineering and product. Long enough to stop believing they're two different jobs. I'm at my best at the start of a project, when there's a concept to shape and the job is to get it standing as fast as possible. And I like carrying it end-to-end from there: research, design, code, ship. Trustform is the one I'd point at.
I've spent most of those years on B2B in finance and regulationSome AdTech and EdTech along the way.: compliance software, trading terminals, the kind of thing banks and funds open every morning and nobody outside the industry has heard of. Less boring than it sounds. When the rules are written for you, the only thing genuinely left to design is whether the user has a decent day or a miserable one.
I'm deep into AI tooling, which is what makes my efforts practical rather than exhausting. Most companies I've seen are still using it to type faster, not to change who can ship a whole product. Also fond of interfaces that don't need explaining. And of my dog
Wolfy, who is not impressed by any of it.
Modern tooling raises my own output, and gets business problems solved far faster.
- Claude Code
- Cursor
- Zed
- Warp
- Figma
- Notion
- n8n
- LangChain
A peek into my bookshelf
The ones I keep going back to, and what I took from each.
Antifragile
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Published long before the current wave, and it reads better for it. Via negativa: robustness from what you remove, not what you add. Exactly how AI is making systems steadier.
9 / 10
Designing Data-Intensive Applications
Martin Kleppmann
How storage, replication and consensus actually behave once a system has more than one machine in it, and what each guarantee costs.
10 / 10
The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI
Cory Doctorow
A centaur is a person the machine assists; a reverse centaur is a person harnessed to it. Doctorow on which of the two the current wave is actually building.
9 / 10
Stolen Focus
Johann Hari
Makes the case that collapsing attention is an environmental problem rather than a personal failing, and that most of the fixes are collective rather than a matter of willpower.
10 / 10
Write, Trim
Maxim Ilyakhov, Lyudmila Sarycheva
A method for cutting padding and flourishes out of a sentence. The habit didn't stay in prose. I now make the same passes over code.
10 / 10
Zero to One
Peter Thiel, Blake Masters
On the difference between copying what works and making something that didn't exist. Contrarian by design, and worth arguing with even where you agree.
10 / 10
Atomic Habits
James Clear
Systems over goals, and the case that small changes compound. Thin in places, but the framing of habits as identity rather than discipline stuck.
8 / 10
The Visual Display
Edward R. Tufte
What I had open while working out how to draw a corporate ownership structure someone could actually read. Most of it is about telling signal from decoration.
10 / 10
Antifragile
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Published long before the current wave, and it reads better for it. Via negativa: robustness from what you remove, not what you add. Exactly how AI is making systems steadier.
9 / 10
Designing Data-Intensive Applications
Martin Kleppmann
How storage, replication and consensus actually behave once a system has more than one machine in it, and what each guarantee costs.
10 / 10
The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI
Cory Doctorow
A centaur is a person the machine assists; a reverse centaur is a person harnessed to it. Doctorow on which of the two the current wave is actually building.
9 / 10
Stolen Focus
Johann Hari
Makes the case that collapsing attention is an environmental problem rather than a personal failing, and that most of the fixes are collective rather than a matter of willpower.
10 / 10
Write, Trim
Maxim Ilyakhov, Lyudmila Sarycheva
A method for cutting padding and flourishes out of a sentence. The habit didn't stay in prose. I now make the same passes over code.
10 / 10
Zero to One
Peter Thiel, Blake Masters
On the difference between copying what works and making something that didn't exist. Contrarian by design, and worth arguing with even where you agree.
10 / 10
Atomic Habits
James Clear
Systems over goals, and the case that small changes compound. Thin in places, but the framing of habits as identity rather than discipline stuck.
8 / 10
The Visual Display
Edward R. Tufte
What I had open while working out how to draw a corporate ownership structure someone could actually read. Most of it is about telling signal from decoration.
10 / 10
Antifragile
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Published long before the current wave, and it reads better for it. Via negativa: robustness from what you remove, not what you add. Exactly how AI is making systems steadier.
9 / 10
Designing Data-Intensive Applications
Martin Kleppmann
How storage, replication and consensus actually behave once a system has more than one machine in it, and what each guarantee costs.
10 / 10
The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI
Cory Doctorow
A centaur is a person the machine assists; a reverse centaur is a person harnessed to it. Doctorow on which of the two the current wave is actually building.
9 / 10
Stolen Focus
Johann Hari
Makes the case that collapsing attention is an environmental problem rather than a personal failing, and that most of the fixes are collective rather than a matter of willpower.
10 / 10
Write, Trim
Maxim Ilyakhov, Lyudmila Sarycheva
A method for cutting padding and flourishes out of a sentence. The habit didn't stay in prose. I now make the same passes over code.
10 / 10
Zero to One
Peter Thiel, Blake Masters
On the difference between copying what works and making something that didn't exist. Contrarian by design, and worth arguing with even where you agree.
10 / 10
Atomic Habits
James Clear
Systems over goals, and the case that small changes compound. Thin in places, but the framing of habits as identity rather than discipline stuck.
8 / 10
The Visual Display
Edward R. Tufte
What I had open while working out how to draw a corporate ownership structure someone could actually read. Most of it is about telling signal from decoration.
10 / 10