How I got here

I got into technology because I wanted to automate things. I loved gadgets as a kid and I still do. A new piece of hardware can lift a bad day. That's how I got in, and it's still most of why I stay.

The job I didn't want

Like most people in their first job, I had a fixed idea of the work I wanted. Client-facing, visible, the sort of thing you can point at when relatives ask what you do. Then I got moved to the internal team. No revenue, no client waiting on a deliverable. It felt like being quietly moved to the side of the room.

With no client memo defining the scope, I ended up doing all of it. Requirements, coding, QA, deployment, and every bug and change request that came after. I didn't get a slice of a project. I owned the whole thing. Meanwhile, friends at other companies were two years in and still hadn't spoken to a client.

That stretch taught me the entire process end to end. What a badly worded requirement costs you three months later. Why deployments go wrong at 11 PM on a Friday. I didn't appreciate it then. I do now.

Building my own

Then I started an IT services company with a partner and grew a team from nothing. That's where I found out how much of the work is finding the right people, and how much of the rest is keeping them.

The regulated years

After that I joined a company in a regulated industry. I built the India office from zero to a hundred people, and the company grew from a handful to two hundred. I learned compliance one audit at a time: HIPAA, SOC 2, PCI DSS, GDPR.

Somewhere in there it hit me that compliance done properly doesn't slow you down. When everyone knows the rules, nobody has to guess, and people stop avoiding tools because they're not sure they're allowed to use them. It makes you faster, and it's what lets a company scale into bigger customers.

The one I nearly got wrong

Around that time I got frustrated with someone on my team. Deadlines were slipping, communication felt off, and it was easy to assume he just wasn't pulling his weight. I'd more or less decided that before I'd asked him a single question.

Then I paused, and instead of reacting I asked how everything was going. What came back wasn't a defence. He had a lot going on outside work and it was affecting his concentration. We found a better way to support each other, and the project got back on track.

Everyone is carrying something, even when it isn't visible. I keep having to relearn that one.

Going back to school

I did an MBA while working full time. What made it worth it wasn't the content, it was the timing. A classroom discussion one evening would change how I handled a leadership conversation the next day. For most of my career I'd been learning management on the fly. I wanted to know how people who'd studied it actually think.

Now

I'm in a new industry now. The tools are AI and the principles are the same. I can still code, so I take an idea, build it myself, and see it working in days instead of quarters.

I use AI every day, and I've also sat across from a candidate whose answers were obviously not his own. Smart person, strong resume, and the moment I asked a practical question it fell apart. AI is a good partner. If you let it do all the work you're not growing, you're outsourcing your thinking. Drive it. Don't let it drive you.

People

People have been the most important part of all of it. Some of the people I helped grow still call me, years later, to tell me what they're doing now. That's the part I'm proudest of.

This site exists because I want to share what I've learned. I like talking to people, finding out what they're building, and helping where I can. If that's you, get in touch.