If your brain isn't broken, why does AI work hurt more than the work it replaced?
+I'm not the only one more exhausted at the end of a workday using AI than before; apparently there's a term for that now: Brain Fry.
The Gallup numbers are out. 80% disengaged. The heaviest AI users burning fastest. Everyone calls it a crisis. I think they're looking at it wrong.
@@ -27,7 +29,7 @@ import BaseLayout from '../../layouts/BaseLayout.astro';But discomfort is not damage. Ask Arnold if he quit lifting because of discomfort.
-The problem isn't that your brain is broken. The problem is that most people focus on the discomfort instead of looking forward through it. The key word is forward; not ahead, not onward, but forward. Direction with momentum.
+Your brain's not broken; the discomfort you feel is from growth and is expected. Move forward through it. The key word is forward; not ahead, not onward, but forward. Direction with momentum.
When I'm on the move, I move. When the reconfiguration is happening, you have two choices: sit in the pain and call it burnout, or recognize it as growth and keep your eyes forward. One is a loop. The other is a ladder.
@@ -47,7 +49,7 @@ import BaseLayout from '../../layouts/BaseLayout.astro';Fourth, build for the human, not the machine. Every AI deployment should pass this test: does it make the human more capable or merely more productive? Capability compounds. Productivity extracts. The difference shows up in engagement scores within six months.
-I'm building two things in parallel. Speckl, a compliance specification language where AI generates the spec but a human reviews and approves it before the compiler turns it into code. The human judgment is embedded as provenance; auditable, verifiable, part of the artifact. And a consultancy helping engineering leaders shift from extraction metrics to capability metrics.
+I'm building two things in parallel. Speckl, a specification language that compiles directly to WASM — AI generates the spec, a human reviews and approves it, and the compiler turns it into executable code with provenance baked in. The human judgment is embedded in the artifact; auditable, verifiable, part of the output. And a consultancy helping engineering leaders shift from extraction metrics to capability metrics.
If your team is showing signs of what the industry calls brain fry; higher error rates, faster turnover, quieter standups; the fix isn't more training. It's a structural rethink of how AI and humans collaborate.
diff --git a/src/pages/blog/devex-shift.astro b/src/pages/blog/devex-shift.astro index 7c8af7e..25dd0e0 100644 --- a/src/pages/blog/devex-shift.astro +++ b/src/pages/blog/devex-shift.astro @@ -19,6 +19,8 @@ import BaseLayout from '../../layouts/BaseLayout.astro';What if the tool nobody's using is more important than the one everyone deployed?
+Who gives a crap about things that are never used.
That's a weird opening for a post about developer experience. But it's the whole thing. Every conversation about DevEx starts with tooling; faster CI, better IDEs, internal platforms, AI coding assistants. Companies are spending $60 billion on this stuff this year alone. Platform engineering teams are bigger than most startups. The dashboards are beautiful.
diff --git a/src/pages/blog/gallup-disengagement.astro b/src/pages/blog/gallup-disengagement.astro index b4fe36c..7c303cb 100644 --- a/src/pages/blog/gallup-disengagement.astro +++ b/src/pages/blog/gallup-disengagement.astro @@ -19,6 +19,8 @@ import BaseLayout from '../../layouts/BaseLayout.astro';What do you anchor to when everything you're standing on is shaking?
+There's a lot of fear right now.
I don't mean anxiety. I don't mean stress. I mean fear; the kind that sits in your stomach and doesn't leave. Engineers wondering if their job will exist next year. Managers wondering if they'll be replaced by a dashboard. Leaders wondering if the ground they built on is still there.
diff --git a/src/pages/blog/soil-beneath-the-code.astro b/src/pages/blog/soil-beneath-the-code.astro new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e9b7724 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/pages/blog/soil-beneath-the-code.astro @@ -0,0 +1,69 @@ +--- +import BaseLayout from '../../layouts/BaseLayout.astro'; +--- + +The Soil Beneath The Code
+What if the health of your engineering org had nothing to do with your code and everything to do with your soil?
+ +More coming soon.
+Are your tools making your team faster, or just making them easier to watch?
+Every company running "AI adoption" is making the same bargain: you give us more data about how you work, we give you tools that make you faster. Everyone wins.
Except nobody's winning. The employees are burning out. The tools are surveilling. And the productivity numbers everyone's celebrating? They're measuring output volume, not output value.
diff --git a/src/pages/blog/three-questions-mentoring.astro b/src/pages/blog/three-questions-mentoring.astro new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8802e47 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/pages/blog/three-questions-mentoring.astro @@ -0,0 +1,69 @@ +--- +import BaseLayout from '../../layouts/BaseLayout.astro'; +--- + +Three Questions That Changed How I Mentor
+What if mentoring didn't require a program, a framework, or a budget — just three questions asked consistently?
+ +More coming soon.
+Three Signs Your Team Is Being Strip-Mined
+How do you tell the difference between a team that's producing and a team that's being extracted from?
+ +More coming soon.
+What if the thing burning you out isn't how much you're spending, but that you don't know what you're buying?
+Token anxiety is BS.
There's a term floating around Silicon Valley right now. Nikunj Kothari at FPV Ventures coined it: that feeling of "in this given unit of time, which we don't get back, how can I have AI do a lot more for me than the next person?" People checking their agents during parties. At bars. Walking through Dolores Park with laptops slightly open. Replacing evening Netflix with Claude Code, dreaming up new tasks to automate. Rushing the kids to bed so they can get back to the computer.
diff --git a/src/styles/global.css b/src/styles/global.css index 8c966f7..2ea954b 100644 --- a/src/styles/global.css +++ b/src/styles/global.css @@ -412,6 +412,21 @@ code { margin: 0 auto; } +/* --- Lead Question (blog posts, above fold) --- */ +.lead-question { + font-family: var(--font-heading); + font-size: var(--size-xl); + font-weight: 500; + font-style: italic; + color: var(--color-green-dark); + border-left: 4px solid var(--color-amber); + padding: var(--space-md) var(--space-lg); + margin-bottom: var(--space-xl); + background: var(--color-cream-warm); + border-radius: 0 4px 4px 0; + line-height: 1.4; +} + /* --- Prose --- */ .prose { max-width: var(--max-width-prose);