Token spend is the new cloud bill
The token bill for an AI agent is the visible 10 to 30% of what it costs. Review, supervision, rework and ownership make up the rest, and unlike a salary, almost nobody forecasts it.
CTO
The fractured, but whole
A startup ran out of runway and handled the layoff badly. The engineer found out from his broker. The argument here is that the company's real output was never the platform, it was the engineers it built, and no month of handover meetings can transfer that.
How to become an AI-native SaaS company in the next 3 years
Becoming AI-native in three years does not need a three-year technology roadmap. It needs a usage policy, a map of your data, one bounded experiment, and both the enthusiasts and the sceptics in the room. Build the ability to change, not the overhaul.
How to choose a fractional CTO in Belgium: a guide for non-technical founders
A practical guide to evaluating fractional CTO providers in Belgium: the three criteria that matter most, how the four provider types differ, what an engagement should cost, and when a full-time hire is the better call.
The CTO as prisoner
CTOs who built their company's survival by doing everything can't escape that role by scheduling a holiday. Moving from doing to enabling is a skill and identity shift at once. One thing handed off permanently is where the exit starts.
The artificial Turk and our role as software experts
We smile at the 18th-century crowd for being swept up by a box with a man inside, yet today it's easy to hand ChatGPT a vague idea and treat the PRD it returns as gospel. Generative AI is genuinely powerful. We get the best from it when we bring both enthusiasm and a critical eye.
Conductor: running multiple AI coding agents in parallel
Conductor by Melty Labs makes parallel agent workflows practical by running multiple agents with separate tasks simultaneously. The trade-offs are real but manageable, and this is where development is heading.
The AI Agile Manifesto
Agile was supposed to free us from bureaucracy. Many teams just rebuilt it with better branding. Now, AI-driven development is forcing the uncomfortable question: Were we ever truly agile, or just managing slow feedback loops?
Why AI makes engineering teams smaller, but not simpler
AI is changing what small teams can ship, boilerplate gone, prototypes faster, experimentation cheaper. But lower costs of building don't mean lower costs of building the wrong thing. It just means you can do it faster.
The unbundling of engineering value (Part 2)
AI won't make software engineers redundant. It will expose what engineering was always supposed to be about: understanding systems, not just writing code.
The unbundling of engineering value (Part 1)
Here's part one of a post I shared with our team on the radical change and evolution of our jobs. AI won't make software engineers redundant. It will expose what engineering was always supposed to be about: understanding systems, not just writing code.
Communicate or be micromanaged - the CTO edition
CTOs often come from engineering backgrounds and, particularly when newly promoted, tend to focus on what they know best, the technology. While this is understandable given their previous success, technology is rarely the hardest part of the CTO role.
The CTO's guide to AI adoption strategy
AI adoption fails when treated as a tool rollout. This guide covers the decision framework, team dynamics, economics, and mistakes from 190+ technical audits.
How to introduce AI coding agents into your engineering team
AI coding agents draft code, write tests, and open pull requests autonomously. This guide covers the tool landscape, readiness signals, a phased rollout plan, and the team dynamics that make or break adoption.
Communicate or be micromanaged - the engineering edition
Micromanagement rarely starts with bad intent. It usually starts with silence. When nobody knows what you are working on, meetings multiply, trust erodes, and focus disappears. This piece shows how clear, boring communication is your best defence.