by John Macdonald | Feb 22, 2026 | AI, Technology, The250
Engineering discipline was built on specs. Requirements, architecture, design, verification, and interface specifications have historically driven the engineering team and product development. Not only do they tell the team what to build, but they’re also the... by John Macdonald | Feb 21, 2026 | Human, Leadership, The250
If companies had no problems, they’d need no employees. If people had no problems, they’d need no products or services. And those two statements relate circularly. Your job, product, or service has one purpose: fix a problem. First, you gotta find it. Share this:... by John Macdonald | Feb 20, 2026 | Human, Leadership, Technology, The250
I’m both a software engineer and an electrical engineer. Here are some things we say (a lot) to the marketing and product teams. “That won’t work.” “It can’t do that.” “That’s impossible.” We say these things because we believe our job is to be the source of truth. We... by John Macdonald | Feb 19, 2026 | AI, Leadership, The250
Middle management gets a bad rap in corporate America. Professional meeting organizers Professional delegators PowerPoint creators The people who stop me from doing what I want to do Buzzword ninjas However, quiality middle managers are good at: Goal decomposition... by John Macdonald | Feb 18, 2026 | AI, Human, Leadership, The250
Struggle first on your own. Then pull in AI. David Epstein wrote a great article about whether AI is rotting our brains, based on an MIT study. I wrote about it also. Spoiler Alert: It depends. Basically, start with yourself, rather than starting with AI. The best... by John Macdonald | Feb 17, 2026 | AI, Human, Leadership, Technology, The250
When I first started The250, my writing and publishing were 100% manual. Here’s the original workflow for The250: I’d start with a topic (or a few) that I’d been thinking about. If necessary, do some research. Open Grammarly, start writing. Iterate in Grammarly until...