by John Macdonald | Mar 9, 2026 | AI, Leadership, Technology, The250
I’ve “written” 100k lines of code in the last 6 weeks. Is some of it crap? Yes. Is it bloated? Yes. Is there tech debt that needs to be cleaned up and refactored? Yes. Is some of this code doing stuff I don’t understand fully? Yes. Will there be difficult bugs to find... by John Macdonald | Mar 8, 2026 | AI, Human, Leadership, Technology, The250
Right now, we generally fall into three camps: a) “we’re doomed,” b) “it’s gonna be awesome,” and c) “we’re not sure yet, but hope it’s gonna be alright.” At some point in the future, maybe 2 years or maybe 10 or more years, we’ll know the impact that AI has had on... by John Macdonald | Mar 7, 2026 | Human, Leadership, The250
Scaffolding helps us fix the places we can’t get to on our own. When you see scaffolding, you know a few things: They’re serious about fixing it Fixing it requires a stable support system It’s temporary, but may take a while The end result is restoration to previous... by John Macdonald | Mar 3, 2026 | Human, Leadership, The250
Some think the way to success is to make others go through the tollbooth. My idea. My IP. My job. My knowledge. My resources. The tollbooth approach. If you want what I have, you gotta pay the toll. And I set the toll. Resource tollboothing can work in specific... by John Macdonald | Feb 26, 2026 | Human, Leadership, The250
A colleague showed a graph representing team activity. The graph was a picture of status truth. Here’s what we’ve done, and here’s what we’re going to do in the next month. Everything was on time. All green. No issues raised. But they skewered him. It didn’t tell the... by John Macdonald | Feb 25, 2026 | Human, Leadership, The250
Sometimes you have a moment, usually when you’re down in the trenches with sore muscles and dirt all over your face, and you just say to yourself, “What are we doing here?” That’s a powerful moment. Embrace it. Lean into it. That moment can generate change. It can be...