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Human-centric AI adoption

I Love TECH 2025  ·  DevTalks 2025

When humanity lights the beacons, builders answer. Why products fail on need rather than on technology, and what to do about it.

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For decades we optimised software for machines, because machines were the hard part. They are not the hard part any more, which means the constraint moved to us and almost nobody has rewritten their process to match.

The talk starts with a drawing my sister made of me staring at a YAML file, goes through why most products fail on unmet need rather than on engineering, and lands on Jobs to be Done as the correction: people do not want a drill, and they do not want your platform either. The practical half is a decomposition and recomposition method for taking a problem apart far enough that the real job becomes visible.

It ends somewhere less tidy, on purpose. When information and labour both get cheap, what is scarce is emotion, empathy, care and attention, and that is an engineering concern rather than a poster in the kitchen.

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Sunday Field Notes

The talk was one hour. The notes are every Sunday.

One short note most weeks on engineering leadership, teams, and building a career in public. The same thinking you just heard, without pretending I've figured it out. No pitch, no cadence guilt, leave in one click.

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