A couple years ago, I wrote about how risk is subjective. When I left Amazon during mass layoffs to start Platformr, people called it bold and risky. I didn’t see it that way. Risk depends on what you value—and I value my purpose in life, innovation, ownership, and the ability to create something from nothing…
Stop Asking Your Senior Architect to Write Unit Tests: A Guide to AI Team Management
Here’s a management anti-pattern I see constantly: developers using one AI model for everything. It’s like hiring a brilliant systems architect and asking them to write CSS, review PRs, design your logo, AND refactor your database queries. Sure, they can do it. But should they? I run a five-model AI development team. Each has a…
Managing AWS Organizations Top-Down to Eliminate Hidden Costs
After twenty years building and scaling infrastructure, I’ve learned that the most expensive problems in AWS aren’t the ones staring at you in Cost Explorer. They’re the ones hiding in plain sight across accounts, regions, and services you forgot you were running. Most teams approach AWS cost management bottom-up—hunting for idle EC2 instances, right-sizing RDS…
That Landing Zone You Built 3 years ago? It’s Already Old.
Here’s an uncomfortable truth I’ve learned after building hundreds of AWS Landing Zones: the one you deployed two years ago is already out of date. And the longer you wait to address it, the more expensive the fix becomes. According to AWS, customers typically rebuild their Landing Zones every three years. Not update. Rebuild. The…
Zero Trust in AWS Part 2: The $250K Wake-Up Call
This is Part 2 of my Zero Trust series. If you haven’t read Part 1: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Paranoid Security, start there for the foundation. In Part 1, I talked about Zero Trust like it was a nice-to-have security philosophy. Layer cakes and paranoid parents. But let me tell you…
Cloud Parenting 101: Raising Healthy SaaS Solutions on AWS
From managing multi-tenant environments to rapidly scaling up users, the AWS Well-Architected Framework helps you build a reliable, scalable, secure foundation for your Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions. Much like raising children, your SaaS application needs structure, room to grow, and occasional time-outs. Today, let’s review the advantages of using AWS as a market…
Wearing a new hat while playing poker
I like to use the analogy of owning and running a company and the similarities it has with playing poker. When I play poker, I like to know my percentages for winning, weigh my risks, be bold when needed, and read the room. To be a successful company, you need to identify and understand the…
Zero Trust in AWS: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Paranoid Security
Look, I’ll be straight with you. In the wild world of cloud security, treating your network like an open house is basically leaving your digital front door wide open with a welcome mat that says “Hackers, Please Come In!” That’s where Zero Trust comes in – and trust me, I’ve learned this the hard way….
Proof of Concepts vs MVP
Not long ago, R&D departments fought tooth and nail for resources to explore new tech. On-premise solutions were expensive and decisions focused on avoiding failure at all costs—kind of like bringing a calculator to Vegas to make sure you don’t lose at blackjack. In the last decade, cloud platforms have revolutionized innovation. Companies of all…
Hiring a outsourced tech team
You’re launching a new app or starting an enterprise level software project and looking to outsource development. Time and resources are at stake, and you’ve been handed the responsibility for finding a technology consultant. How do you choose? And how can you be confident you’ve made the right choice? We’ll look at which questions to…