Lead Prompt Podcast

We lost the spirit of Web 1.0, can we ever revive that via a Neo Web 1.0 renaissance? Notes: I am back! It may be sentimentality, but I really miss the old days of the internet. I remember using it for the first time in a public library on a 56k modem, on a PC that you had to book in advance. There was an excitement about it, it was new and unexplored. Bandwidth was such an issue, online video was...

The more legacy code your team maintains, the greater the impact on their productivity. Legacy code is a tax, and should be deleted when possible. Notes: Organisations often approach legacy applications with a sense of fear. Throughout my career, I have seen legacy applications, or legacy sub-systems of an application that contain some code that nobody left in the organisation understands. I have...

As a leader, you need to think about how you react when things go wrong. Your example matters. Notes: In the software industry, bugs are a fact of life. In complex systems that exist in complex environments, things can and will go wrong. As a leader, you need to think about how you react when things go wrong. An ex-manager of mine, who was a brilliant mentor, used to say: "John just present the fa...

At times like this, I hate social media: the ugly side of many people starts to show via this brutally honest mirror. Notes: The world is a bit crazy right now, with all of the ongoing wars. At times like this I hate social media: the ugly side of many people starts to show via this brutally honest mirror we all carry around in our pockets. My X feed this week was not only full of horrific videos,...

This week my web search engine greppr came under a bot attack, in this episode I will discuss what happened and how I fixed it. Notes: Leaders, all of your problems are people problems. Mostly due to their poor communication skills. This week a senior colleague got annoyed with me for not turning up to a meeting: With a person I never heard of. At a place and time I never received an invite for. P...

This week my web search engine greppr came under a bot attack, in this episode I will discuss what happened and how I fixed it. Notes: I am running late this week due to exhaustion. Last week, my web search engine greppr.org was attacked by a bot. Initially I thought it was real traffic: I seen search queries coming in from multiple IPs, that on first impressions looked like real traffic. However...

Sometimes software engineers need to do sales, so we might as well get good at it. Notes: This week an engineering colleague and I found ourselves in an unplanned sales pitch. We scheduled a call to discuss post-production support of our application with one of our customers, and found that the customer in question was not bought into the application at all. Their basic response can be summarized...

I done a cross-post of one of my blog entries on X (Twitter) and Hacker News this week, and got significantly better results from Hacker News. As a small content creator, X is doing nothing for me right now. Notes: This week I done an interesting experiment using a blog entry I wrote. Ref: https://techleader.pro/a/609-Business-leadership-requires-unpopular-decisions I posted the same blog on my X...

Once one understands the dynamics of a group, they can influence it from inside or outside of that group. Group dynamics often result in individuals following a bad path, simply because the rest of their group are doing it. Notes: This week I wrote a blog on why we should all be weary of group dynamics: https://techleader.pro/a/607-Beware-of-group-dynamics In this podcast, I want to expand on that...

The internet is now the industrial group-think complex. No matter how outlandish someone's beliefs are, group support is available online. Notes: For some people, nothing is real until it's posted on social media for affirmation. The affirmation comes from online echo chambers, that grow organically when like-minded people find each other online with similar bias. The confirm each other's bias, gi...

As a leader you will often have to operate in a hostile environment, and employ a reasonable degree of hostility to survive. In this podcast, I will discuss the darker power plays that you may employ sparingly. Notes: I made a post on X during the week about the subtle art of power plays: https://twitter.com/TechLeaderPro/status/1691932765783019743 Sometimes leadership is closer to open conflict t...

Tesla are being hit with another lawsuit, this time about their claimed battery range of their cars. The reality is these are range estimates not guarantees, and are based on optimal conditions. Notes: There is a new class action lawsuit against Tesla over their range claims. The lawsuit alleges that Tesla "marketed its electric vehicles as having a grossly overvalued range in an effort to increas...

Today I am going discuss why a leader needs to be a great at meetings, and to leverage these opportunities to communicate to the fullest. Topics: Whether we love them or not, meetings are a fact of life, so we might as well get good at them. We discussed three main types of meetings: the briefing, the workshop, and the one-to-one. There are other types, but these are the main ones. We also discuss...

In an information-rich environment, with a lot of loud background noise, each of us needs to have our own built-in triage mechanism. Without it, we can become overwhelmed with noise. Notes: Information flow can be overwhelming Recently in a production support context, I become acutely aware of this. The challenge here is reliably telling signal from noise. Triage is the process of telling a seriou...

I have seen many instances both in my career, and in life in general, of garbage statistics presented in reports being accepted on face value. Why is this, and what can we do to challenge it? Notes: In my teams we deal with very large volumes of data, but in a controlled ecosystem. Even with controls in place, I regularly see statistical reports from different sources that contradict each other on...

In my opinion, all existing social media fediverse implementations are a not truly free, because if they can ban a user or block an instance, they have central authority. I believe web3 technologies like blockchains have a role to play in building a true fediverse, let me explain. Notes: According to their website, Meta intend to make Threads part of the Fediverse: "Our plan is to make Threads par...

Last week Twitter gave their millions of users a lesson on the impacts of rate limiting a service. In this episode, I will discuss why that was an incredibly ham-fisted way of tackling web scraping. Notes: Early on Saturday afternoon, European time, I started to get error messages on the Twitter mobile website that read: "Sorry, you are rate limited. Please wait a few moments, then try again.". Re...

This week I read a headline about why its a bad idea for young people to start a company in Ireland. I agree with this, but would broaden that out to the entire EU. Today I want to discuss why that is, and why those challenges do not exist in the US to the same degree. Notes: This week I read an article about why its a bad idea for young people to start a company in Ireland. I agree with this, but...

Whether we acknowledge it or not, our reputation proceeds us into a room like a forward-facing shadow. If people look forward to your arrival, or dread it, is up to you. Reputational harm occurs when you completely neglect that reputation. Notes: This week I have been thinking a lot about reputational harm, and how a leader's reputation proceeds them. Whether we acknowledge it or not, our reputati...

There are two main ways to discover new knowledge online: active via research, and passive via social network feeds. This week I want to explore why passive is becoming the dominant way, and why this is undesirable. Notes: The ultimate goal of the internet, for me, is to discover new knowledge and get smarter. It was originally presented as the greatest library in the World. At a high level, there...

Lately I have been thinking a lot about how much time I spend on my smart phone, and how over time, those phones have become the de facto master keys for our lives. Is that even desirable? Notes: Recently thinking about why the mobile phone has become our master key in life. This stems from some recent test drives I done on EVs, many of which can be accessed via an app of your phone rather than a...

I have just launched greppr, a new web search engine that has no filters, no tracking, no ads. The service is a public beta, with a small index and feature set, but that will grow over time and your feedback is very welcomed! Note: Limited to basic search: no time ranges, sorting, or spell checking implemented yet. Limited to approximately 1 million documents. That will grow. Limited to just text...

As an experiment this week, I decided to uninstall the Twitter app from my phone, to force myself to reduce my time on the platform. Let's see how I got on in my attempt to spend my evenings on more productive projects. Notes: I've removed the Twitter app from my phone this week, to reduce my time on social media. I am not dropping completely, but just reducing my time on Twitter, especially in th...

Today I am going to discuss the recent AI hoax that impacted upon the Irish Times, resulting in them mistakenly publishing an opinion piece by a contributor that did not exist, and why I believe it was actually social engineering and not AI that was to blame. Topics: Last week, the Irish Times was duped into publishing an article on their website that was claimed to be at least partly generated wi...

Today I am going share my experiences of working with recruiters for many years in the tech industry, from the perspective of a hiring manager. I will discuss what makes a bad recruiter, and what makes a great one, and why it is all based on trust. Topics: I gave my perspective of working with different recruiters over many years of being a hiring manager, both good and bad. I hire based on attitu...