🤩Brett Willemsen

I've never liked the behaviour around tech debt. People just throw out "tech debt" as a scary boogeyman to spook people out into doing premature optimisation. There is good debt and bad debt. Not all debt is priced the same. You want to be thoughtful about what kinds of debt you take on and why and what the likely cost of that debt will be and what it's for and whether the return from that will be larger than the cost of the debt, but "tech debt" isn't the end of the conversation, its the beginning of one, and its not primarily a tech conversation, its a business one.

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One of the best parts of building JobAdder is seeing how it drives real results. Cityscape Recruitment now sources 33% of placements from their own database, thanks to custom dashboards, Temp Express, and seamless integrations with Timesheet Portal and Xero. Read the full story: https://lnkd.in/eYeqkfJJ

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So true! A sure symptom of being in a "feature factory" is when there's little to no iteration of launched features... They are always moving on, not much assessment of impact made, and little to no time spent reflecting on lessons learned.

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The '10x engineer' is a dangerous myth that actively harms technical leadership and team growth. As senior leaders, our real job isn't to be the smartest person in the room, but to make everyone else smarter. Chasing individual 'rockstars' might deliver short-term bursts, but it inevitably leads to burnout, knowledge silos, and fractured teams. It valorizes individual heroics over the systemic improvements that truly drive sustainable progress. This mindset often overlooks the crucial work of mentorship, process refinement, and infrastructure building that underpins high-performing organizations. True technical leadership is about *amplification*. It's about designing systems, cultures, and processes that elevate *everyone's* output. Instead of measuring individual contributions, let's focus on: 1. **Enabling psychological safety:** So every voice feels heard and valued. 2. **Fostering knowledge sharing:** Breaking down silos and building collective intelligence. 3. **Mentorship and growth paths:** Investing in the development of *all* engineers. 4. **Removing systemic blockers:** Paving the way for consistent, collective velocity. When we shift our focus from individual 'heroics' to collective amplification, we create exponentially more impact and a far more resilient, innovative engineering culture. How are you redefining technical success within your teams to move beyond the 10x myth? #TechLeadership #EngineeringCulture #SoftwareEngineering #TeamAmplification #LeadershipDevelopment #Beyond10x #TechLeadership #SoftwareEngineering

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I’m really happy to see more companies recognizing the benefits of React Native. HelloFresh recently shared how they’re managing their mobile tech, and their approach is clever. Instead of rewriting everything from scratch (which can be a nightmare), they chose a "Brownfield" strategy. Basically, they started integrating React Native screens directly into their existing native apps. The result? They can share code across their different brands (HelloFresh, Factor, etc.) and expect to ship features 3x faster. It really shows that React Native isn't just useful for new projects. It’s just as powerful when used within native apps to enhance what you already have. https://lnkd.in/enyKcRRM #ReactNative

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𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗚𝗼𝗼𝗱, 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗮𝗱 & 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗪𝗮𝘆 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱 #Jira has lost its way. Time to take what works and leave the rest behind. I hate to criticise fellow Aussies, but here goes. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗚𝗼𝗼𝗱 Feature-rich. Highly configurable. Plans is genuinely amazing. Timelines is solid. The app ecosystem works. Credit where it's due. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗮𝗱 The last UI overhaul was a disaster. Everything you don't need is in the left-hand nav. Everything you do need requires a horizontal scroll — try that on a mouse, even a good one. Dead links. Simple functions buried in obscure places. Features that were non-intuitive on day one and still are. And the fundamental problem with all GUI-based ticketing: it eats time. Opening tickets, filling in fields, clicking through workflows — it kills productivity. Automation helps, but only so far. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗪𝗮𝘆 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱 So how do you keep the good and dodge the bad? Build your own UI with only the features you actually use Feed it via Jira's APIs Run your own database for speed — stay async with Jira's servers Sound extreme? We've done something similar. I recently partnered with Jan J. from #Xware to architect and build a fully automated, GMP-compliant toolchain for deploying #Azure #MedicalDevice cloud infrastructure. Automated deployments. Automated validation. Full traceability from requirements through specifications to code. Automated PDF generation for the #SAP document management system. It was bespoke. It worked brilliantly. But that's the problem. What the industry actually needs is a fully configurable SaaS solution covering requirements, specifications, design, code, environments, and monitoring — all with built-in traceability and compliance. The technology exists. Teams like ours can build it bespoke. But it's not democratised. There's no economic payback for smaller companies. Crazy thinking? Or just ahead of the curve? Let me know.

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A lot of founders see funding as a 'safety net' of sorts, or like, something that gives them time... You'll hear things like "We have 2 years of runway so we've got plenty of time, we don't need to rush". While there might be *some* truth in that, and you should definitely never rush if it is going to cause chaos and/or a lack of focus - runway or investment is almost entirely about acceleration. It's like adding a turbo charger to your car - it doesn't mean you can drive slower than before and somehow still win the race, it's only useful if you use it to move faster and to create an advantage. Very very few founders I speak to actually understand this^ (And the ones that do almost always go on to be successful) Startups fail at an overwhelming rate, but startups built by founders that know what game they've signed up to play succeed far more frequently by an order of magnitude.

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