A new adventure
Since I wrote last month, I’ve been doing a lot more thinking about the future and have finally decided what’s next for me.
For the last few months, I’ve been working as a contractor at a company called Gower Street Analytics: a really interesting start up in the movie business that predicts the global cinema box office. I’ve been working remotely from home each day alongside a small team of developers, learning Clojure and ClojureScript, pairing with tmux, vim and appear.in, building tools for film analysts and planning cool new research with my co-workers.
At first it was simply a great way to get back on my feet after the Ealdorlight Kickstarter failed, but I’ve been drawn into both the data analytics work and the fantastic team that’s been assembled at the company. The people I’m working with are smart, humble and focused. Much of my coding, training and coaching has been solitary for the last four and a half years, and it’s been great programming in a team again, especially one this good.
In fact, I’ve enjoyed it so much that I’ve decided to accept the CTO position, and will be leading the technical team there full-time from the new year.
This move does change my relationship with the games industry. I’ve always been a part time indie developer, coaching and advising technical leaders to pay the bills. At one time I hoped I might rely on video games for all my income - this move represents a shift away from that goal for now. Despite this, I’ve some side projects I’d love to work on, and will continue working on Sol Trader in a hobbyist fashion. There will still be Sol Trader updates when I can manage them - I’m in the middle of preparing the latest one.
This is my first full-time role since I closed Eden seven years ago, and it’s great to be back in a leadership position in a growing company with a great team. There’s loads to do and I’m excited to begin talking more about the interesting work we’ve been doing - you’ll hear more from me in future about that.
If you’re looking for a great new permanent position in a remote team, which cares about code quality, working together well and doing things right, then get in touch.
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How to Build a Robust LLM Application
Last month at Cherrypick we launched a brand new meal generator that uses LLMs to create personalized meal plans.
It has been a great success and we are pleased with the results. Customers are changing their plans 30% less and using their plans in their baskets 14% more.
However, getting to this point was not straightforward, and we learned many things that can go wrong when building these types of systems.
Here is what we learned about building an LLM-based product that actually works, and ends up in production rather than languishing in an investor deck as a cool tech demo.
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As someone who lives an hour and a half from my London office, I love working from home. I can help my teenagers out of the door in the morning, and I am present when the family comes home. I can have coffee with my wife Ellie before we start work. I prepare dinner during my lunch break, and receive deliveries. I can contribute more effort during my day to Cherrypick, free from distractions, interruptions and the long commute. I would struggle to work effectively five days a week in London.
I also love working from the office. It is an opportunity to spend real time with the people I work with. Communication is easier and I spend less time on screens. I can train less experienced colleagues much more efficiently than video chat. I can ask for and give advice and help in person, cutting down long feedback cycles. I would struggle to work effectively five days a week from home.
Much of the debate around hybrid working appears to be a zero sum argument about why working from home is “better” or “worse”, and why working in the office is “more” or “less” productive.
One is not better than the other; they are just different. I think we need both for a balanced life.
Here are some pointers for how to have a productive conversation about hybrid in your team.
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Startup CTOs or founding developers are the first technical people in the business. It is natural to think your job is to write code and build software. This is backwards.
Your first job is not to build software. Your role is to use your technical expertise to help the startup figure out fast if you have a valid solution to a compelling problem, and then a valid product for a big enough market.
You might do this through building software, but you might not need to.
Here is a story of how I did this wrong, and how you can do it right.
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Perhaps you are a technical co-founder who has managed to raise funding and you have been catapulted into the startup life. Perhaps you have just been brought in to handle the startup’s tech after the first round came in.
As the CTO, or the most senior technology person in the company, there are so many calls on your attention at this stage.
There is plenty of interesting new tech to build. There are potential customers to speak to (hopefully). There are investors to keep updated, who will want to know when the company is going to grow. There are people to hire. It can feel like you are drowning in possibility.
In the midst of all of that, we neglect this one thing at our peril.
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It has been a long time since I wrote on this blog. Roughly 10% of the world’s population wasn’t even alive yet when I last posted - that’s sobering!
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