Hi ,

If you came up to talk to me after our session at JCON this week, thank you. The conversations afterwards, over coffee, in the hallway, at the bar later, were the part of the conference I will remember longest. Elma and I spent months on that talk, and seeing it land with people who recognised themselves in it meant a great deal.

A few of you asked for the slides. Here they are:

Slides

The link will stay live, so feel free to pass it on to colleagues who couldn't make it.

If you weren't at JCON, the talk is part of an ongoing project Elma and I have been working on about how senior developers can navigate the AI transition without losing themselves in the process. One idea from the talk has been pulling at me ever since: the AI Shepherd. We only had a couple of minutes for it on stage, and I knew it deserved more.

So I wrote about it.

The Code Was Always the Door is a field guide for senior developers on the role I think we are evolving into. It opens with the doorman fallacy from Rory Sutherland's Alchemy, argues that your seniority is the moat in this transition rather than the liability, and breaks the work of being an AI Shepherd into four things: reading the terrain, choosing the path, watching for predators, and tending the flock. Each one anchored in a story from my own work.

Read it. Tell me what you disagree with. And as always, if you reply to this email, I see it.

Thank you again for being here.

Enjoy,

Markus