What has been your business highlight of 2022?
Taking the entire CTS company to Spain in late Spring. It felt genuinely superb to get together again in person and reconnect with old faces and build some new relationships.
If you were ruler of your own country, what law would you introduce first?
I would urgently make it illegal to send chat messages that say "Hi", and then nothing else, closely followed by a law that permits only people with serious industry expertise in a given area to be a government minister in said area.
Which channel or tech leader (outside of your own company) has impressed you most in 2022?
I continue to enjoy reading the high-quality content created by Charity Majors (co-founder of Honeycomb, an Observability platform).
If you had a warning label, what would it say?
"Impatient."
What was your first job?
If I ignore student and summer jobs (which included fishmongery, soldering electricity meters on a production line, and customer support at a DVD chipping company among others...), my first full-time role was as a software engineer. If anyone has ever heard of Centura as a programming language, I will be impressed.
What was the last book you read, and was it any good?
Non-fiction: Flying Blind, which narrates the woes of Boeing and their move away from a safety-first culture. Yes, it was good. Fiction: With a Mind to Kill, one of the newer James Bond novels. It served a purpose of whiling away some travel time.
What's the most important lesson you've learned from another business leader or mentor?
That you can achieve anything if you only hire smart people, and never compromise on those recruitment standards. Via James Monico, co-founder of Cloudreach.
Who would play you in a movie of your life?
Tom Hardy seems versatile, but unclear if he could grow the beard?
