iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

Remember that feeling as a junior dev learning the ropes and wondering what’s possible? Best feeling you have in your career IMO. I never thought I’d have that feeling again, but Claude, LLMs, are giving me that feeling again, and it’s exciting. I’m wondering what’s possible all over again.

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

I’ve been having a whole heap of fun with Claude and Opus 4.5. Really impressive stuff. The speed at which we can get feedback has never been faster.

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

The Staff+ role is a fascinating place to be. Sometimes you feel accountable for everything yet nothing at the same time.

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 10/11/2025

I would really love to see some reputable studies on the use of AI in software engineering I could read and reference. Does anyone have any steers on where I should look?

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

I often find this role is misunderstood and, in my experience, one of the reasons “management” question the AAP. The reality is all of the decisions would’ve have happened anyway, just without the transparency and appropriate conversations happening. Take your pick, I know which I’d prefer.

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 13/10/2025

Just a small amount of facilitation training would go a huge way in a lot of orgs.

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

GenAI is a lot like an organisation with low psychological safety. It will try its best to please you, it won’t challenge you, and when I can’t please you with the truth it will make something up that’s untrue just to satisfy your demands . Yes I am on a train with too much time in my hands.

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

We need to get better at working with complexity, not flattening it just to feel in control and “productive”. That’s where real judgment, and leadership live. Anything less isn’t simplification, it’s avoidance. And in my book, that’s piss poor leadership.

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

It’s easier to follow a familiar metric than to re-engage with the messy, complex reality it once tried to represent.

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

The real danger? Once a metric’s in place, it builds inertia. It shapes how we talk, what we value, and what we ignore. Even when it’s no longer useful, we keep following it.

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

“Data-driven decisions” sound smart, but too often it just means letting incomplete or poorly framed data make the decision for us. We forget data is only ever a piece of the picture, useful, but never the whole story.

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

But in simplifying it all, we lose the nuance that actually matters. We stop thinking deeply, because the numbers look “fine.”

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

We’ve got this habit, especially in work and leadership, of turning complex, messy, human stuff into clean, objective metrics. It makes things feel manageable, like we’re in control.

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

“Vibe coding”… Phrases like this just make me want to get out of tech. My god. A bit dramatic, I know, but, I don’t love the direction our industry is headed at the moment. Short-termism in full effect. It’s going to be an interesting few years, that’s for sure.

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 16/03/2025

No easy fix, but it’s a cycle that keeps repeating. Would love to hear from folks who’ve seen this done well.

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 16/03/2025

Maybe the answer isn’t big bang migrations but an evolution over revolution approach, gradually modernising and integrating systems instead of assuming a clean break will ever be realistic.

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 16/03/2025

The result? Companies end up supporting multiple systems indefinitely, missing out on the efficiencies they aimed for.

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 16/03/2025

It’s a pattern I see all the time. A company merges, or a new system is built. “All new customers will be on the new platform!” But what about the existing ones? Migration is always underestimated in complexity, cost, and risk. So it drags, or never happens.

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 16/03/2025

Just spent way too long on the phone with EE renewing broadband. The classic story: new customer deals vs. renewal pricing games. But what really stood out? How long it took them to even find my account. Turns out, I’m on their “legacy” system, it took a good 30 minutes of my time.

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Reposted by Michael Gray

Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 13/03/2025

Psychological safety is NOT about lack of disagreement. Psychological safety REQUIRES: * disagreement and debate * setting standards for behavior and performance, and enforcing them * telling people things they don't want to hear * courage, from the bottom up * humility, from the top down

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 24/02/2025

Thank you for your AI generated response.

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 24/02/2025

“Indeed, AI remains only as good as the data on which it was trained, and the increasing volume of data on the internet being generated by AI risks making it less, not more, reliable.” - and here lies the fundamental flaw with gen AI.

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

Business/product uncertainty directly increases the complexity of the systems we produce, both software and organisational. I have no hard evidence this is true but I’m convinced it is.

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

I can relate, I still hate being told what to do now, especially if I do no understand they why. 😅 With direct interaction, what if you reframe it from advice/instruct, to being curious and asking questions that make them think more deeply. Would that change your perspective on direct interaction?

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

Why do you think you lean that way?

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

We should. The other aspect to this is it’s part of our role to ensure the system they work within is not constraining. I.e. they feel they can. If the conditions are wrong we can encourage them all we want, but they won’t be able to.

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

Global vs local optimisations. The impossible balance 😅

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

But shaping the future means thinking beyond that, seeing what’s possible before it’s obvious. Real change happens over time. It’s about shifting mindsets, evolving ways of thinking, and guiding people on a journey.

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

And the challenge? Explaining why now doesn’t always land well with people, because their mindset is constrained present, not the possibilities of the future. Most people are focused on today’s problems, immediate priorities, and what they see in front of them.

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

It’s about thinking strategically, having a perspective on where we should be going, and shaping how we get there. That means influencing a future that looks different from today.

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

The premium’s going to be on folks who can design, maintain, and evolve sustainable systems. Big-picture thinkers who connect the dots. These skills are only going to become more and more valuable.

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

Code is the easy part, especially now that AI is getting better and better at generating it. But AI still can’t fundamentally reason, no matter what the latest ChatGPT claims. And here’s the thing, writing the code was never the hard part.

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

The is role seeing the business domain clearly, translating it into technical decisions, having strong people and influencing skills, and approaching everything with a systems mindset.

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

One of my former colleagues asked how important it is for staff/principal engineers to be tech agnostic. My opinion is we should be and largely already are. The real value is understanding fundamentals, they translate to any technology.

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

One hundred percent, all of this.

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 14/01/2025

Oh I love the train for focus time, just never, and I mean, never, reserve the time for anything that requires any form of stable internet connection.

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

It’s not just Twitter for me… it’s pretty much any social media. Everywhere is full of misinformation. It’s getting harder and harder to know what sources you can/can’t trust anymore.

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 09/01/2025

In the end, it’s not just the right thing to do, it’s a competitive advantage.

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 09/01/2025

Organisations that take advantage of this fear to squeeze more out of their people might see short-term gains but will ultimately be left behind. Now is the time to double-down and invest in fostering trust, encouraging challenge, and creating a culture of safety.

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 09/01/2025

Psychological safety is at an all-time low in organisations, largely driven by a macroeconomic climate resulting in a challenging job market. When people are more focused on keeping their jobs than challenging the status quo, innovation and continuous improvement become significantly harder.

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

I’m getting _a lot_ of follows from random accounts on here, that I’m not convinced are real. Anyone else? Have the Twitter bots come to invade BlueSky now too?

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 12/11/2024

or identify the global optimisations that will benefit the whole system and help make it happen. Still, the impossible balance…

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 12/11/2024

The impossible balance… I love this topic, local optimisation at the expense of global and vice versa. This is a huge part of staff+ roles, to help find this balance in organisations by providing context to teams to make better local decisions that benefit the system as a whole…

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 12/11/2024

My QCon talk is available now for those folks who are interested. Really, it’s a talk about how we’ve optimised for flow over the years, from how we’re organised and interact, to how we make architectural decisions at scale - bit.ly/4fDFXS4

bit.ly

The Journey of ClearBank From Start-Up To Scale-Up

Michael Gray discusses how ClearBank has balanced autonomy and process in its engineering teams who faced increased demands due to departmental expansion and a complex regulatory environment.

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 09/11/2024

As a dog owner I’d be really pleased if fireworks were restricted to ONLY the night of the celebration/festivity. Poor thing.

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Michael Gray @mikegraycodes.bsky.social · 03/11/2024

So, this is the place to be now is it? Happy to see lots of old faces. Hopefully this can fill the hole Twitter left that Mastodon couldn’t quite fill!

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