The year 2025 is an interesting time to be a software engineer. For better or worse, GenAI continues to disrupt, in all of its equally beneficial and harmful ways that I've both witnessed and can foresee. I'm left with conflicting feelings about AI in general that range from optimism to pessimism and everything in-between. How I personally feel about it doesn't really matter, though. The industry has embraced GenAI and in order for me to compete and stay relevant, I need to elevate my craft and expand my toolbelt to stay on top of my game. This is the case with GenAI, and it will be the case after the next disruption. I already know this. So why haven't I yet?

While I have worked on a few experimental GenAI projects internally at Spotify, I did so because I had to. Sure, it was cool and interesting and new, but I haven't done much outside of that in my own time. I read into that as a measurement of my interest; if something is not a hobby of mine, I must not be interested 🤷🏾. But I am interested and I do want to learn more. I know this because I think about it daily, but what I don't do daily is take action. After an honest conversation with myself, the truth is I've been stagnant and lazy, often putting blame on my lack of free time. And while free time is much more limited these days, unless I become wealthy and retire tomorrow, the time constraint ain't going anywhere, fam. Not until I do something about it. I have way too many privileges to be complaining about time.

Here are three actions I'm already taking:

  1. Therapy. I can get in my own way unconsciously through poor habits. I need an expert with an unbiased perspective, opinion, and no attachments, to tell me the things I won't or am too afraid to tell myself.

  2. This blog. This will be an outlet for me to share thoughts and talk tech. It's also a public space to hold myself accountable, so I'm not just talking BS.

  3. Effort. Consciously put forth a focused effort into everything that I care about. Such as my relationships with God, my family, my craft, and most importantly myself.

While I'm here on this topic, I want to give a special shout out and thank you to my beautiful wife, Makeda, for all of your unconditional love and support 😘. You've always been right by my side, pushing and supporting me to be the best version of myself. Pushing me to create content, encouraging me to share my knowledge from my perspective, because you believe in me and my abilities. Thank you, I love you!

Okay, so I started this post talking about GenAI 😅. To get to the standard of understanding that my brain needs to be happy, I need to learn and understand not only how to use it, but also how it works under the hood, so that I can have the intuition to manipulate it, make practical use of it in any context, and hack around it when I need to get creative. This learning process will be fun, enlightening, boring, full of mistakes, and frustrating at times. It will be a grind. So be it. Stay tuned as I document this journey, among other things.

Relevant Music

This is one of my favorite songs by Big Sean. I feel like it captures the vibe of this post.