The Technology Executive

Teams across the market are smaller than they were two years ago and getting more done. Almost all of them have the same hole: nobody junior. That gap didn't start with AI. Long before generative AI, a lot of companies were already avoiding junior hires, because junior people are difficult and expensive to develop : years of mentoring, tolerance for mistakes, a willingness to pay someone to learn on the job. The youth unemployment numbers have been ugly for a while because of it; recent college graduates were already unemployed at roughly 5.6%, well above the 4.2% national rate , before you even get to AI. AI isn't creating that problem. It's making it worse, because the junior work, drafting the first pass, pulling the data, writing the routine ticket response, is exactly the work AI now does before a human touches it. The debate about AI and jobs keeps getting framed as one question: does AI take jobs, yes or no. That framing is already wrong, and the data coming out thi...

Open your feed this week and you'll find two competing panics: Today, its AI is about to take everyone's job and previously it was that companies suddenly need everyone back in the office. We had that second argument for three straight years before AI showed up. I want to set the headlines aside and look at this the way an economist would: what is a salary actually buying, and does AI change the answer. That's a more useful question than either panic, and it's the one that actually determines what happens to anyone's pay. You're Paying for Time, Outcomes, or Units. Pick One. Hourly pay is honest about what it is: you're buying a block of a person's time at a given skill level. There's no ambiguity to resolve when a tool makes that person faster. Fewer hours, less pay, full stop, assuming the work still gets done to standard. A salary is a different contract, whether anyone wrote it down this way or not. It's closer to fixed-price consultin...

Nobody Has Priced This Yet In my day-to-day, I speak to leaders at lots of consulting firms and we keep ending up in the same conversation: what do we do about AI and pricing? The problem is not that there is no answer. The problem is that there are too many, and every one of them assumes something that may not be true: that the consulting firm can actually manage the cost of AI in the first place. That is a big assumption for an industry where, by micro-segment, plenty of firms are a few bad months from closing their doors. Layer on the fact that clients want projects faster and cheaper while firms are trying to protect or grow margin, and you have a genuine standoff. AI does not resolve that tension. It just gives both sides a new variable to fight over. The Fee Nobody Wants to Admit Is a Rate Cut The first instinct I see is a technology fee, a separate line item for the AI tooling. I dislike it the most. It has the same feel as a baggage fee or a credit card surcharge: I am b...

What Soren Kaplan Gets Right, and Where I'd Push Back I read Soren Kaplan's recent Inc. column arguing that consulting disruption has finally arrived, that once AI can generate a strategic plan or synthesize market trends in seconds, the rules of what clients pay for change completely. He's right about the direction. After nearly three decades in this industry, and the last few years watching AI move through dozens of engagements alongside consulting partners of every size, I'd push back on the timeline, and on what's actually being disrupted. Buyer Expectations vs. Consulting Realities Procurement has been told, by vendors, by analysts, by their own boards, that AI should be cutting consulting costs dramatically by now. Consulting firms have been told to adopt AI or get disrupted. The savings clients budgeted for still haven't materialized at the scale they were promised, and that's the gap: procurement asking where the savings are, delivery explainin...

Beyond the Waterfall: How Veteran IT Leaders Can Bridge the Agility Gap Over nearly three decades in IT leadership and consulting, I’ve had a front-row seat to the most profound technological shifts in modern history. I’ve worked with global corporations and nimble NGOs, witnessing firsthand the patterns of success and failure. Through it all, I’ve come to recognize a quiet, yet powerful, paradox: the very experience that forges a successful career can, if we’re not careful, become an anchor in an ocean of relentless change. Many of us built our careers on the bedrock of predictable, structured methodologies. We were the architects of certainty, implementing massive ERP systems and managing multi-year projects with the discipline of a military campaign. But the ground has shifted beneath our feet. The pace of innovation has outstripped our traditional playbooks, creating a critical "agility gap" that threatens to make our hard-won wisdom obsolete. This isn't a question of...

Navigating the Shifting Sands: Why IT Leaders Must Overcome Knowledge Inertia Imagine a seasoned SaaS consultant confidently pitching features that are already outdated. This isn't a hypothetical scenario; it’s a symptom of a pervasive problem in the tech world: Knowledge Inertia. This is the tendency for individuals and organizations to cling to familiar, often obsolete, information and practices. It's not just an individual failing; it's an organizational challenge that stifles innovation, creates a competitive disadvantage, and causes professionals to fall off the "knowledge cliff"—the perilous gap between what we think we know and the reality of current best practices. As a veteran IT executive and consultant with nearly three decades in the industry, I've seen firsthand the crippling effects of clinging to the past. This post will dissect Knowledge Inertia, explore its roots, and offer actionable insights for IT leaders to cultivate the agility needed f...

Remote Work: The New Rules of Engagement for IT & Consulting Professionals The concept of remote work is not new. For decades, global corporations and pioneering industries have built successful distributed teams, proving that talent and impact are not bound by geography. However, the recent, large-scale shift has accelerated this evolution, moving remote work from a niche practice to a mainstream operational model. This transition has rewritten the professional social contract, especially for those in high-stakes, high-collaboration fields like IT and consulting. The casual, in-office interactions that once smoothed over communication gaps and fostered a sense of shared purpose are gone. In their place is a new reality that demands a more intentional, disciplined, and strategic approach to work. This is not a temporary trend. This is the new-normal. And to succeed in it, we must understand and master the new rules of engagement. This guide, built on extensive research and best pra...