When I came across a recent Harvard Business Review article on the hidden penalty of using AI at work, it wasn’t the AI part that stood out to me, even though I’m studying this very topic as part of my Master’s of Engineering. Yes, the AI findings were interesting, but what stopped me in my tracks was something else: the “competence penalty” women pay. The research put numbers to it: The competence penalty was more than twice as severe for female engineers, who faced a 13% reduction...| Annie Vella
A few weeks ago, I had a conversation that’s stayed with me. A colleague from another department said: “I’ve always been able to read and understand code, even debug it, but I could never write it.” Something about this revelation stayed with me. Most people I’ve met outside the software engineering world tend to describe code as unintelligible - like hieroglyphics. I guess that’s why I’ve always assumed: if someone couldn’t write code, they probably couldn’t read it either....| Annie Vella
The recent releases of Claude Code and OpenAI Codex caught my attention, but not for the reasons you might expect. I was puzzled by the enthusiasm they’ve generated. These are, after all, terminal tools. In an era where graphical IDEs dominate, with tools like Cursor, Windsurf, and VSCode evolving toward ever-more seamless integrations, like ‘Design Mode’, why are we getting excited about terminal-based AI coding tools that feel like a step backwards?| Annie Vella
We don’t talk enough about the feeling of learning something deeply - the slow, sometimes frustrating and painful process that forges real intuition. As software engineers, we know this feeling intimately. The slow burn of mastering a new concept or language. The pressure and anxiety of resolving your first production issue. The endless hours spent debugging a complex system that just won’t work - until, at last, it does. And how that struggle itself is the point: it’s what transforms a...| Annie Vella
In an era where tech stacks grow ever more complex and teams become increasingly specialised, there’s profound wisdom to be found in looking back at simpler, more effective approaches. I’ve been meaning to write about my experience at Trade Me for years. Earlier this week, I attended the launch of Rowan Simpson’s new book, How to Be Wrong. Rowan hired me into his team at Trade Me back in 2006, and to my delight, I even earned a mention in his book! That unexpected recognition, along wit...| Annie Vella
Earlier this year, Lovable celebrated their biggest milestone yet - more than 12,000 (!) new projects created in a single day. The very next day, they went down. The irony? Their success became their downfall. Each new project in Lovable requires a new GitHub repository, and this surge - thousands per day - put such strain on GitHub’s infrastructure that it risked affecting GitHub’s entire platform. Their on-call engineer had to make the difficult decision to suspend Lovable’s account, ...| Annie Vella
I’ve now spent a couple of months using Windsurf fairly regularly and I thought I’d share some of my experiences with it. To set the scene, I’m a software engineer with over 20 years experience. I have a degree in Computer Science and Math and spent the first half of my career in hands-on individual contributor roles across 7 industries and 4 countries. I would generally describe myself as a C# .NET backend dev but I’ve built my fair share of frontends and even some mobile apps. I’v...| Annie Vella
The concept of agentic AI absolutely fascinates me. An LLM on its own is already mind-blowing, but building much larger systems where hundreds of specialised LLMs work together as components, with yet another LLM orchestrating how it all works, is a whole other world. The possibilities for automation are endless. At the end of the day, software systems are just components stitched together to perform seemingly complex tasks, but the logic behind it all is very deterministic. As software engin...| Annie Vella
2024 was a massive year for me, and even that feels like an understatement. I pushed myself to my limits in many ways, but have enjoyed every second of it. After all, if you’re comfortable, you’re not growing, right? My passion for continuous learning kicked into overdrive these past couple of years, leading me down fascinating intellectual paths. Could it be that AI has helped make information more accessible? Or is it that I’ve finally found my calling? I can’t really say for sure, ...| Annie Vella
Apologies, this is a long one - clearly I’ve got a lot to say on this subject! It didn’t take long after ChatGPT was released for me to start seeing how fundamentally this technology could transform software engineering. Not just as another tool in our arsenal, but as something that could redefine what it means to be a software engineer entirely. The discourse around this has been fascinating. Jump on LinkedIn or X and you’ll see endless debates about whether AI will augment or replace ...| Annie Vella
We live in an era where rapid solutions are celebrated. The quicker we solve a problem, the more productive we appear. But what if, in our rush to get to a resolution, we’re missing the mark entirely? Albert Einstein’s timeless quote, “If I were given one hour to save the planet, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute resolving it”, resonates deeply in today’s fast-paced, technology-driven world.| Annie Vella
Learning: IBM Quantum Learning Learn quantum programming with PennyLane Programming: IBM Qiskit Google Cirq Microsoft Q# YouTube: Quantum Computing for Computer Scientists Understanding Quantum Information & Computation| Annie Vella
This page contains links to curated collections of resources that I have found useful for learning about topics that I’m passionate about. I’ll keep adding to them so check back regularly for updates. W. Edwards Deming Quantum Computing| Annie Vella
I’ve always loved sharing my knowledge and experiences with others, but I didn’t always have the courage to step onto a stage. In 2023, I decided to face my fear of public speaking head-on, embracing the mantra “practice makes better.” Since then, I’ve jumped at every opportunity to talk about topics I’m passionate about, and it’s been an incredibly rewarding journey. Engaging with diverse minds at conferences and meetups has been especially fulfilling.| Annie Vella
I’ve been contemplating the concept of agentic AI for a while now. The idea that we can create specialised AI agents, each mastering a specific task, and have them work together iteratively struck me as a powerful way to really harness the power of AI to tackle complex problems. After all, that’s how teams of humans working together accomplish amazing outcomes, right? I first encountered Auto-GPT over a year ago and was intrigued enough to join their Discord community. At that time, the c...| Annie Vella
In June 2024, I had the privilege of travelling from Auckland, New Zealand, to speak at StaffPlus London - an unforgettable experience. Speaking at such a high-profile event, surrounded by so many talented Staff+ Engineers, was truly special. What made this event particularly memorable wasn’t just the prominence of the event but the opportunity to share something that has become deeply important to me: how the timeless teachings of W. Edwards Deming remain as relevant today as ever in the c...| Annie Vella
Learning about Deming has led me to another incredible thinker - Russell Ackoff. Born in 1919, Ackoff is best known for his contributions to Systems Thinking. In one of his lectures, From Mechanistic to Systemic Thinking, Ackoff discusses systems and the difference between analysis and synthesis. He explains that the essential properties of a system are unique to the system as a whole. These properties arise from the interactions between the parts of the system. In other words, a system is mo...| Annie Vella
In the fast-paced world of tech, leadership styles can make or break an organisation’s success. Are you driving growth with a developmental mindset or merely maintaining the status quo with a transactional approach? One of the best books I’ve read recently is Gene Kim and Steven Spear’s Wiring the Winning Organisation. It distils many great leadership theories into clear, actionable concepts. At the very end of the book, in Appendices A and B, they talk about the differences between tra...| Annie Vella
General: The W. Edwards Deming Institute Books: Out of the Crisis - W. Edwards Deming (1982) The New Economics - W. Edwards Deming (1993) Deming’s Journey to Profound Knowledge - John Willis (2023) Podcasts: Profound Podcast - John Willis Videos: W. Edwards Deming - Rare Full-Length Interview - Feburary 1984| Annie Vella
Many of us became software engineers because we found our identity in building things. Not managing things. Not overseeing things. Building things. With our own hands, our own minds, our own code. But that identity is being challenged. AI coding assistants aren’t just changing how we write software - they’re fundamentally transforming who we are. We’re shifting from creators to orchestrators, from builders to overseers. From engineers to something that looks suspiciously like… managers.| Annie Vella