Jim Rand

Most of what I write comes from building things and seeing what breaks. 30+ years in enterprise tech. Started in network engineering, ended up leading AI and analytics initiatives because the interesting problems kept moving. Built analytics organizations from the ground up, designed data platforms, shipped predictive systems, and spent a lot of time in rooms explaining what the data meant to people who controlled budgets. Now I'm independent - that's the nice way of saying laid-off, unemployed, and furiously job hunting. Building AI tools and writing about the gap between AI hype and AI practice. I ship Claude Code plugins. I try to figure out how to make my side coding projects profitable. And I write about what I learn, mostly for people doing similar work who wonder if anyone else is running into the same walls. I write with AI assistance, and I'm upfront about it. The thinking is mine. The arguments are mine. The occasional bad joke is definitely mine. But I use AI tools in my writing process the same way I use them in my engineering work, and I think being honest about that matters more than pretending otherwise. My background is technical, but my writing generally isn't. If you're looking for someone who builds with these tools daily and writes honestly about what works, what doesn't, and what nobody's talking about yet, you might find something useful here.