AI in Engineering, Hiring, and Data
I went home to Italy for Christmas.
On my flight back to SF, I watched Jersey Boys and it reminded me that talent does not protect you from a bad deal. Neither does a “successful” launch.
In the movie, the music works. The machine around it does not. Handshake agreements, surprise debts, and fuzzy ownership turn hit songs into a monthly argument about who gets paid.
I see the same pattern when a restaurant group rolls out mobile ordering and loyalty. The app goes live on time, signups jump 15-20%, everyone exhales.
Then 6 months later you learn the agency owns the code, the vendor owns the customer data, and every small change is a $40k change order because no one truly owned the outcome end to end.
This week the Financial Times is already talking about AI-made music and the royalty mess that follows. The tech is never the scary part. The unclear rights are.
It makes me wonder whether most “digital delays” are really contract problems showing up late.
…and if you were wondering: yes, “big girls don’t cry” has been stuck in my head for the past 3 days.