https://rowehl.com/Mike Rowehl's personal blog 2026-10-04T16:25:20-07:00 Mike Rowehl https://rowehl.com/ Jekyll © 2026 Mike Rowehl /assets/img/favicons/favicon.ico /assets/img/favicons/favicon-96x96.png 2026-06-28T20:48:00-07:00 2026-06-28T20:48:00-07:00 https://rowehl.com/2026/06/28/when-the-ai-is-wrong.html Mike Rowehl

We had an interesting issue at work this past week. One of the developers flagged a problem that seemed to be network related. They had done all of the legwork to track it down, had some AI assistance to validate that the most likely problem was that we had some kind of network blocking in place, tried a few workarounds, and sent the details over to us when it seemed conclusive that it was a ne...

2026-06-21T09:38:00-07:00 2026-06-21T09:38:00-07:00 https://rowehl.com/2026/06/21/gradual-ai-transition.html Mike Rowehl

The use of AI across the company I’m working with is very uneven. There are some folks who use it constantly every day, and there are plenty of folks who I’m pretty sure have never even given it a serious try. I’m in the former group. I had to hop in and get up to speed pretty quickly while not being able to call on my team all that much. Everyone was underwater and didn’t really have the time ...

2026-06-13T15:48:00-07:00 2026-10-04T15:59:48-07:00 https://rowehl.com/2026/06/13/leadership-without-being-the-boss.html Mike Rowehl

I used to tell people that I was happy to help lead an effort, I just didn’t want to be in charge. Sometimes that would confuse people and it would take a while to explain. A long time ago a friend drew me a picture like this: And I’ve used something like it often over the years to explain what I mean. I’ve also seen some very Dilbert style versions where the boss has a whip instead, and the...

2026-04-05T16:00:00-07:00 2026-04-05T16:00:00-07:00 https://rowehl.com/2026/04/05/the-good-kind-of-political.html Mike Rowehl

As a technical person I’ve always had a pretty immediate negative reaction to anything “political”. I would just think of the negative aspects of a political work environment. Things like decisions being made based on who someone knows instead of the merit of an idea, and people driving projects based on their own advancement instead of the good of the company. And for a long time it kept me fr...

2026-03-19T20:43:00-07:00 2026-03-19T20:43:00-07:00 https://rowehl.com/2026/03/19/horsepower-and-torque.html Mike Rowehl

When I’m getting involved with something new I ask myself “does this need more horsepower or more torque”? I’m sure other people have different terms for the same set of considerations, but that comparison has worked well for me. Is the team already locked into something and cranking along well? Then this is a horsepower issue. Or do we need to establish a new practice and get get everyone alig...