Welcome back to I'm a Software Engineer ~ What Next? The podcast for devs figuring out their next move. Hosted by James Wilson and Matt Sinclair, we talk honestly about what it takes to build a meaningful career in tech.
This week we're joined by Les Cochrane, CTO at Practice Toolkit, building software for GPs inside the NHS. Les started in hardware, networks and second-line IT support, switched to interactive media at uni, did UX before anyone called it UX, taught himself the backend on a Rails app he built to replace the FTP site at a marketing agency, and then co-founded BorrowMyDoggy on the back of a weekend hackathon. After that: contracting, leading 24 engineers in sports data at IMG Arena (including being the employee rep when they had to let go of about 180 of them), and now CTO at a healthcare startup learning what compliance means for the first time.
In this episode, we cover:
- Validating his startup that he co-founded (BorrowMyDoggy) by sticking posters up on Hampstead Heath and having someone in Exeter sign up within 24 hours
- What happens when 4,500 people sign up in an hour to a landing page that doesn't have a working search yet
- Why "I need help" is the wrong way to ask for help, and what to say instead
- Product engineer vs T-shaped vs Kent Beck's paint-drip people, and why time matters in the metaphor
- Going from leading 24 engineers to being the employee rep during a 180-person redundancy
- AI as a force multiplier "for good or evil" — and why introducing it into a six-month-release shop won't help
- The LLM-generated PR quiz that makes you answer 10 questions about your own checked-in code before it merges
- Centaur chess, supertanker captains, and Kahneman's type-3 thinking: cognitive offload and what we lose
⏱️ Chapters
- 0:00 Intro: maths t-shirts and pub trivia odds
- 1:53 Meet Les Cochrane: IT support, UX, BorrowMyDoggy, IMG Arena, Practice Toolkit
- 3:59 The BorrowMyDoggy elevator pitch
- 7:35 Validating the idea on Hampstead Heath: 4,500 signups in an hour
- 10:38 The magic telephone: advice to his 25-year-old self
- 13:31 How to ask for help: "I tried this and it failed"
- 15:10 Go find good people: Forward and ThoughtWorks
- 18:43 Why move from UX into software engineering?
- 21:26 Majors and minors, and teaching himself the backend in Rails
- 24:32 What is a product engineer? T-shaped vs Kent Beck's paint-drip people
- 28:30 Polyglot programming: the language shapes the idea
- 34:58 IMG Arena: leading 24 engineers and platform thinking
- 37:48 180 redundancies and being the employee rep
- 38:51 Did you ever plan to be a CTO?
- 40:36 AI as a force multiplier, for good or evil
- 43:50 Centaur chess: augment humans, don't replace them
- 47:23 The two extremes of the AI debate: the carpenter and the band saw
- 49:05 Cognitive offload: do you need to know how a linker works?
- 50:49 The LLM-generated PR quiz
- 52:30 Steering the ship: supertanker captains and type-3 thinking
- 54:49 Whisper, voice notes and thinking out loud
- 57:26 Wrap-up: a record ten show notes
🔗 Links
🗒️ Show Notes
- Stop Writing Documents Nobody Reads — Mike Jones, loveholidays tech
- Paul Ingles — LinkedIn posts
- Elixir's With Statement
- The Comprehensive Guide to Elixir's for Comprehension
- Why LLM-Powered Programming is More Mech Suit Than Artificial Human
- matthewsinclair/intent on GitHub
- What We Let Machines Do
- When Thinking Isn't Just Fast or Slow Anymore — The Rise of System 3
- From Engineering Bootcamps & Founding Startups to GitHub with Kate Catlin
- Aphantasia — When You Can't Picture Things in Your Mind
🗣️ Guest
- Les Cochrane — https://www.linkedin.com/in/lescochrane/
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