Rob Vretenar

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗻 “𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘃𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲” 𝗖𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀 𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗥𝗶𝘀𝗸𝘀: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗛𝗶𝗱𝗱𝗲𝗻 𝗖𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗗𝗮𝘆𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗦𝗮𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲 🌅 🌃 As conversations heat up about eliminating the biannual clock change and keeping Daylight Savings Time year‑round, there’s a risk that isn’t getting nearly enough attention - especially here in northern climates. If we lock into permanent DST, sunrise in mid‑winter would shift so late that many children would be walking to school in thr morning in complete darkness. As someone who has spent a long career in the Business Analysis realm, I’m wired to think about the second‑ and third‑order impacts of “good ideas” that seem simple on the surface. And this one carries a safety implication we can’t afford to overlook. 🚸🧒🦺 When we talk about modernization, convenience, or reducing disruption, we also need to talk about unintended consequences. A darker morning commute for kids - especially in communities where walking is the norm (such as here in Toronto) - isn’t a minor detail. It’s a real, physical safety risk. ⚠️⚠️⚠️ But there is a path forward. If governments move ahead with eliminating standard time, school boards should proactively consider later school start times 🕘. Not only would this help mitigate the darkness issue, but it aligns with growing research on adolescent sleep, alertness, and well‑being. It’s a rare opportunity to solve two problems at once. Progress shouldn’t come at the expense of safety. Sometimes the most responsible thing we can do is pause, zoom out, and ask: Who else does this affect, and how? That’s the lens I’ve always brought to my work - and it’s one we need now more than ever. #DaylightSavingsTime #StandardTime #PublicSafety #ChildSafety #NorthernCommunities #BusinessAnalysis #UnintendedConsequences #EducationPolicy #SchoolStartTimes #Leadership #UXMindset #HumanCentredDesign

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In 11 years of leading engineering teams, no one has ever voluntarily left one of mine. I've gone back and forth on whether to say that publicly. It's not a magic formula, I'm not the only reason people stayed, and honestly, engineers should feel safe to leave. But it's a pattern, and I don't think it's an accident. So for the past month, I've been quietly writing about what I think is going on: trust, psychological safety, shielding engineers from politics, resolving conflict without ego, and the small, unglamorous habits that make a team somewhere people want to stay. Three posts are up so far: → Why I'm Finally Writing About Leading Engineering Teams → The Experiences That Shape Us → The Other Candidate New posts every other week. If you lead engineers, I'd love to hear what's worked for you, and where you think I'm wrong. https://gregpike.net #EngineeringManagement #EngineeringLeadership #TeamCulture

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The narrative that Ai will destroy all jobs is something I am not buying into. In fact, I believe it is the opposite. There are so many processes that have yet to be addressed and Ai can help alleviate this generational backlog. For example, renewing a passport should be a 1 minute thing. In Canada, we use a tired process that takes us back to the 1960s. The Beatles broke up bro! I’ve used Ai to speed up traditional development and used Ai to build Ai-first applications. Powerful … but to really leverage Ai, you need to understand software development best practices, system thinking, design patterns, foundations of code and basic refactoring. I am not in the Ai business, so I have no dog in this fight, but I have been a software developer for 30+ years, and have taken a few apps to market.

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What about the benefits you didn't think to ask about? When we are job hunting, salary and vacation tend to be the big things we focus on. Over time, though, life has a way of proving how critically important some of those lesser-known benefits are. My mother passed away last month. While it wasn't completely unexpected, it was still a shock to the system when it happened. Luckily, Wealthsimple offers all its full-time employees bereavement leave, so I was able to focus on being with my family and saying goodbye to my mom. Things like bereavement leave and short and long-term disability leave are not the flashy bits in the offer sheet that get our attention, but they can make a world of difference when you need them. My call-out is to take a look at the total package when you're considering who your next employer will be. You're going to be giving a lot of time and energy to your employer - make sure they're giving back when you need it too.

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In software there's a constant pressure to show progress early, but early stage planning (research, design, architecture, specs, acceptance criteria) is messy and often feels like treading water. It shouldn't be a surprise that planning is important (if it is surprising, please call me), but when we assumed planning paid itself back in the end, we were wrong. There's so much more value in thinking before doing, and we're just starting to fully see it. I wrote down some of the things I dug up over the past few weeks, for anyone who's ever been on the fence about spending another day defining requirements. https://lnkd.in/gcptb2qB

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Most technical leaders think their biggest risk is moving too fast. They're wrong. After 30 years of scaling teams and rescuing failing platforms, I've seen the same pattern destroy more companies than reckless shipping ever did. I call it The Expert's Anchor. When you're scrappy and naive, you ship fast. You don't know what you don't know, so you just... build. No fear. Pure velocity. Then success happens. You scale. You hire experts. You implement best practices. And slowly, invisibly, your expertise becomes your anchor. I watched it happen at CanWest/Postmedia. In the early days, we'd have an idea on Monday and ship it on Tuesday. By the time we were a 50-person team, every decision needed three sign-offs. Every deployment required a committee. The technical excellence that got us there calcified into sclerosis. We weren't moving slow because we lacked talent. We were moving slow because we had too much of it. The anchor that should stabilize you in a storm starts dragging in the silt while the wind is in your favour. I've spent 30 years helping teams haul up that anchor. Or set one when they're drifting without foundations. The question isn't whether you need an anchor. It's whether yours is currently helping or hurting. Which is your team?

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🎙️ How will AI change the way software is built, who builds it, and the skills that will matter most? In this new episode of Beyond Capture, Umony CEO Dean Elwood and CTO Alan Charbonneau explore the rapid evolution of AI-assisted software development and what it means for the future of engineering. They discuss how AI is lowering the barriers to building software, the rise of vibe coding, and why individual builders may soon have capabilities that once required entire development teams. The conversation also looks at the limits of today's models, the growing importance of taste, context, and human judgement, and why understanding problems may soon matter more than writing code. They also challenge assumptions about automation and examine how AI is reshaping career paths across technical and non-technical roles. Tune in to the full episode: 🎥  YouTube: https://lnkd.in/ergyQjkn 🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/eeSdi4Tb 🎧 Spotify: https://lnkd.in/e8ahQJwk 🎧 Amazon Music: https://lnkd.in/eeQdUQhD #BeyondCapture #ArtificialIntelligence #SoftwareEngineering #AIDevelopment #Innovation #Leadership #FutureOfWork #Technology

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🤖 How are you managing AI context? After a few years of managing agentic change in both the way we run the business and ship products - we are finding that a single source of truth is needed to decouple years of context from the actual AI harness. The reason is that we now operate several harnesses (Hermes, Anthropic, OpenAI, DoJoAI, Coding tools, etc.) and we are realizing that our context is starting to get out of sync. We are currently experimenting with offloading memory and context but haven't settled on a final solution. How are you solving for this and what tools are your trying out? (I think I have to figure out how to stop my whiteboard markers from drying out first!!) 🙌🏻

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New Event Announcement: AI-Powered Modernization: Strategies to untangle legacy systems Legacy systems and mounting technical debt continue to constrain innovation, even as AI promises transformative gains. This free webcast will highlight how engineering leaders and practitioners can modernize incrementally, leveraging AI to refactor code, streamline integration and reduce manual workloads across complex environments. Speakers will share approaches to untangle legacy architectures, prioritize high-impact modernization efforts, and shorten development cycles. The webcast will also cover how AI-driven insights can help teams identify bottlenecks, manage technical debt and create a foundation for future-ready applications. Wednesday, October 21, 2026 | 12:30pm - 1:30pm ET Register for this free webcast here: https://lnkd.in/drnN4XPa This webcast is part 3 of a 4-part series exploring AI strategies for technical leaders. Register for the 2 remaining webcasts by clicking the link above. #GlobeAITechnicalLeaders #GlobeEvents

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