Wesley Dean
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DevSecOps Engineer, Author, and Mentor

I'm a technologist, author, and mentor who helps people and organizations move from complexity to clarity. Through consulting, writing, and workshops, I bridge the gap between technical and non-technical teams, translating risk into meaningful decisions and sustainable action. My work centers on leadership, connection, and disciplined execution, drawing on decades of experience to help teams build secure, reliable systems while strengthening trust, alignment, and shared understanding.

Picture of Wesley Dean wearing a gray hoodie

Latest 3 Posts ↓

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Metrics, Intent, and the Drift Problem in AI-Assisted Development image

Metrics, Intent, and the Drift Problem in AI-Assisted Development

8 min read

In my news feed, I recently saw a post from TechCrunch that talked about "tokenmaxxing" and how the use of LLM token usage as a metric for developer productivity wasn't having the desired effect. The article pointed out how various metrics over the years have been varying degrees of ineffective when it came to quantifying how productive developers were being. Other metrics included the number of lines of code (LoC) added to a project, the number of commits pushed to a repository, code acceptance rates, and many more.

The goal with these metrics is to find some way that the value of a developer can be reduced to a number that can be easily compared to other numbers. These numbers can be added to a spreadsheet, tracked over time, turned into graphs, and presented as objective signals of progress.

That approach is understandable, but it's also incomplete.

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AI and Leadership image

AI and Leadership

7 min read

I was in a conversation about AI and Leadership recently and a number of themes were common while some were less so.

We were discussing someone who was trying to position themselves as a thought leader by regularly posting articles that showed all of the hallmarks of having been written by AI.

Using AI is fine. I have no problem with people who use AI. That's not my problem. My problem is when someone posts, publishes, disseminates, etc. a piece of content and calls it their own when they did not, in fact, craft it. My problem is when the responsibility for human judgment is abdicated in preference for expedience and speed. My problem is when fear and a desire for comfort edges out creativity and risk.

In my mind, these are not the traits of a leader.

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The Human Cost of Mobbing All Day Work (Part 6) image

The Human Cost of Mobbing All Day Work (Part 6)

6 min read

Additional patterns that support the same values

The three ideas I mentioned are the core of what I would recommend. There are also several supporting patterns that reinforce the same values.

Use bounded collaboration windows

Pairing, mobbing, and shared working sessions can be excellent tools when they are bounded, purposeful, and chosen for the kind of work at hand.

There are situations where intense synchronous collaboration is exactly the right tool:

  • onboarding
  • incident response
  • shared debugging
  • risky migrations
  • hard architectural knots
  • knowledge transfer in fragile areas of the codebase
  • moments when a team genuinely needs to think together in real time

The problem begins when the tool becomes the atmosphere.

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24 more posts can be found in the archive.