Essays on engineering leadership, regulated systems, and AI accountability.https://chrisballance.com/https://chrisballance.com/writing/what-software-engineering-can-learn-from-billions-of-years-of-evolution/https://chrisballance.com/writing/what-software-engineering-can-learn-from-billions-of-years-of-evolution/Survival is not elegance. It is adaptation under pressure Nature has been running the longest continuous experimentation process in history…Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://chrisballance.com/writing/why-your-sensitive-audio-data-deserves-local-transcription-building-enterprise-grade-solutions-with-open-source/https://chrisballance.com/writing/why-your-sensitive-audio-data-deserves-local-transcription-building-enterprise-grade-solutions-with-open-source/Open source code on GitHub: https://github.com/ballance/transcription In my work with transcription systems, one challenge comes up repeate…Tue, 12 Aug 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://chrisballance.com/writing/democratizing-ai-the-most-important-shift-since-the-personal-computer/https://chrisballance.com/writing/democratizing-ai-the-most-important-shift-since-the-personal-computer/There was a time when the only way to use a computer was to wait your turn. In the early days of computing, machines were so large, so expe…Tue, 15 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://chrisballance.com/writing/how-i-learned-the-em-dash-wasn-t-the-villain/https://chrisballance.com/writing/how-i-learned-the-em-dash-wasn-t-the-villain/I used to think the em dash was a red flag. Not in a literary sense, but in a “your robot forgot to sound like you” kind of way. If someone…Sat, 05 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://chrisballance.com/writing/sticky-notes-sawdust-and-software-the-couple-s-guide-to-project-management/https://chrisballance.com/writing/sticky-notes-sawdust-and-software-the-couple-s-guide-to-project-management/On any given evening, Katherine Ballance cracks open the dense PMBOK tome and attacks it with a rainbow of highlighters. She has color-code…Mon, 23 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://chrisballance.com/writing/from-notepad-to-copilot-what-we-forgot-along-the-way/https://chrisballance.com/writing/from-notepad-to-copilot-what-we-forgot-along-the-way/Over the years I have gone from a C++ in the early days building mathematical models for industrial processes to C#, Java, Python, briefly…Mon, 02 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://chrisballance.com/writing/one-commit-at-a-time-incremental-design-for-engineering-culture/https://chrisballance.com/writing/one-commit-at-a-time-incremental-design-for-engineering-culture/Culture isn’t a memo. Every small decision: who you hire, how you handle mistakes, and even what tools you approve, shapes your team. Here’…Mon, 19 May 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://chrisballance.com/writing/what-building-a-gantry-crane-taught-me-about-software-architecture/https://chrisballance.com/writing/what-building-a-gantry-crane-taught-me-about-software-architecture/I inherited from my father a strong tendency to over-engineer everything I build. Generally, it's a good trait, but it comes with certain t…Sat, 15 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://chrisballance.com/writing/abstract-guilds-of-craftsmen/https://chrisballance.com/writing/abstract-guilds-of-craftsmen/Originally published at https://chrisballance.com/2017/03/28/abstract-guilds-of-craftsmen/ While driving back from lunch with a friend the…Wed, 29 Mar 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://chrisballance.com/writing/most-companies-have-a-data-privacy-policy-so-should-you/https://chrisballance.com/writing/most-companies-have-a-data-privacy-policy-so-should-you/Having a written policy keeps any decisions out of the hands of arbitrary choice. Years of working in IT, especially in the financial and m…Wed, 20 Jul 2016 00:00:00 GMThttps://chrisballance.com/writing/build-an-ecosystem-around-an-ethos-the-bottom-line-is-no-longer-the-bottom-line/https://chrisballance.com/writing/build-an-ecosystem-around-an-ethos-the-bottom-line-is-no-longer-the-bottom-line/Once upon a time, in an economy far far away, the measure of a company was its balance sheet alone. While a company must be profitable in o…Fri, 13 May 2016 00:00:00 GMThttps://chrisballance.com/writing/ten-years-ago-today-i-lost-my-mentor-but-his-teachings-were-timeless/https://chrisballance.com/writing/ten-years-ago-today-i-lost-my-mentor-but-his-teachings-were-timeless/Twenty-four years might be considered a long time for a mentor-ship, but this one was unique, and started way back in 1981. What I didn’t k…Thu, 10 Mar 2016 00:00:00 GMThttps://chrisballance.com/writing/becoming-a-journeyman-vs-hiring-a-craftsman/https://chrisballance.com/writing/becoming-a-journeyman-vs-hiring-a-craftsman/I recently decided to set out on the somewhat mundane task of replacing my (nearly falling over) mailbox with a nicer brick one. It's certa…Sat, 27 Feb 2016 00:00:00 GMThttps://chrisballance.com/writing/i-don-t-know-is-almost-always-the-wrong-answer/https://chrisballance.com/writing/i-don-t-know-is-almost-always-the-wrong-answer/Whether you’re asked about the circumference of the Earth, the number of cups in a gallon, or the land speed velocity of an unladen Swallow…Sun, 14 Feb 2016 00:00:00 GMThttps://chrisballance.com/writing/business-and-life-lessons-i-learned-from-both-my-dad-and-sun-tzu/https://chrisballance.com/writing/business-and-life-lessons-i-learned-from-both-my-dad-and-sun-tzu/As a student of both my Dad, and Sun Tzu, the following advice has proven useful to me over the years. "The best victory is when the oppone…Sun, 29 Nov 2015 00:00:00 GMThttps://chrisballance.com/writing/automating-the-whole-process-instead-of-fixing-the-printer/https://chrisballance.com/writing/automating-the-whole-process-instead-of-fixing-the-printer/This morning, my wife asked me to fix the printer so that she could print some forms. Sure, I could have spent a few minutes fighting with…Sat, 03 Oct 2015 00:00:00 GMT