why this exists

I started in IT in 1999, fixing Windows NT machines and running my first blog off a Dell OptiPlex under my desk on Gentoo. Twenty-five years later I’m a digital and product executive who’s lived through the dot-com bust, Web 2.0, the cloud transition, mobile, and now generative AI. This is my fourth hype cycle.

Some of the patterns recur. Some don’t. Telling the difference is the work — and it’s what my writing is about.

who it’s for

Executives, investors, P&L owners, and product and tech decision-makers. People who have to make real calls with incomplete information, and who don’t have time to be wrong. If you’re navigating the AI cycle from a position where being wrong actually costs you something, this is for you.

what you’ll get

Two recurring threads, running in parallel.

Lessons from my bosses. Management and strategy wisdom I absorbed from the people I worked with for over twenty-five years — usually attributable to a specific person who said it once, what they meant, and why it stuck. The kind of advice you can’t Google.

Notes from the AI trenches. What’s actually happening in this cycle, from someone who’s seen this rhyme before. Not tutorials, not breathless predictions, not vendor cheerleading. Pattern recognition.

Two to three posts a week.

who I am

Phillip Morelock. I live in Los Angeles and have worked in the other Valley, too. I’ve held engineering, product, and P&L leadership roles at companies you’ve heard of and companies you haven’t.

If that’s the kind of perspective you want in your inbox a couple of times a week, subscribe below.

Subscribe to get full access to the newsletter and publication archives.

To learn more about the tech platform that powers this publication, visit Substack.com.

User's avatar

Subscribe to hacksciences

pattern recognition from four hype cycles, written for the executives navigating the current one.

People