I'm Scott Drake. I write software and teach leadership, but what I really do is study complex things and turn those insights into systems anyone can use. This site is where I share past and current work.
If you're a software engineer starting to build with AI, you've probably sat in meetings where people casually throw around terms like "LangChain," "embeddings," or "hugging face." If you've nodded along while mentally cataloging what to research later, you're not alone.
The AI space has its own...
When a high-performing employee resigns, leaders usually ask the same question: What’s missing?
Pay. Benefits. Perks. Engagement programs.
That instinct makes sense, but it often points in the wrong direction.
When compensation is reasonably market-aligned, retention problems rarely come from...
This post is Part Six of a six-part series. Get started with Part One.
By the time I had a clearer way to think about joy, the work changed.
Earlier, joy had lived on my goal list as something I wanted but couldn’t quite reach. I assumed that meant I was missing effort, discipline, or insi...
This post is Part Five of a six-part series. Get started with Part One.
Once I understood joy as emotional climate, and saw how momentum builds through the Doom Loop and the Joy Flywheel, the problem became more concrete.
I wasn’t looking for a cure or a technique. I was paying attention t...
This post is Part Four of a six-part series. Get started with Part One.
Once I understood joy as a matter of emotional climate, the next question became obvious: why does that climate drift, and why does it sometimes feel like it accelerates in the wrong direction?
The answer turned out to...
This post is Part Three of a six-part series. Get started with Part One.
When I first encountered the idea that joy is a choice, I didn’t like it.
It sounded simplistic. Even dismissive. As if difficult circumstances could be overridden by attitude alone. That didn’t match my experience, a...
This post is Part Two of a six-part series. Get started with Part One.
If lasting joy is something you want more of, the first challenge is surprisingly basic: most of us don’t have a clear way to think about it.
We use a lot of emotional language—happy, stressed, burned out, fine—but we t...
