Sabbaticalism

After being laid off from Microsoft in late 2023, I took a year-long sabbatical. Rather than immediately seeking new employment, I pursued personal creative projects and eventually became deeply immersed in AI exploration.

The Conviction

I was initially skeptical about technological transformations. I've been in tech long enough to see several "revolutionary" technologies that turned out to be incremental improvements at best.

But after diving into the details—actually building with these tools, not just reading about them—I became convinced of AI's fundamental impact. As Satya Nadella noted, "AI agents will update multiple databases with logic in the AI tier"—fundamentally changing how enterprise applications function.

This isn't about chatbots or image generators. It's about rearchitecting how software systems work at a foundational level.

Data Architecture > Agent Frameworks

The underlying data architecture matters more than specific agent frameworks. Everyone's building agents, but few are thinking carefully about the data layer those agents will operate on.

Product management skills—particularly understanding use cases and product-focused thinking—are increasingly valuable in AI-centric organizations. The ability to define clear requirements, understand user needs, and scope problems appropriately translates directly to AI system design.

Context Engineering

This is the evolution beyond prompt engineering. It's virtual product management for AI applications.

Sean Grove from OpenAI highlights how requirements-gathering and planning translate directly into AI system design. When you're designing context for an AI system, you're essentially doing product management—defining what information the system needs, in what structure, to accomplish specific goals.

The questions are familiar:

• What does the user actually need?
• What information is required to make a decision?
• What are the edge cases?
• How do we measure success?

The application is new, but the discipline is the same.

What's Next

I'm documenting my ongoing exploration of AI technologies, software development, and data strategy consulting. This blog is part of that documentation—a public learning log that might be useful to others on similar journeys.

The sabbatical taught me that sometimes the best way to understand a technology is to step back from employment and just build with it. No roadmaps, no sprints, no stakeholder management. Just curiosity and execution.