AI is changing how teams build. Most advice on it comes from places that don’t look like where you work.
Ellis & Kherdekar is a twice-weekly newsletter for leaders building AI-native teams and shipping with AI. We write it from inside a large enterprise, where the work involves legacy systems, real process, regulated workflows and internal customers who need things to keep running.
Almost every well-known voice on AI and engineering leadership writes from a tech company, a research lab or a startup. Most companies aren’t like that. Ours isn’t, and yours probably isn’t either. That’s the gap we write for.
What you’ll get
Playbooks you can run this quarter. These are methods for building and leading AI-native teams, and they work in any domain.
The patterns behind AI-driven delivery. We cover what works once the demo is over, and where it breaks.
Lessons from running operations at scale. We cover delivery, telemetry, prediction and self-healing, written so you can use them without knowing where we work.
Honest tradeoffs. We don’t do news roundups, tool hype or vendor pitches. We write about what we’d tell a friend who asked.
Who it’s for
The newsletter is for engineering, product, data and platform leaders who are being asked to ship faster with AI and don’t have a playbook. It’s also for the executives they report to, who need a clear read on what’s real.
Who we are
Mike Ellis is an engineering leader with 20 years in enterprise technology. He builds AI-driven software delivery systems and cares most about growing engineers who can think past their current role.
Rishi Kherdekar is a data and analytics leader and former consultant. He builds prediction systems that act on what the data shows, and he turns hard-won lessons into frameworks teams can use.
Why subscribe?
Each issue goes straight to your inbox, with no spam and no ads. Subscribers get full access to every post and the archive. For audio and community features, get the Substack app.
Join the conversation
The best issues start with reader questions. Hit reply, leave a comment, or tell us what’s broken on your team. We read all of it.
The opinions here are our own and do not represent any employer, past or present. Nothing in this publication describes any specific company’s internal systems, data, vendors, teams, metrics, or plans. Sponsored placements are clearly labeled.
