Decisions
50+ recent decisions
Make it up to Skip for working the GDC fire from a family vacation - money is a given, pair it with time away or something better, and ask him directly
Nov 3, 2026 · people · low70% confidence
Skip worked the Google kernel deadline from Disneyland during a family trip. Peter asked Nathan and Justin what CIQ is doing for him: money is a given, but asked whether it should be paired with more time away or something else, and proposed simply asking Skip what would make the rest of the trip more magical.
People: Skip, Nathan Blackham, Justin Haynes
India location does not disqualify the kernel-security candidate Greg referred - take it seriously, Nathan runs the conversation
Nov 3, 2026 · people · low72% confidence
Greg referred a kernel-security engineer in India (Sachin Kumar) who reached out via X, said location is not a problem, and asked to be kept in the loop. Peter said CIQ will look at the candidate seriously, that nothing prevents having someone in India - the timezone cost was already accepted with Pratham - and routed the conversation to Nathan. HR confirmed Nathan would meet the candidate the following week.
People: Greg Kurtzer, Nathan Blackham, Sachin Kumar
Customer-specific fixes on 10.2 LTS only if every LTS customer wants them - otherwise it is a multi-year branch and breaks bug-for-bug compatibility with RH
Nov 3, 2026 · technical · medium70% confidence
Ryan raised a customer-requested fix for 10.2 LTS that Melissa was advocating. Peter gave the test: if every 10.2 LTS customer wants the fix, do it; if not, it is another branch to maintain for years and very likely not worth it, and doing it means CIQ is no longer bug-for-bug compatible with Red Hat - we need to be clear about who we are. He framed it as thinking out loud and said he would support whatever Ryan and the other party agreed.
People: Ryan Smith, Melissa Wood
Sign off on the Fuzzball/Stratum strategy doc while reserving one right - shape the UX so there is one unified experience regardless of what underpins the cluster
Nov 3, 2026 · technical · medium76% confidence
After the 10/30 alignment meeting, Peter skimmed the Fuzzball/Stratum doc while away and gave written sign-off: nominally aligned, no concerns. He reserved the ability to get into the weeds on UX later - how installation options are presented and how admin panels evolve based on what is installed - so there is one unified experience regardless of what underpins the cluster.
People: Bjorn Hovland, Chris Wolford, Jonathon Anderson
Award the Linux and RAT teams for the CVE onslaught - deliberately sequenced: Greg thanks them publicly, Peter praises them at the Wednesday on-site, award announced then; Greg disowns Ginux-as-replacement
Nov 3, 2026 · people · medium78% confidence
Greg asked whether Peter had reservations about an award for everyone on the Linux and RAT teams dealing with the CVE onslaught. Peter said none and asked for it to be intentional: Greg posts publicly and thanks them (as agreed earlier), Peter praises them in person Wednesday at the Reno on-site, and the award is announced at that point. In the same thread he asked Greg to tell Arthur Tyde that Ginux is not the solution and does not compete with the RLC kernel, because the joke fed the team concern that Greg sees Ginux as a replacement. Greg then publicly called Ginux a research project that will never compete with Linux.
People: Greg Kurtzer, Arthur Tyde, Nathan Blackham, Justin Haynes
Accept Google previously-identified-CVEs contract wording - it is not what they really want, and their own language becomes scope leverage later
Nov 3, 2026 · strategy · medium80% confidence
In the GDC contract thread with Kelly Hall and Bjorn, Peter accepted Google wording that limits CIQ obligations to a previously identified list of CVEs. He noted Google wants to control regression scope, but as worded they will not automatically get upstream changes, and because of embargoes many upstream changes are unlabeled CVE fixes. He chose to let Google learn that and ask for something different later, and said it will be leverage: future change requests can be answered as not in the previously identified list, per their own language.
People: Kelly Hall, Bjorn Hovland
GDC targeted-CVE builds - what fits the existing build machinery ships Monday, everything else is quoted work, slips are attributed to the customer constraint, and a rough estimate is enough
Nov 3, 2026 · strategy · high84% confidence
Across 10/30 to 11/2 Peter applied one rule to Tissa asks for 1.16/1.17/1.18 kernels. Default: last week build plus CVE 9999, available Monday because it fits existing machinery. A March-kernel branch with only 9999 is a new branch with no build path or testing, so it gets an ETA, not a commitment. 1.18 by Monday holds only if CIQ can keep rebasing on upstream. He pressed Google to decide that day and asked why they would want one new CVE but not the 37 old ones. On 10/31 he directed that any date change on the sheet state it is caused by Google not wanting the latest driver, and that communicated dates be reinforced. On 11/2 he refused a two-day turnaround by email (dates stay 11/16, one could be pulled in and the other slid) and told Nathan and Justin the message is weeks not days, about 3 weeks, and a swag is sufficient - no more planning effort than that.
People: Tissa Senevirathne, Nathan Blackham, Justin Haynes
Public CVE claims match what is in customers hands - fixed internally is not fixed; engage fast with accurate words
Nov 3, 2026 · operational · medium82% confidence
During the CVE-2026-98432 (MPTCP) news on 11/1, Greg drafted Rocky Linux Pro had this fixed yesterday, CIQ customers are safe. Peter said no and rewrote it to separate fixed internally from delivered: We had a fix before you posted this, and are rolling it out across our distros in the next 36 hours. He had already pushed Greg to engage publicly right away. When Justin noted packages reach repos almost immediately and only images lag, Peter accepted patched kernel packages as accurate wording.
People: Greg Kurtzer, Justin Haynes, Bjorn Hovland
Datacenter business needs its own team and deals that pay now - stop signing engineers up for work far outside their remit
Nov 3, 2026 · strategy · high74% confidence
In a DM to Bjorn framed for the C-suite, Peter said the team is burned out on IRIS (network still down, someone has to go back on site, half a dozen people on daily calls, Wolfgang pulled off Fuzzball work), that this is unsustainable with IRIS alone and Grenoble arrives in 8-9 weeks. Position: deals must get CIQ paid now rather than just opening future doors, CIQ must be very careful signing people up for work far outside their remit, and if CIQ is really in the datacenter business a whole missing team needs to exist today.
People: Bjorn Hovland, Ryan Smith, Greg Kurtzer
Keep Stratum out of the Core42 IRIS deployment - take the win we have; Stratum can go into Grenoble
Nov 3, 2026 · strategy · high79% confidence
Adam Jackson proposed adding Stratum to the Core42 IRIS deal. Peter refused: deploy what is already agreed, do not reopen the contract, and let Stratum go into Grenoble when that happens.
People: Adam Jackson, Bjorn Hovland
Reinforce: confidence numbers are machine-read interfaces between teams and must be right in real time
Oct 30, 2026 · operational · medium72% confidence
At the 10/27 Engineering Weekly Sync (Stratum shown at 30 percent confidence on launch day) and in the Wolford 1:1, Peter reinforced that confidence numbers are no longer read only by humans - agents generate reports, go-to-market triggers and automatic meetings from them - so they must be kept right in real time. He picks on a reliable leader publicly so others see it is about the process, not the person, and wants high numbers to mean good numbers.
People: Chris Wolford, Nathan Blackham
Advertise the Kubernetes req on launch Thursday - no extra week of waiting
Oct 30, 2026 · operational · low74% confidence
On 10/27 HR said Wolford wanted to delay advertising the Kubernetes open req another week. Peter checked with Wolford and confirmed in the HR thread that the req can be advertised Thursday, Stratum launch day, with Wolford aligned.
People: Chris Wolford, Mariah Rippee, Bjorn Hovland
ISMS council - accept Risk 33 (vendor breach) and accept a binding legal-review obligation for externally shared incident reports
Oct 30, 2026 · operational · low70% confidence
At the 10/29 ISMS governance council Peter accepted Risk 33 (third-party SaaS vendor breach, high impact, unlikely, score 10) and, after questioning whether to tie CIQ hands, accepted the IR plan change obligating legal review before any incident material is shared with a customer or external party.
People: Steve Wallace, Kelly Wall, Mariah Rippee
Grenoble pitch - Peter quarterbacks the technical answers and capabilities due within 6-8 weeks are presented as in final test
Oct 30, 2026 · operational · low62% confidence
In the 10/26 Grenoble prep, with Bjorn unavailable for part of the call, Peter quarterbacked who answers which questions. The spreadsheet had been answered affirmatively although some items need six to eight weeks of development; the agreed posture was to engage on them as capabilities in final dev and test that will exist by rollout. Bjorn set the sales posture of not pushing the full stack on a customer that wants Stratum.
People: Bjorn Hovland, Adam Jackson, Chris Wolford, Michael Shinn
Core42 10/29 - CIQ is not the bottleneck; the only CIQ task is a best-practice doc for Warewulf in secure environments, routed to Michael Shinn
Oct 30, 2026 · operational · low70% confidence
After the 10/29 Core42 calls Peter stated it is very clear to Core42 leadership that CIQ is not the bottleneck and network is. The only immediate CIQ deliverable is a best-practice design doc for deploying Warewulf into a secure environment (ILO, FE, OOB network requirements, where Warewulf sits, what must be open between zones), mirroring other secured deployments, to Core42 security. Peter routed it to Michael Shinn with Adam as the delivery path.
People: Michael Shinn, Adam Jackson, Bjorn Hovland
The RESF operations lead joins department heads so the RESF can ask CIQ for help without knowing who will provide it
Oct 30, 2026 · operational · low72% confidence
Peter had the RESF operations lead invited to the Thursday department heads meeting (Eng Sync 10/27) and stated at the 10/29 meeting that he wants the RESF to be aggressive in asking CIQ for help without knowing who on the CIQ side provides it; department heads find people to solve the problem of the day.
People: Chris Baek
Title mapping rules for Justin org - no senior or junior variants, map to the lower bound and promote later, no comp or promotions in the exercise, no zealotry where someone gets hurt
Oct 30, 2026 · operational · low68% confidence
In the 10/23 Justin 1:1 Peter gave the mapping rules for collapsing titles: no senior or junior variants of any title; when torn, translate someone to the lower bound and keep the ability to promote them; do not bring promotions into the exercise; no salary changes, names only; have an honest conversation about who would be hurt and keep a wart (a senior prefix) rather than generate pain for a simpler map.
People: Justin Haynes
Use an existing open support req for an Arabic-speaking Middle East support hire - a new role, not a like-for-like backfill
Oct 30, 2026 · people · low70% confidence
On 10/23 in #human-resources Greg questioned a support hire. Peter approved it (good because Bjorn is good), told HR it is fine to use the existing open req, and told Greg the hire will not do the previous holder job: he will support the Middle East deployments first and foremost, as Arabic-speaking support.
People: Greg Kurtzer, Bjorn Hovland
CVE automation framing - the goal is zero humans, assume tokens are free to test feasibility, and redesign the flow rather than swap human boxes for automation boxes
Oct 30, 2026 · technical · medium64% confidence
In the 10/29 Nathan 1:1 Nathan said CVE automation is moving too slowly and he will push it at next week onsite, using a 1,000-PRs-a-week, remove-the-humans thought experiment. Peter set the frame his org works from: (1) redesign the whole flow, not replace each human step with an automation step - removing humans changes the flow and leaves about a tenth of the cases as error paths for people; (2) assume tokens and machine time are free for the exercise - if zero-human is unreachable even then, stop; if reachable, then discuss cost; (3) parallel attempts in front of a trusted gate are fine, losers aborted. He called it one of his hot-button issues.
People: Nathan Blackham, Justin Haynes
Sensitive Decision
Desktop agent - define the user experience first; the per-token API is an acceptable starting path and model-integration choices stay open
Oct 30, 2026 · technical · medium68% confidence
At the 10/26 Desktop Brainstorm Greg pushed on definitions and billing (a desktop harness on the API means per-token cost and no Codex or Claude Code subscription use). Peter set the working rule: settle what the agent experience should be first, treat the API as a known-workable path, and do not block on how CIQ interfaces with the model - more options (local harness APIs, routing layers) will open before launch. The experience he described: bring your own agent or key, with granular OS permissions (full disk access yes or no, specific folders) granted up front. He opened by restating the 10/21 decision that stock GNOME is a zero-investment placeholder to be retired and work is not doubled.
People: Greg Kurtzer, Bjorn Hovland, Nathan Blackham
Every engineering team takes every product training, due in 30 days - manager carve-outs overridden
Oct 30, 2026 · operational · low70% confidence
Mariah collected per-manager input on which product trainings teams should take; some managers narrowed the list (e.g. Rocky and Ascender only) or wanted 60 days. In the 10/27 HR sync Peter overrode the narrowing for his org: trainings are quick, and the rationale for the PIC team taking Rocky applies equally to the Linux teams taking Fuzzball and Warewulf. Everyone takes all trainings, 30 days. We got feedback otherwise, and we are ignoring it.
People: Mariah Rippee, Bjorn Hovland, Justin Haynes
Sensitive Decision
2027 engineering budget - current reqs plus only two unallocated heads, one org-wide gathering every six months, cloud spend modeled as growth-tied
Oct 30, 2026 · strategy · medium72% confidence
In the 10/23 2027 budget walkthrough with Chris Baek and Kelly Wall, Peter set the assumptions: open reqs plus the five or six planned engineering, hardware and AI hires, then only two unallocated TBD heads (around April and August/September); an additional IT head comes out of that buffer only if Steve wins the case with Peter, which he has not yet. Ongoing market adjustments for underpaid engineers are independent of any Series B true-up; model engineering cost up about 10 percent. Travel allows one gathering of Peter whole org every six months, not separate six-month gatherings per sub-org - CIQ chose to be remote. Cloud modeled at about 75K per month H1 and 85K H2, since it is customer traffic on Portal and Depot and only rises with revenue. Computer spend 150K; AI budget raised.
People: Chris Baek, Kelly Wall, Steve Wallace
Tim Pepper - push now for an RESF board or leadership role, paid not volunteer, with Peter carrying it to Greg and Bjorn
Oct 30, 2026 · strategy · medium74% confidence
A long-standing RESF director is stepping off the board. In the 10/28 sync with Tim, Peter said that director had been the adult in the room who built much of the RESF-CIQ relationship over six to nine months and that he feels exposed without him. Tim said a board role is something he could do. Peter said it is not a volunteer seat - CIQ pays people to serve there - and that he would broach it with Greg and Bjorn and carry that ball forward. He also asked Tim to send Xander a no-harm-no-foul note with an open door.
People: Tim Pepper, Greg Kurtzer, Bjorn Hovland
Sensitive Decision
No data gatekeeping - access to company data by default unless a signed compliance or legal rule requires a block; tool owners can request features but cannot stop work
Oct 30, 2026 · operational · medium76% confidence
After a contractor building internal data tools waited about 10 weeks for Google Analytics and BigQuery access, Peter set the rule: people get access to company data unless there is a compliance or legal reason under a guideline Peter has signed (federal data a non-US person cannot see is a legitimate block). The business owner of an internal tool can ask for features but cannot ask that work not happen; outcomes decide whether work continues. Blocks should be raised immediately, not after weeks. Peter had Steve deliver the message to the RevOps data owners first, planned to reinforce it at the Thursday meeting, and on 10/29 told the contractor BigQuery access should be open and a RevOps meeting would be set up.
People: Steve Wallace
Sensitive Decision
Sensitive Decision
GDC contract redline - air-gapped scope only, FIPS module is priced (75K plus lab fee) or dropped, 14-day critical/high SLA with the clock starting when a patch is identified upstream
Oct 30, 2026 · strategy · medium74% confidence
On 10/27 Peter reviewed the GDC amendment line by line with Kelly and resolved Nathan comments: scope narrowed to deployed in GDC air-gapped environments (not connected GDC); the FIPS loadable module is new work and not at no additional cost - 75K plus lab fee, which forces the 250K expense cap up, or Google drops it or it moves to the next round; accepted a 14-day SLA for critical and high CVEs with the clock starting when a patch is identified upstream (per Peter conversation with Tissa), with a communication plan owed before a patch exists - a mitigation plan and a communication are the same thing; dropped dev-build language and did not care about support duration for the build Google is leaving.
People: Kelly Hall, Nathan Blackham
GDC new ask after landing Anthropic - write down what we believe, parrot it back, give an ETA assuming funded, and use it to win the added 300K without slowing the base contract
Oct 30, 2026 · strategy · high75% confidence
On 10/29-10/30 Tissa came back with a larger ask after Google landed a big opportunity (Anthropic). Peter directed Nathan and Justin: before spending any time, write down what CIQ believes is true and send it to Tissa to validate - (1) what is delivered Monday, (2) the additional ask parroted back to confirm version and build, (3) when CIQ could have it assuming it is funded. Tissa is working to get CIQ about 300K more, taking GDC toward 1M plus royalties next year, and this must not slow signature of the existing contract. Peter relayed Tissa request that CIQ engineers stop saying that is not in the contract and say we will talk to Pete instead. On 10/30 he asked for the CIQ ETA column filled, including future releases, to talk through any gap between desire and capability.
People: Nathan Blackham, Justin Haynes, Tissa Senevirathne, Kelly Hall
Rocky Linux Pro rename - one disruption, customers told first, structural RLC names stay until there is a value or a problem
Oct 30, 2026 · technical · high73% confidence
Bjorn owned the RLC Pro to Rocky Linux Pro rename and Greg had no objection to Justin convergence doc. Peter set how it executes: Justin 8.10/9.2 convergence changes and the rename ship together so customers absorb one disruption; sales contacts every potentially affected customer first and only then does engineering flip its side (Justin could not action it that morning); structural RLC names (repos, Depot paths, CPEs, bootc and container names) stay as they are; and there is no hard company-wide switch - the public name can slide over a week or two. Jamie Brooks drives the project.
People: Bjorn Hovland, Justin Haynes, Nathan Blackham, Melissa Wood, Jamie Brooks, Greg Kurtzer
GDC full kernel with IBT off is not just sign the kmod - say no unless it fits, do not reopen the contract, Peter and Kelly own the Tissa conversation
Oct 30, 2026 · strategy · high91% confidence
On 10/29, with the GDC contract about to be signed, Google asked for a 6.18 full kernel with IBT off for the following week. Peter framed it in #google-partnership-governance: the ask pushes CIQ from just sign our kmod into supporting kernel development, which CIQ told Google it must staff up for and is still hiring for; it falls back into the CIQ needs to do the live patching work bucket and cannot be delivered in a couple of days. If Justin path works, fine; otherwise the answer is no. He told Nathan he did not need to manage the contract, stopped the engineering thread (Let us spend no more time on this and Kelly and I will talk to Tissa), and refused to change the order of anything or reopen any question while the contract was being signed. He emailed and then called Tissa; Tissa dropped the full-kernel requirement, and Peter confirmed in writing the plan is the minimal kernel with IBT disabled for next week, with Kelly, Nathan and Justin on the thread.
People: Nathan Blackham, Kelly Hall, Justin Haynes, Tissa Senevirathne
Sensitive Decision
Sensitive Decision
Decline the program-manager req for Wolford org - if CIQ spends a head there, make it an engineer
Oct 23, 2026 · people · medium66% confidence
Chris Baek read Wolford as underwater because confidence numbers had gone a week without updates and planned to open a program-manager req for everything in Wolford world. In the 10/22 Wolford 1:1 Peter disagreed: Wolford is busy but surviving; and if CIQ spends headcount in Wolford world it should not be glorified secretarial work Wolford has to negotiate with - Peter would rather get him an engineer. Peter checked the view with Wolford and offered to reverse it if Wolford wanted the PM, and told him the optics problem is stale confidence numbers, which he can remove by keeping them current.
People: Chris Baek, Chris Wolford
Apptainer - hold Bjorn to zero engineering hours and let things fall on the floor so the maintenance cost becomes visible
Oct 23, 2026 · strategy · medium78% confidence
Peter has an agreement with Bjorn that Apptainer costs zero engineering hours. In the 10/22 Wolford 1:1, after hearing the PIC team still spends some time on it, Peter told Wolford to be aggressive about spending zero time, said he expects Apptainer to fall apart a bit and that is okay, because Bjorn needs to hear that these things do not stay functional and maintained without engineering focus. He said the same to Nathan the same day and created a todo for Bjorn noting that Apptainer is taking engineering time.
People: Bjorn Hovland, Chris Wolford, Nathan Blackham
Peter personally drives NVIDIA to commit, to Google, that it will support CIQ-built RLC on NVIDIA hardware
Oct 23, 2026 · strategy · high82% confidence
At the 10/22 GDC roadmap meeting Google disclosed NVIDIA had put in writing that Google must reproduce NVIDIA-hardware bugs on RHEL before NVIDIA will look at them. Peter took it on personally: called Scott Hara (NVIDIA) that evening - NVIDIA engineering to align, a three-way NDA, and a statement to Google that NVIDIA will work with both CIQ and Google; emailed Tissa (Google) and shaped Google question to include joint support given CIQ custom kernel work for Google; forwarded to Scott asking for a positive written response; asked Greg to be ready to make the case to NVIDIA. In the same meeting he told Google CIQ can support their roadmap for the next year line item by line item, in response to Google assembling its own senior kernel team.
People: Scott Hara, Tissa Senevirathne, Greg Kurtzer, Bjorn Hovland
Start the long-tail work to position Tim Pepper for an RESF executive role, as the fallback if Lee does not grow into it
Oct 23, 2026 · people · medium70% confidence
In the 10/22 C-suite sync, after agreeing that the current RESF operations lead gets strategic coaching, Peter added a contingency and asked to start acting on it now: if Lee does not work out, Tim Pepper should already be positioned for an RESF leadership role, including within the RESF. That means building relationships now and working out whether Tim should be a CIQ employee. Peter explicitly framed it as not a change right now. Bjorn pushed for an elevated Tim role regardless; Greg was nervous about the employee question either way and proposed Lee bring Tim in as president.
People: Greg Kurtzer, Bjorn Hovland, Tim Pepper, Lee
Sensitive Decision
Customer-specific asks go through Work Ingestion and RAT build/validation - no side channels, even under deal pressure
Oct 23, 2026 · operational · medium79% confidence
On 10/23 two escalations from Justin hit the same rule. Toss (Viva Republica) AWS private offers, tied to a $2.4M TCV deal with a frustrated customer: Peter joined the channel to ensure the ask goes through regular Work Ingestion - in Jira, with Product visibility, balanced against other work - and aligned with Bjorn that it goes on the product priority list. OCI HPC base image being built outside the normal path: if CIQ will stand behind it, it must come through the main RAT org, which runs the consistent build and validation process; same message in #team-asia-pacific.
People: Justin Haynes, Bjorn Hovland, Brady Dibble, Kelly Hall, Arthur Tyde
Fuzzball plus Stratum - one identity and one pane of glass, no duplicated functionality, Engineering owns the developer experience
Oct 23, 2026 · technical · high74% confidence
At the 10/23 Fuzzball plus Stratum alignment session, Bjorn locked the product split (Fuzzball for R&D, training and research; Stratum for production and inference) and Peter agreed. Peter own calls were architectural invariants: (1) one identity and one set of permissions across both products, with views varying by role and the Stratum UI living within the Fuzzball UI if they coexist; (2) no duplicated functionality - anything both platforms use lives once, in Stratum or in a third shared repo, and Fuzzball reaches through to Stratum hooks; (3) Engineering, not Product, owns the CIQ developer experience of building these products. Process: Jonathon writes the vision for a second review, Wolford draws stock K8s versus Stratum with shared components broken out, Bjorn and Jonathon build an environment by use-case matrix to prune with, and a follow-up next week. Whether Fuzzball requires Stratum stays open between Greg and Bjorn.
People: Bjorn Hovland, Greg Kurtzer, Chris Wolford, Jonathon Anderson, Jason Scott
Core42 - hold to the SOW: stock Kubernetes plus Fuzzball before Oct 31, no CIQ-installed CozyStack, technical pushback routes to Peter
Oct 23, 2026 · strategy · high80% confidence
On 10/23 Core42 took Fuzzball out of the Oct 31 plan (no Fuzzball before deployment, look at it together later). Peter refused to let CIQ become a pure system integrator. As soon as the network is up, CIQ installs Ascender and Fuzzball; if Kubernetes is not there, CIQ installs stock K8s for Fuzzball to sit on, without CozyStack, and Core42 can add CozyStack later. Any pushback from Maxim or Sergei gets the scripted SOW answer (after consultation with Core42 engineering we have been told to follow the SOW; Fuzzball is an integral part of the CIQ stack and does not affect any other Kubernetes offering), and technical pushback routes to Peter. Builds on the 10/22 Ryan 1:1 where Peter made stock K8s plus Fuzzball plan A. The stock-K8s-then-Fuzzball shape was proposed by Bjorn; Peter adopted it and owns the engineering plan and the pushback routing.
People: Bjorn Hovland, Adam Jackson, Ryan Smith, Wolfgang Resch, Chris Wolford
Get CIQ onto the embargoed security lists, Linux first - treat the absence as our failing; give upstream hours from the Stratum engineers to wherever Tim directs, and let Tim move without waiting on Peter
Oct 21, 2026 · strategy · medium72% confidence
In the 10/21 Tim Pepper 1:1 Peter set three things. CIQ getting onto embargoed security lists is a goal - Linux matters more to him than Kubernetes - and he views not being admitted as a failing on CIQ side to be fixed by building community trust; Tim brokers the conversations. Weekly hours from both Stratum/Kubernetes engineers (one hired, one req open) go to upstream work wherever Tim directs. And Tim moves things forward without waiting on Peter: invite him to meetings rather than reschedule around him, and Peter will tell his team and Marketing to jump when Tim asks. The upstream/downstream development training Tim plans will include the Linux org.
People: Tim Pepper, Chris Wolford, Lindsay Aamodt, Nathan Blackham, Justin Haynes
Justin org becomes the platform team - and for more than Linux; deep Linux knowledge is needed to build the platform, not to run it
Oct 21, 2026 · strategy · medium62% confidence
Justin described the shape he is building toward: his team runs the services, automations and connections so the trains just run, and Nathan team owns what goes through the pipes; Nathan dislikes it because he wants everyone to know Linux deeply. Peter sided with the platform shape: everyone knowing Linux is valuable but not central to success, and Justin will end up being a platform team for far more than Linux - Kubernetes, Fuzzball, Apptainer.
People: Justin Haynes, Nathan Blackham
AI spend - the 100k card limit stays as a runaway tripwire while Baek plans 120k per month for 2027
Oct 21, 2026 · operational · low74% confidence
Peter approved the AI budget moving from 75k to 100k per month (actual current spend). When Chris Baek proposed budgeting 120k per month through 2027, Peter agreed for planning but kept the credit-card limit at 100k so a runaway process is caught.
People: Chris Baek
Justin - now is the cheapest time to break things; bring every go-faster option to Peter and Bjorn, even the ones you would veto
Oct 21, 2026 · strategy · medium72% confidence
On the 8.10, 9.2 and 10 product-identity changes Brady wants, Peter told Justin there will never be a time with fewer customers, so do it now and do not wait on Peter reading the risk doc. Justin standing order to his team is to surface go-faster-by-breaking options and veto the too-big ones; Peter changed the filter: options Justin would veto still come to Peter and Bjorn, flagged as too big.
People: Justin Haynes, Bjorn Hovland, Brady Dibble
Sensitive Decision
Bjorn post-training / sovereign-stack ask goes on the Value Drivers board as a product block; engineering hangs a learn-first research effort off it
Oct 21, 2026 · operational · medium79% confidence
Bjorn asked for help understanding late-stage training of open-weight models on customer proprietary data as a use case pairing Stratum, Fuzzball and Open Waldo. Peter said yes, framed it as a use case for the existing portfolio rather than a new product, and refused to run it out of band: Bjorn puts a single block in the middle of the three-tier Value Drivers board saying CIQ wants to support this use case; that block triggers Peter to attach engineering (people from across CIQ engineering, possibly external contractors); step one is educating Bjorn and Peter before deciding whether anything goes into Jira. He applied the same move to Fuzzball/Stratum being agent-deployable - a block in the middle of the board with work hanging off both sides.
People: Bjorn Hovland, Lindsay Aamodt, Chris Baek