Kelly Wall
Jan 12, 2026 - Aug 19, 2026
5
Decisions
0
Active Todos
4
Patterns
Categories
Decisions (5)
Refuse to act on the AI spend number until it is decomposed - one-time hardware out, recurring API in - then treat the remainder as usage discipline rather than a spend cap
Steve Wallace raised rising AI costs at the end of the Aug 18 Engineering Weekly Sync. Peter did not accept the number as presented. He said the AI costs finance is counting include one-time purchases like the giant chassis just bought from NVIDIA for the 200s, and: I do not want to get hung up on one-time costs. I care way more about the recurring cloud costs and making sure people are being smart there. He set a meeting with finance for Thursday in LA to decompose it, and named what the response will be once the number is clean: model-tier discipline (teaching people not to do every single thing with Fable and Opus - Sonnet is still there for a reason and still really good at some things), possibly monthly per-person budgets, and a quality bar on AI-assisted work. Nathan raised that copy-pasting a prompt in and the answer out adds no value; Peter closed it with: we should be holding each other accountable and not accepting work at that bar.
Rippling Asset Mgmt — time over cost; pay full $18k for end-of-June over $15k for December
The Rippling Asset Management integration project was de-scoped to ~$15k from ~$18k. Peter decided the full-scope original at $18k is acceptable IF Rippling can deliver by end of June. Steve will get the timeline from Kelly Wall to inform the final decision. Explicit framing: time over cost. The principle is conditional — if Rippling slips on the end-of-June timeline, the math changes and $15k-for-December may be the right call.
Moody Citibank card hard cutoff 6/15 — force-action via past-tense framing after 9 months of soft asks
After Kelly Wall described 9 months of soft asks to Steve Moody to switch from the personal-history Citibank card to the Ramp card (forcing manual finance journal entries every month), Peter directed Kelly to send Moody a notice that the card has been disabled and will stop working on June 15. CC Steve Wallace. Phrase it past-tense (has been disabled) plus future-fact (stops working 6/15) — not request language. Peter explicitly affirmed his prior gate (Kelly checks with him before shut-offs) while greenlighting this one because Kelly is giving a month notice — the notice IS the legitimacy gate.
ICP Consolidation - RLCH and RLCAI into Fuzzball
Consolidated RLCH (Rocky Linux Confidential Hardened) and RLCAI ICPs with Fuzzball ICPs to simplify GTM. RLCH targets regulated industries, government, power distribution. RLCAI targets AI-inferencing and compute-heavy industries. Rocky Pro kept separate for mid-market RHEL/SUSE/Oracle replacement motion.
H1 Planning Framework - 3-Lane Model
Introduced a new 3-lane planning model to address GTM and Engineering misalignment. Top Lane (GTM): marketing campaigns, messaging. Middle Lane (Value Drivers): the why - market state change, ICP, business significance. Bottom Lane (Engineering): deliverables driven by Value Drivers.
Related Patterns (4)
Lead by Example with New Tools
When championing new tools or processes, personally use them and share results rather than just advocating. Learning by doing and demonstrating value through example is more effective than mandates.
Protect Engineering Focus Through Process
When faced with requests that would disrupt engineering focus (from sales, governance, product, or other stakeholders), establish processes that protect engineering ability to innovate while still satisfying legitimate concerns. Prefer systematic solutions over ad-hoc responses.
Purpose Is the Decision Procedure
When someone asks how a process, board, tool or artifact should handle their specific case, Peter refuses to answer on the askers terms. He re-derives the answer from what the artifact is for, states that purpose as the only decision procedure, and lets the answer fall out. Anything found to be serving a second purpose is deleted rather than debated. Tools and views are explicitly subordinate to definitions. He will accept that the askers real problem is simply not solved by this artifact rather than widen the artifact to cover it.
Demonstrate the Standard, Then Collect It
When a new leadership expectation has to land across multiple orgs, Peter does not write a spec. He runs a live exemplar in public with the strongest performer first, says openly that the ordering was deliberate, keeps the form of the deliverable open so the ask stays about the thinking rather than the artifact, lets the delta be self-evident to the people who will have to close it, and then collects the same from everyone else on a named rotation. He prefers showing imperfect work now over polished work later.