The person behind Good Nuisance
Hi, I’m Phil.
I wanted to make music. I ended up being an awesome engineering lead.
Both my parents were software engineers, so naturally I decided I was going into the arts. I rebelled hard against the family traditions and studied drama and art. Along the way I discovered that you can build virtual musical instruments. I asked my dad how I could learn C++. He handed me a copy of Borland C++, and the rest is history.
More than twenty years of building software and leading teams later, I’m based in Berlin. I work with founders as a fractional CTO, coach engineering leaders, and help people make AI work for them.
Say hello
I’ve got plenty
of this wrong.
I once thought keeping my distance would make me a better manager.
I’d already been through a failed agency business. We could build good software; we didn’t understand cash flow. Later, managing a team in Berlin, I decided I needed to be more detached. I actually told people I could only see them as colleagues, never friends.
Yeah. I said that.
I made myself miserable, struggled to earn the team’s trust, and took on work I should have let them do. Things improved when I let my guard down. We built trust and respect, and the team performed better.
Later, at Klarna, I went from leading one team to managing managers across roughly six teams. I had a lot more learning to do.
If you’re carrying too much because it feels easier to do it yourself, I know how you get there.
The longer, messier versionWhy
Good Nuisance?
I like building things. I also want to know whether we should be building them in the first place.
A conversation about technical debt can turn out to be about what the company rewards. The thing holding up delivery might be a disagreement nobody has said out loud. Buying another tool won’t necessarily help.
In my fractional CTO work and coaching, I ask what’s getting in the way before we decide what to change.
I’ve changed my mind about AI, too. Using it has made me more excited about what people can build. It’s why I now teach it to people who don’t code, as well as working with engineers. My AI enablement work gives people practice with the tools and with questioning what comes back.
You might know me from Punk Leadership. Good Nuisance is the name I now work under.
Something you
can use afterwards.
I run AI workshops with Igor Ranc of Handpicked Berlin. People bring things they want to build, and we help them get started. This is the kind of thing I love hearing afterwards:
“Three days after the seminar, I delivered a work product using Claude that fit my client’s needs perfectly. I really needed this!”Russell Coon Workshop participantMore from the participants
I wrote a book, too.
Screaming together
in the same direction.
Punk Leadership grew out of a talk connecting punk with leading a tech team. I wrote, designed and self-published it because I wanted leaders to think harder about the effect the things we build have on people.
It has a choose-your-own-adventure section. In three places, it tells you to stop reading and get a refund. A fairly odd business book, then.
About the bookStill tinkering.
I’ve published one poem, released a song and played bass on stage for exactly one song. I like learning how to make things, even when there’s no sensible business case for it.
Writing is another way I work things out. If you want a better idea of how I think, there’s plenty here to agree or argue with.
- The confessions of an eternal creative tinkerer
- Tech debt isn’t a technical problem. It’s a capitalism problem.
Shall we
have a chat?
Tell me what’s going on and what you’d like help with.
Let’s talk