Jay Burgess: EssaysEssays and field fiction on operational systems, forward deployed engineering, and how organizations actually work.https://jay-burgess.me/essays/2026-10-06T00:00:00ZJay BurgessMindset Before Experiencehttps://jay-burgess.me/essays/mindset-before-experience.html2026-10-06T00:00:00Z2026-10-06T00:00:00ZYears in a role measure exposure. They say very little about how a person looks at what they were exposed to.A Different Kind of Operations Leaderhttps://jay-burgess.me/essays/a-different-kind-of-operations-leader.html2026-10-06T00:00:00Z2026-10-06T00:00:00ZA more useful introduction than a job history is the question a leader asks when something is not working, and the system that question leads to.What the Feed Stopped Sendinghttps://jay-burgess.me/essays/what-the-feed-stopped-sending.html2026-09-19T00:00:00Z2026-09-19T00:00:00ZA story about a benefits company that never hired an operations person, and the coordinator who quietly caught its worst failure by hand for fourteen months. Fiction.The Box and the Wiringhttps://jay-burgess.me/essays/the-box-and-the-wiring.html2026-09-19T00:00:00Z2026-09-19T00:00:00ZOperations and operational systems work sound like the same job from a distance. Up close, they answer different questions.Finding It Is Not Fixing Ithttps://jay-burgess.me/essays/finding-it-is-not-fixing-it.html2026-09-19T00:00:00Z2026-09-19T00:00:00ZSplitting the diagnosis from the delivery slows the fix down, and it also changes which fix gets found.What the Money Was Doinghttps://jay-burgess.me/essays/what-the-money-was-doing.html2026-05-18T00:00:00Z2026-05-18T00:00:00ZA story about a company losing two million a quarter, and the four years of interest it paid on money it had already earned. Fiction.What Ninth Street Knewhttps://jay-burgess.me/essays/what-ninth-street-knew.html2026-02-10T00:00:00Z2026-02-10T00:00:00ZA story about a production company whose entire delivery knowledge lived in one freelancer's chat history, and the contract date it was going to leave on. Fiction.The Outcome Is the Unit of Deliveryhttps://jay-burgess.me/essays/the-outcome-is-the-unit-of-delivery.html2025-11-03T00:00:00Z2025-11-03T00:00:00ZMost delivery is measured in artifacts because artifacts are countable. What an outcome has to be to count, and why organizations avoid committing to one.Deployment Changes the Problemhttps://jay-burgess.me/essays/deployment-changes-the-problem.html2025-08-25T00:00:00Z2025-08-25T00:00:00ZSome requirements only exist once real work is running, which makes a live operation the one place you can find them.The Forward Deployed Engineerhttps://jay-burgess.me/essays/the-forward-deployed-engineer.html2025-06-17T00:00:00Z2025-06-17T00:00:00ZA delivery discipline that starts at the operating problem and stays until the outcome holds. The method, the unit of delivery, and the exit condition.Technology Is a Component, Not the Objectivehttps://jay-burgess.me/essays/technology-is-a-component.html2025-04-09T00:00:00Z2025-04-09T00:00:00ZSoftware, data, automation and AI supply leverage, and the direction has to come from the operating model. What that means in practice, including for AI specifically.Why Organizations Keep Buying Software for Systems Problemshttps://jay-burgess.me/essays/why-organizations-buy-software-for-systems-problems.html2025-01-22T00:00:00Z2025-01-22T00:00:00ZOrganizations buy the artifact they can procure instead of redesigning the seam that is actually failing. Why the substitution happens, and how to tell when buying is right.The Coordination Taxhttps://jay-burgess.me/essays/the-coordination-tax.html2024-10-29T00:00:00Z2024-10-29T00:00:00ZWhen a system is designed badly, the difference shows up as effort, absorbed quietly by the people doing the work.Friction Is a Systems Signalhttps://jay-burgess.me/essays/friction-is-a-systems-signal.html2024-08-12T00:00:00Z2024-08-12T00:00:00ZFriction is the instrumentation an operation already has. What it measures, which kinds of it point at which failure, and the friction that should be left alone.Start With the Operation, Not the Softwarehttps://jay-burgess.me/essays/start-with-the-operation.html2024-05-20T00:00:00Z2024-05-20T00:00:00ZStarting from the operation is a method you can follow: how to choose a unit of work, trace one real instance, and separate the delay from the work.How Organizations Actually Workhttps://jay-burgess.me/essays/how-organizations-actually-work.html2024-03-05T00:00:00Z2024-03-05T00:00:00ZThere are two organizations in every building. One is described in documents, the other gets the work out, and most change programs are addressed to the first.