The AI Era Is a Great Time to Learn - 15 Years Since I Was a Fledgling Engineer

"What should I learn in the AI era?" "How do I grow as an engineer?" At TechLead Conference 2026, I heard those anxieties often. Fifteen years after asking basic MySQL questions at Python mini Hack-a-thon, and with AI now available to answer anything on demand, I believe this is the best era yet for beginners.

The CTO's Next Career — Why Unicorn Founders Move to AI Labs, and the 9-Step Exit That Makes It Possible

There are thousands of articles on how to start, fund, and scale a company, and almost none on how to leave one. Henry Shi, co-founder and CTO/COO of Super.com, wrote exactly that, then published the resignation process he spent nine months preparing as a 9-step playbook. His destination: Anthropic. His goal: safe AGI. Using this essay, I think through the question of a CTO's next career along three axes: the trend, the operator's value, and the design of a clean exit.

Real Wages Turned Positive, But a Salary Freeze Is Still a Pay Cut — Inflation, AI, and Engineer Job Changes in Japan (May 2026)

At the end of 2025, I wrote that wages weren't keeping up with prices. Six months later, the picture has quietly shifted: real wages have finally turned positive. But 'the average is positive' and 'you are positive' are two different things. If your salary is frozen, it is still an effective pay cut. Using the latest government statistics and a domestic survey, we read three converging trends (wages versus prices, AI and employment, and the engineer job market) as close to the primary sources as possible.

How Staying Active on LinkedIn Led to a Japan CTO Inquiry from an Overseas Startup

By continuing to post on LinkedIn, I received an inquiry about a Japan CTO position from an overseas startup. I'll explain how important LinkedIn is for Japanese engineers aiming for a global career, based on my firsthand experience.

Full Remote Work Isn't for Everyone — Reading the 'Home Alone' Isolation Study from Both Sides of the Household

Full remote work is comfortable. But what if a mental-health cost is quietly accumulating behind that comfort? The new Science study 'Home alone' shows, with data from nearly 590,000 workers, that working from home increases isolation and worsens mental health, and that the harm concentrates among people who live alone. I have lived through full remote work both alone and in a household of five. Here I read the study's data against both versions of my life.