Dispatches from the
deployment.

In June, three AWS announcements landed within three weeks. Most people read them separately. They're one story.

Founders: the most useful go-to-market document of the year isn't a sales playbook. It's watching how a $1B engineering motion is designed.

A $1 billion commitment makes headlines. The partner program announced the same day is how it scales.

Hourly billing rewards effort. AI should be paid for outcomes.

The most in-demand engineer of 2026 doesn't have the job title you'd guess.

Here's something you might not expect from someone at AWS: not every organization should bring in forward deployed engineers.

Before AWS embedded engineers with customers, it ran the experiment on itself.

A 30-developer project, scoped at 12–18 months. Delivered in 76 days.

The best measure of an AI engagement isn't what you ship. It's what happens after you leave.

Three years ago, AWS ran an experiment: what happens if you put applied scientists and strategists directly in the room with customers, instead of shipping them a deck?

Forward Deployed Engineering is not consulting with a cooler name. If it doesn't leave the customer more capable than it found them, it isn't FDE.

An MIT study found ~95% of enterprise AI pilots never produce measurable P&L impact. The models were rarely the problem. The last mile was.