The Qualified Answer

Simon Elisha
  • 5.0 (2)
  • Technology

The Qualified Answer dissects the real decisions senior technology leaders make - what was chosen, what was traded away, and what they wish they'd known. Because every honest expert answer comes with conditions. This podcast unpacks them.

Episodes

  1. Jul 20

    Winding Up The Podcast

    Send a text message to the show! Due to other commitments, this podcast is winding up. Keep on Building! Subscribe to The Qualified Answer newsletter: https://pages.thequalifiedanswer.com/subscribe Learn the strategies we discussed in this episode - head to https://pages.thequalifiedanswer.com/profile for our full training program. Want cool merch? [NULL]Shirt:  https://shop.nullshirt.com/

  2. Jul 6

    Averages Lie, AI Washes, the IDE Loses Its Crown

    Send a text message to the show! You measure your systems with averages, your board deck is full of "AI," and you barely open your IDE anymore. Three things worth a second look — because each one is a signal, and the signal matters more than the noise. In this solo episode, Simon makes the case for measuring at the tail instead of the mean (and why the 99th percentile is usually where the gold is), unpacks why AI washing is just cloud washing wearing a new label, and examines the quiet, seismic shift of the IDE losing its place as the developer's centre of gravity. The connective thread: when a core part of a value chain is fundamentally altered, pay attention — something is happening, and it's worth figuring out what. Three observations, one habit of mind: know where to look. Hosted by Simon Elisha — former AWS Chief Technologist, 35+ years in enterprise technology. Subscribe to The Qualified Answer newsletter: https://pages.thequalifiedanswer.com/subscribe Learn the strategies we discussed in this episode - head to https://pages.thequalifiedanswer.com/profile for our full training program. Want cool merch? [NULL]Shirt:  https://shop.nullshirt.com/

  3. Jun 22

    It's the Developer's Skill With AI, Not the AI

    Send a text message to the show! For most of three decades, "good code" had a definition. Then ChatGPT launched, and within months the canonical principles of software engineering — KISS, DRY, YAGNI, the lot — collapsed in value almost overnight. Simon Raik-Allen, CTO at Mindset Health and a former Monash AI researcher who spent a decade building simulators to teach machines how to code, dove head-first into the new model. In this conversation he walks through what he gave up, what he kept, and what the new skill actually is — including why AI is still bad at architecture, why he refuses to let one coding agent touch its own tests, and why he calls this moment the developer's golden age. Guest: Simon Raik-Allen, CTO, Mindset Health. Hosted by Simon Elisha — former AWS Chief Technologist, 35+ years in enterprise technology. Subscribe to The Qualified Answer newsletter: https://pages.thequalifiedanswer.com/subscribe Learn the strategies we discussed in this episode - head to https://pages.thequalifiedanswer.com/profile for our full training program. Want cool merch? [NULL]Shirt:  https://shop.nullshirt.com/

  4. Jun 8

    Technology Is Made of People

    Send a text message to the show! You can run a perfect dashboard and still be making bad calls. The numbers say everything's fine - but you haven't spoken to anyone close to the work in weeks. In this solo episode, Simon unpacks the three people-shaped foundations of good leadership decisions: how you get people to care when there's no ROI line for it, why culture has to be lived rather than written on a wall, and the discipline of reconciling hard data with real anecdotes. He draws on the leader who taught him culture by example, the case against hot-desking, and the AWS rule that when data and anecdotes disagree, you dive deep. Because in the end, technology is made of people - and so are the decisions about it. Hosted by Simon Elisha - former AWS Chief Technologist, 35+ years in enterprise technology. Subscribe to The Qualified Answer newsletter: https://pages.thequalifiedanswer.com/subscribe Learn the strategies we discussed in this episode - head to https://pages.thequalifiedanswer.com/profile for our full training program. Want cool merch? [NULL]Shirt:  https://shop.nullshirt.com/

  5. May 25

    Going Fast as a Company without Gatekeepers

    Send a text message to the show! What if the whole business went fast together? You've spent two years getting product and engineering shipping multiple times a day. Releases are fast and of high quality. Then you notice the company isn't actually moving any faster. Herry Wiputra spent seven and a half years at hipages tackling that exact problem. After accelerating product and engineering, he made a controversial call - break the silos open, restructure around cross-functional teams that own customer flows end-to-end, and put senior leadership members on the hook as direct sponsors of each team. Simon and Herry walk through the decision, the near-mutiny it triggered, the guardrails that kept it from collapsing into chaos, and the two environments where the whole approach is an anti-pattern. A decision case on cross-functional teams, theory of constraints, and what it actually takes to move end-to-end velocity from a tech conversation to a board-level one. Guest: Herry Wiputra, Chief Product Officer, hipages Hosted by Simon Elisha — former AWS Chief Technologist, 35+ years in enterprise technology. Subscribe to The Qualified Answer newsletter: https://pages.thequalifiedanswer.com/subscribe Learn the strategies we discussed in this episode - head to https://pages.thequalifiedanswer.com/profile for our full training program. Want cool merch? [NULL]Shirt:  https://shop.nullshirt.com/

  6. May 11

    Bill Shock and the Feedback Loop I Forgot

    Send a text message to the show! You wired up a service, did the mental arithmetic, moved on. Then the bill arrived and it wasn't $20, $50, or even $100. It was thousands. In this solo episode, Simon Elisha walks through his own recent bill shock and what it forced him to confront: the difference between intending to monitor a system and actually building the feedback loop that does it for you. He works through the architecture of the recovery - budgets and alerts as the missing mechanism, optionality through separation of concerns rather than expensive abstraction, and the better-faster-cheaper trade-off as a forcing function for naming what you actually want. A meta-model episode for anyone running systems whose true cost they're not seeing. Hosted by Simon Elisha - former AWS Chief Technologist, 35+ years in enterprise technology. Subscribe to The Qualified Answer newsletter: https://pages.thequalifiedanswer.com/subscribe Learn the strategies we discussed in this episode - head to https://pages.thequalifiedanswer.com/profile for our full training program. Want cool merch? [NULL]Shirt:  https://shop.nullshirt.com/

  7. Apr 27

    The Counterfactual: Why Repairing Beat Rewriting and Outsourcing

    Send a text message to the show! Guest: David Broeren                                                                                                                                                                                   In 2011, David walked into his first delivery manager role and inherited a problem with no easy exit. A major Australian bank's business banking platform had been rated fourth of four in an independent industry survey — and fourth by some distance. An outsourcing contract was ready for signature. Leadership was keen to bring in a team of elite developers and rewrite the thing from scratch.                        David did neither.                                                                                                                         This episode walks through the decision arc: why the two "obvious" options were the wrong ones, the counterfactual maths that made the case for repair, and how he got a disengaged team to turn around a platform that — fifteen years later — still sits at number one. The qualified answer:  Every decision is a risk decision — make it an informed one. The counterfactual is the tool that surfaces what the obvious path actually costs. And when you hear someone say "surely" — back up. That word usually means they haven't been questioned. Subscribe to The Qualified Answer newsletter: https://pages.thequalifiedanswer.com/subscribe Learn the strategies we discussed in this episode - head to https://pages.thequalifiedanswer.com/profile for our full training program. Want cool merch? [NULL]Shirt:  https://shop.nullshirt.com/

  8. Apr 13

    Welcome to The Qualified Answer: Surviving Tech Bubbles & The Gorilla Game

    Send a text message to the show! Imagine spending millions of dollars and months of preparation on a revolutionary e-commerce platform, only to launch to absolute crickets. In the inaugural episode of The Qualified Answer, host Simon Elisha takes us back to the dot-com boom to dissect a spectacular B2B reverse auction failure—and explains why the hard lessons learned then are repeating themselves in today's AI gold rush. From navigating the "irrational exuberance" of tech bubbles to making calculated decisions under pressure, Simon lays the groundwork for what this podcast is all about: exercising good judgment, learning from the expensive mistakes of others, and understanding that every tech decision comes with a "yes, with an if, or a no, with a but." Key Takeaways & Topics Covered: The Dot-Com Disaster: The story of a highly funded, heavily hyped reverse auction platform that failed on day one because it fundamentally ignored customer needs. The Gorilla Game in the AI Era: Breaking down Geoffrey Moore’s market dynamics (Gorillas, Chimps, and Monkeys) and how players like Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI are currently battling for the Gorilla spot. Mastering the OODA Loop: How to apply the military concept of Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act to your business strategy—and why the "Orient" phase is the one AI can't do for you. "Buy What's on the Truck": A hard-learned lesson in IT procurement. Why betting on tech futures and "coming soon" software can ruin your architecture. The Power of Network Effects: How open standards and network effects win markets, featuring throwbacks to the fax machine, AWS S3 APIs, and the new push for Anthropic's Model Context Protocol (MCP). Resources & Concepts Mentioned: Crossing the Chasm, Inside the Tornado, and The Gorilla Game by Geoffrey MooreThe OODA Loop (John Boyd)Model Context Protocol (MCP)Join the Conversation: We want to hear from you! Click the link at the top to send Simon a text or voice message directly. Let us know what you thought of the episode, suggest future topics, or recommend a guest.Help us grow: If you enjoyed this first episode, please share The Qualified Answer with a friend or colleague who loves talking tech, business, and strategy. Keep on building! Subscribe to The Qualified Answer newsletter: https://pages.thequalifiedanswer.com/subscribe Learn the strategies we discussed in this episode - head to https://pages.thequalifiedanswer.com/profile for our full training program. Want cool merch? [NULL]Shirt:  https://shop.nullshirt.com/

  9. Season 1, Episode 1 Trailer

    Trailer: Every Honest Answer Comes With a But

    Send a text message to the show! Every honest answer in technology comes with conditions. The Qualified Answer is a decisions podcast for senior technology leaders - the ones who own the call, and the ones who execute it. Each episode is either a decision case - a senior leader walks you through one real call they had to make, what they chose, what they traded away, and what they wish they'd known - or a solo deep dive into the mental models, frameworks, and patterns behind how consequential decisions actually get made. Hosted by Simon Elisha - 35 years in enterprise technology, first AWS technical hire in Australia, 700+ podcast episodes, and decades of decisions (some great, some not-so great). New episodes coming soon. Subscribe now. Yes, with an if. No, with a but. Keep on building! Subscribe to The Qualified Answer newsletter: https://pages.thequalifiedanswer.com/subscribe Learn the strategies we discussed in this episode - head to https://pages.thequalifiedanswer.com/profile for our full training program. Want cool merch? [NULL]Shirt:  https://shop.nullshirt.com/

  • 1 Trailer
    8 Episodes

Trailer

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
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About

The Qualified Answer dissects the real decisions senior technology leaders make - what was chosen, what was traded away, and what they wish they'd known. Because every honest expert answer comes with conditions. This podcast unpacks them.

Information

  • Creator
    Simon Elisha
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    9
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Vantage Fulcrum PTY LTD
  • Show Website
    The Qualified Answer