Right and fast

September 25, 2026

I’m seeing a shift on how companies work nowadays.

5 years ago, Qonto was using the Toyota Management System, which is people-centered, with continuous improvement in their processes. Finished working products were valued. We had project-planning phases, where it was decided what to build, why, and at what cost. We were doing things right the first time. We were focusing in one project at a time, until completion. We were keeping technical scalability down. We took the time.

And it worked. We shipped successful projects, and the customer satisfaction score was very high. The success was in part because of this process.

But Qonto changed how they work. Adapting it to the “AI era”. Following the latest AI-psychosis trends.

The teams are their own startups.

The new process for a new project/feature is:

Set a deadline (eg: in 1.5 months)
Set objectives of what you want to build. Be ambitious (#ambition)
Now, walk backwards. Create a plan to achieve those objectives. Be optimistic. (#ambition)
Once you have a plan, commit to it. Deliver. (#ownership)
No backsies. Deadlines are not be changed (#teamwork, #accountability)

The expectation is that software build is good. Mantainable. Easy to adapt to new requirements.

And corporate wants the new features coming out fast.

Corporate wants us to use AI. It’s going to make us way more productive. Reality is that bulding software and delivering projects is as complex as it was. But now we have another tool called Claude that seems to be doing correctly 80% of the work, but we cannot ship 80% of a Financing solution. Or 80% of a card processor.

I’ve talked to other peers in the industry and they are struggling with the exact same pattern. It’s a very interesting phase where companies are trying out what works and what doesn’t. At the expense of bad engineering, and ultimately worst products and unsatisfied customers.

I look forward to the regression to the mean, where AI usage is dialed down, expectations are more realistic, and we can work in a better way, ship stellar products we’re proud of. Really. I miss it.