Welcome to Skunk Works
Field notes from the operators table — what we are building, breaking, and betting on, every week.
Most technology advice is written by people who have never carried a pager.
I have. Twenty-plus years of it — from the floor at Unisys to the rooms where fractional CTOs and CISOs actually own the outcome. Skunk Works is the newsletter I wanted to read the whole time and could never find: field notes from the operators' table. No vendor talking points. No LinkedIn-thought-leader cosplay. The real thing.
What this is
Every week, one piece on the stuff that actually moves the needle for a technology business — the decisions, the war stories, the bets, and yes, the weird experiments we probably shouldn't be running but do anyway. Some weeks it's a teardown of a decision that cost someone seven figures. Some weeks it's a play that printed money. Some weeks it's just a hard-won opinion, defended in public.
Why "Skunk Works"
Because the best work happens off to the side, away from the committee — small teams, real constraints, permission to try the thing everyone says won't work. That's where I've spent my career, and that's the energy here.
Who it's for
Operators. Founders carrying real risk. Engineers who got pulled into leadership and are figuring it out live. The people who'd rather have a drink and argue about architecture than sit through another roadmap deck.
If that's you — pull up a stool. The next one drops in a week.
— Donald Grieb, WolfpackFront