Twenty years ago I learned the job isn't design or code — it's translation. Between what clients want and what users need. Between dense documents and a screen someone can actually use. Between design and engineering, which mostly don't speak each other's language. Lately, between humans and AI.

I've practised it everywhere: a 25-person agency I founded in India and sold, startups where I was the first product hire, a national regulator that had already watched two attempts fail. In 2015 my family and I restarted from zero in Australia — the hardest translation of all.

Ten years on, I'm in Brisbane with my wife, our daughter and son, spending my days giving AI agents personality and life — convinced this is the most profound shift humanity has experienced. My daughter's plan is that we buy a farm and live there forever. Ten years of translation experience, and I still can't turn "maybe one day" into something a seven-year-old will accept.