Martijn Veldkamp
Enterprise Architect · Virtual CTO · Farmer · Sarcastic Realist
Cutting Through the Hype
I spend my days architecting large-scale solutions for the complex organisations and my evenings staring at the horizon on a farm in North Holland. It’s a contrast that keeps me sane: cutting-edge AI and cloud architecture by day, and things that actually work like gravity, old Volvos, and slow-drip coffee from my Mocca Master.
My philosophy is borrowed from Colin Chapman: “Simplify, then add lightness.”
In a world obsessed with adding more “features” (and currently, throwing “AI” at problems like it’s magic dust), I focus on strategic architecture, Conway’s Law in action, and maintaining a healthy scepticism for the current AI gold rush. To me, most Generative AI is a very expensive, very advanced autocomplete. It’s a tool, not a saviour.
Latest Articles
Thoughts on architecture, AI strategy, governance, and the art of building systems that last.
- Why Agents are Slowing Us Down (and Why That’s Okay)
I’ve seen more posts then I care for where someone proudly presents a dashboard tracking “tokens consumed” as the team’s primary AI productivity metric. Not bugs fixed. Not… Read more: Why Agents are Slowing Us Down (and Why That’s Okay) - AI Coding Tools: a bit of a time machine
I think that most people can relate. Over time my career and role shifted. Less time building things directly, more time designing systems, reviewing architectures, and guiding teams.… Read more: AI Coding Tools: a bit of a time machine - The Second Opinion that wasn’t
You asked ChatGPT whether your strategy made sense. It gave you five well-reasoned paragraphs explaining why it did. You felt better. That feeling is the problem. We have… Read more: The Second Opinion that wasn’t - The Slow Death of the Developer Who Knows Why Things WorkI’ve spent the last few weeks navigating two different kinds of grief. One is personal. The other is professional: watching the slow, agonizing death of the “Developer Who… Read more: The Slow Death of the Developer Who Knows Why Things Work
- Can you handle it?
The current evolution from prompt engineering to autonomous AI agents has accidentally validated decades of management theory. These latest generation of AI…
- Escaping the Feature Factory
We spent the last decade obsessing over speed. We adopted Agile, we SCRUMmed, did the DevOps, and we measured our success by velocity and deployment frequency. For the… Read more: Escaping the Feature Factory
Work With Me
I help organisations cut through complexity — whether that means designing an AI strategy that isn’t just a vendor pitch, untangling technical debt, or providing Virtual CTO leadership for teams that need strategic direction without the permanent headcount.
What I bring: Strategic architecture, data & AI governance, digital transformation leadership, and the pragmatism to tell you when the emperor has no clothes.
Reach out on LinkedIn or drop me an email.