Oil leases, control panels, connected hardware, and now AI.

I'm Michael Job. For twenty years I've worked on the part of a company nobody writes down: how work actually moves from one person to the next. Lean Six Sigma across three Chevron oil leases. Fifty embedded hardware programs at Rexnord and Zurn Elkay. A granted patent on IoT water management. Now AI structure for founder-led companies, and panel capacity for contractors who ran out of it.

Read the essaysHow I work
LATEST ESSAY
The Market Is Still Counting Chips
July 27, 2026 · 18 min
US Patent 12,641,156 granted May 2026 50+ hardware programs to production Rexnord → Zurn Elkay 2015–2024 Cal Poly SLO B.S. Industrial Technology

Where the constraints actually are

Power delivery, advanced packaging, panel capacity, permitting. I write about the physical limits underneath AI and industrial markets, and about who captures the value once a narrative moves on.

Counting Chips

5 parts · 70 min · complete
The Toll Booth Moves
PART 1
The Toll Booth Moves
Part 1 of "Counting Chips": why the scarcity you're paying for is rarely the scarcity you'll end up owning
9 min · July 14, 2026
The Great Repackaging
PART 2
The Great Repackaging
Part 2 of "Counting Chips": every socket on the old motherboard was a market and the sockets are disappearing
15 min · July 15, 2026
Nvidia Stopped Selling Chips Years Ago
PART 3
Nvidia Stopped Selling Chips Years Ago
Part 3 of "Counting Chips": how boundary-setting authority is built, what it costs to keep, and what would unbundle it
18 min · July 16, 2026
Blocs Over Substrate
PART 4
Blocs Over Substrate
Part 4 of "Counting Chips": the chip war didn't end. It was absorbed into a contest of blocs. Every bloc stands on the same constrained ground.
13 min · July 21, 2026
The Market Is Still Counting Chips
PART 5
The Market Is Still Counting Chips
Part 5 of "Counting Chips," and the last: how a components market became specified infrastructure, what that would mean for how these businesses are v
18 min · July 27, 2026

Everything else

The Cloud Has a Zoning BoardWe have spent two decades pretending the cloud is weightless. The metaphor did its job too well: it made the digital world feel invisible, frictionless, and detached from the physical one.Physical limits9 minAI Isn’t One Bubble. It’s a Ladder.The risk is not that AI fails. The risk is that public markets misclassify which layer captures the value.Value capture9 minThe AI Efficiency Paradox: When Cheaper Tokens Trigger a Hardware Arms RaceIn the history of technology, efficiency is almost never a synonym for contraction. When a resource becomes dramatically cheaper to produce, the market does not neatly pocket the savings and walk away. It finds ways to consume that resource at a scale previously considered absurd.Physical limits9 minThe Cloud Has an Air Hose: AI, Hormuz, and the End of Weightless SoftwareIf you were a commercial deep-sea diver in the 1920s, your working life depended on the "Standard Diving Dress." A heavy canvas suit and a spun-copper helmet. When you descended to the seafloor, you felt remarkably light. But that feeling of weightlessness was a profound cognitive illusion.Physical limits5 minThe Real AI Bottleneck Is Not Compute. It’s Electrical DeliveryWhen supply chains seize up, people notice the container ships first. They are dramatic, visible, and easy to photograph. But the ships are rarely the true bottleneck. The real constraint usually sits onshore, in berths, cranes, truck appointments, rail links, warehouse space, and all the smaller handoffs where physical systems quietly fail under pressure.Physical limits6 minLululemon Grew Wider Than Its Control SystemWhen a dominant company like Lululemon begins to wobble, the market instinctively points to the visible disturbances: a product miss, a CEO exit, a bad quarter, or a stronger rival.Value capture9 minThe Routing Race: Why Apple’s AI Moat is Built in Silicon, Not SoftwareWe tell ourselves a simple, comforting story about Apple’s dominance. We call it the "walled garden." The narrative goes like this: we buy an iPhone, we get hooked on the seamless blue bubbles of iMessage, we store our lives in iCloud, and the psychological and digital friction of leaving simply becomes too high. It is a story of consumer entrapment.Value capture5 minConstruction Isn't Becoming Manufacturing. It's Becoming Something More Interesting.For the last several years, one of the most common refrains in the industry has been that construction is "becoming more like manufacturing." You hear it at conferences, in investor decks, in contractor strategy memos, and from....Industrial6 minWe Got Faster at Building Data Centers. We Didn't Get Faster at Turning Them On.The industry industrialized construction and left integration to chance. Off-site partners are the lever but almost nobody is pulling it correctly.Industrial8 minAI Can Do the Work. That Doesn't Mean It Wins the Market.The market keeps making the same mistake: assuming the company with the smartest model automatically owns the market it can touch. Watch AI write production code, summarize a deposition, or close a support ticket without a human in the loop... the conclusion feels inevitable. --> The labs are going to own legal, healthcare, finance, enterprise software, all of it. The logic sounds airtight. It is also missing the hardest part of commerce.Value capture4 min

How I work with companies

Three current engagements. Each one comes down to the same problem: a workflow nobody documented, doing more load-bearing work than anyone realizes.

SMBai

Co-founder, with Daniel Obodovski

We unpack how your business actually runs. Not the org chart, the real workflows. We capture the knowledge sitting in your best people's heads, govern it in one source of truth, and build AI on top of it that runs on your company's truth instead of the internet's.

One rule underneath all of it: no black box, anywhere. A person still owns every seam involving money, irreversibility, or anything visible outside the company.

  • Output gets consistent and moves faster through the shop
  • Knowledge stops being trapped in individual people
  • Key-person risk drops, which matters at succession or exit
  • Nothing runs unattended where money or reputation is exposed

Litus Global Solutions

Programs and business development

UL-508A control panels and MCCs for contractors, OEMs, and integrators. I come in when an internal panel shop or a preferred vendor hits capacity and the panel is sitting on the project's critical path. Early technical scoping, capacity matched to real timelines, Fortune 500 and US Navy work.

Program advisory

Independent, since 2024

For engineering-led companies stuck between a promising prototype and predictable delivery. Hardware and IoT programs through EVT, DVT, and PVT. Program governance, operating cadence, and the supply chain alignment that production readiness actually requires.

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About

It started on oil leases. I ran the Lean Six Sigma program across Midway-Sunset, Cymric McKittrick, and Kern River, carrying ten to fifteen projects at a time and documenting savings alongside Chevron engineers, construction reps, and superintendents.

Then a decade in industrial products. At Rexnord I led telemetry-enabled IoT programs from edge hardware through cloud platforms and cut release cycles from twelve weeks to four. At Zurn Elkay I ran a portfolio of more than fifty embedded hardware-software programs, then moved into enterprise transformation work through a spin-off and a merger. Along the way I became a co-inventor on a patent for IoT water management, granted in May 2026.

The pattern held everywhere I went. The constraint was almost never the idea. It was the operating system nobody wrote down: the handoff with no owner, the decision that waits four days for a meeting, the knowledge that lives in one person's head and leaves when they do.

That is the work now, in factories and panel shops and founder-led companies. AI belongs in that machine, but only where the seams are governed and a person still owns anything involving money, irreversibility, or the outside world. If the AI went quiet tomorrow, your team should still be able to explain the work, judge it, and do it.

Selected record
2026
US Patent 12,641,156
Co-inventor. Water management system and user interface, assigned to Zurn Water LLC.
2023–24
Enterprise Program Director
Zurn Elkay. CRM rollout, M&A integration, commercial restructuring.
2019–23
Director, Program Management
Zurn Elkay. 50+ embedded hardware-software programs.
2015–19
Technical Program Manager
Rexnord. 12 full-lifecycle IoT products.
2014–15
Lean Six Sigma Facilitator
Chevron. Three oil leases, five divisions.
B.S.
Industrial Technology
Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.

Two reasons to email me.

Third reason: you disagree with something I wrote. Those are the best emails I get.

You run a business

A founder-led company where too much lives in your head. An engineering team stuck between prototype and production. Or a control panel you needed three weeks ago.

michael@michaelpjob.com

You want the essays

New pieces go out when they're finished, usually about once a week. No cadence promises and no funnel.

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