We meet Eamonn O'Neill, founder and CTO of Lemongrass. Eamonn tells us that he is a technologist first and foremost, as excited about tech today as he was decades ago when he got his first Spectrum computer. He describes his journey from typing out code from magazines through an engineering degree to getting the enterprise software bug working as a graduate. He explains how his peers have been his mentors, and advises those starting out in tech to be excited about the future, do the background reading, and learn from other people. Eamonn ends by sharing his excitement for the future and his view that AI will amplify the efficacy of the most talented people.
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Matt Egan ( .832) Hello, hello, hello.
Welcome to First Person, the show where we meet the most interesting people in IT and learn from them what makes them tick by focusing only on their firsts. I'm your host, Matt Egan, asking you to enjoy, like and subscribe wherever you find us.
And if you are an interesting person in IT, let us know. You might be the next First Person. The next voice you hear will be today's guest. He is Eamonn O'Neill. Enjoying a stellar career, Eamonn is a global leader, co-founder and CTO.
with decades of experience bringing strong technical leadership and focus expertise in enterprise software and architecture. Eamonn is definitely one of the most interesting people in IT, and we are delighted to have him as a guest on First Person. So, Eamonn, welcome.
And first up, what is the first thing people should know about you? Eamonn O'Neill (
.94) Thanks, Matt, for having me on. It's a good question to start with.
I think when I certainly when I talk to customers and other people within, you know, lemongrass and the broader industry, the one thing I always try to get across is that I'm actually I enjoy technology.
And I like to position myself as a technologist, just because I think it's really important to to recognize that Matt Egan ( .406) Mm-hmm.
Eamonn O'Neill (
.712) The cool thing about technology as an industry is that there's always new things coming. And if you're the kind of person who enjoys that, that would really help you, not just in your career, but in working day to day with people.
And it also gives you a little bit of freedom when you tell people you're a technologist to kind of focus on really trying to understand the technology and explain it to other people. Matt Egan ( .098) Yeah.
.737) Yeah, that's the first thing I try to tell people. I do it in lots of different scenarios. Matt Egan ( .226) Yeah, that's cool.
like, so I guess, mean, in that scenario, you're talking about where it's like a customer conversation, like it's comforting for them, right? Because you're not about the one specific product or service, you're about the technology and you're going to help them solve their problems kind of thing.
But also I think, I think from a leadership perspective, like not being afraid of the future in that sense, right? If you're a technologist, like you're excited about the next thing, you're not worried about that. You're excited about the transformation. Eamonn O'Neill ( .761) Exactly.
Matt Egan ( .75) disruption.
Eamonn O'Neill ( .14) Exactly.
that's like I recall even when I started out, there was a sense that to really progress you had to be a manager. You you had to, you had to sort of leave your toys behind as it were and get on with the serious business of being a manager.
And, but the truth is that, and you see it more these days than you used to that a lot of very successful leaders are, technologists who Matt Egan ( .856) Right.
Yeah. Matt Egan ( .064) Yep.
.456) who very passionate about technology and about their product maybe or their area. And that passion is really important. A company, technology company that doesn't have that is very dry and very rarely innovates and succeeds.
And as you rightly say as well, by the way, the attitude of just wanting change is in itself becoming more more important. Matt Egan (
.404) Yeah, I mean… Matt Egan ( .532) Yeah.
I think an organization that's led by someone who isn't invested in technology now, like you're not going to spot the next thing on the horizon, right? You're not going to adapt and evolve. And I also think it's interesting.
mean, you touched on lots of themes that, you know, I hope we get to, right? But I think one, one of the things I've noticed in industry over the past couple of decades is it used to be two very separate paths.
Like to your point, it was, you became the manager or maybe you might be the lead developer and your career topped out at a certain point. but like you could be the specialist in the thing.
And I think maybe it's something to do with the difference between leadership and management, but actually to be a real true leader, you kind of need both, right?
You need to be able to take people with you, but also have that hunger and thirst for the next thing, not to be afraid of it. So great. So that's set us up really nicely for a conversation.
We've got further than we normally get the whole time, which is great because we move now to section one, which we call first things first. And this is where we like to get to know our guests by understanding Eamonn O'Neill ( .424) Okay.
Matt Egan (
.138) some of their first times going right back to the beginning. You've kind of hinted at that a little bit. But please, could you tell us something about your first job in technology? Tell us about what brings you to this place? Where did you start? Eamonn O'Neill (
.306) So I like to think it goes back a little bit further, if you don't mind. mean, to be honest, I think it starts in childhood. I think it starts when you get your first computer, you get your first sort of little bit of tech.
Because I can certainly see a direct line from there through when I got my first ZX Spectrum through to getting to computer club in our school and then into engineering. Matt Egan ( .044) Love this.
Matt Egan ( .333) Uh-huh.
.704) university and really my the reason I did engineering even was I wanted to learn how a computer works simple as that and and it really took you we did everything from doping of silicon through to the even generating the power to run a computer through to programming it and all of the layers through machine code into more advanced programming languages and that set me up really nicely for my first job which was with EDS I'm now part of HPE, Electronic Data Systems at the time.
And that was based out of Dublin. So as a grad, I joined them with a whole bunch of other very similar to the age guys. And we had a great time working in technology then back in the 90s in Dublin. It was certainly a really fun time.
But also EDS being a company with global reach. Matt Egan ( .926) Thank Eamonn O'Neill (
.469) exposed me very quickly to this idea of business software and how enterprises rely so heavily on this type of software. I found that really exciting. Matt Egan ( .838) No, I bet.
And I think it's amazing, first of all, how many people we talk to in this particular series who, you know, the question I ask is wrong, right? It's not the first job. It is that first spark that happens in childhood.
Equally, as soon as you said Spectrum 48K, I can see the rubber keys. I can see the tape deck to the side there. And what a mind blowing step forward that seemed to be at the time.
Whereas when my children are getting frustrated, if anything takes more than seconds to… Eamonn O'Neill ( .809) Yeah, absolutely.
Eamonn O'Neill ( .039) Exactly.
.558) It's like they want to live in that world. so lots of things to follow up on there. But what do you think it was about that computer or computing in general that so captured your imagination as a child? Eamonn O'Neill (
.375) I think I do recall, and again, this is certainly dealing ourselves talking about this, but having to type in the machine code for a game.
And for those who don't know what that's like, mean, literally at the back of there were hundreds of rows of hexadecimal values that you had to type. Get one of them wrong and nothing would work. So it was, you Matt Egan ( .84) Yeah.
Matt Egan ( .75) Yeah.
.647) hard, hard work to get that in. it was just the sense of what's possible with this. Everything from doing text-based work through to gaming.
even what I found, again, another bit of an epiphany, I recall, is there was a little project in one of the magazines to write code to do a clock, which sounds very simple. Matt Egan ( .045) Yeah.
.776) Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Eamonn O'Neill (
.964) But it involved a lot of maths, where you're the sine, cosine, and how all of that became, in a running computer program, became really, it brought it all alive, all of the trigonometry.
so for me, that was also a nice sort of, just like, I even find when I, even today, if I do any programming, some that are well to me once, it's like doing a good crossword puzzle.
And that's what it was like, even in the early computers, was, Matt Egan ( .456) Yeah, shut.
.083) you were solving problems and that in itself was fun. So yeah, that was probably the thing about me. Sorry, go ahead. Matt Egan ( .444) Yeah.
It's like magic really. It's like magic really, right? You create something from nothing. And even that point where you're typing out someone else's code, but if you get it right, when you hit return, the thing happens, right? That's an incredibly satisfying thing.
And I can see how that would be very satisfying. But it's an interesting step to go from that through the engineering degree, which by the way, sounds amazing. because it gave you top to bottom all round, like in-depth knowledge of how this technology works.
But then to be in a business software perspective, right, it's quite interesting that that first role, there will have been a lot of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed grads who went in who didn't end up taking the paths you've taken.
like, what was it about that kind of business software approach? it the fact that you could have that same impact, but like at a much greater scale, I suppose? Like, was that what you found kind of satisfying? Eamonn O'Neill (
.085) Yeah, again, to be perfectly honest, I had no idea what I was getting into when I joined ETS. I couldn't understand anything they were telling me at the start because the language of business software is pretty impenetrable for a lot of people.
after a while, it's exactly that. The thing I got a real kick out of, and it's the same little buzz as we talked about with the Spectrum, is when you can get a technology to work at scale, you get… Matt Egan ( .666) Yeah.
.674) a real buzz when you see the reaction. And then there's examples where it can go either way, right?
So we have one situation I recall where there was a, and it wasn't me, but it was one of our team who basically made a change to production system for a company in Germany.
We didn't realize that because that defect that got in prevented the delivery notes from being printed.
that not only was that slowing down the loading of the trucks, but the trucks were backing up onto a motorway in Germany and it closed the road that caused severe traffic that the police had to get involved in. And this was a major incident on the local logistics.
And we did no idea until the CIO explained to us why printing was so important. Matt Egan ( .194) Wow.
Wow. Eamonn O'Neill (
.231) for that company and the surrounding community. you know, while you have some great impact, but you also have some very terrible impact if you're not careful.
that's the nice thing about enterprises, you do see these huge scales of impact, which hopefully you're on the right side each time of that. Matt Egan ( .444) No, completely.
Matt Egan ( .292) No, completely.
It resonates from my own professional life where I used to edit one of those computer magazines actually a little bit later on, but like in the consumer space.
And then when you move into B2B, when you move into enterprise, covering enterprise, like sometimes other journalists will be a bit like, huh, isn't that boring? you're like quite the opposite actually. Like CIOs do amazing things that impacts lots and lots of people, right?
And once you're walking down the street and you understand the impact. Eamonn O'Neill ( .731) Alright.
.046) of the work of the CIO on the coffee shop or the gym. If you're interested in this stuff, it's incredibly interesting on a much greater scale than anything you could do in a more consumer space. So you're in there.
I can completely see how exciting and satisfying that was from a work perspective. How do you go from there to where you are now? What's the path from being that grad to being a global leader as you are today? Eamonn O'Neill (
.726) I guess I took from EDS. I left after I think it was four or five years and then I joined IBM as a contractor back again in the mid 90s. that was just as contracting as a work mode was starting to become more normalized.
But there was a real sense of freedom being a contractor. I loved it. Did a couple of years of that. Matt Egan ( .595) Yeah.
.47) But that freedom also encourages you to try things, especially when you're bit younger, try things with impunity as it were. And so I set up a company with a few other colleagues from IBM back in 1998.
And then we set up a consulting company that was doing the same sort of thing we were working on, but via ourselves and for customers in Ireland. And that in itself was… Obviously, really good fun, tough, but you learn a lot doing that.
I one guy said to me, running this company is like having three MBAs because you really are taking the pain yourself. We went some months without any salaries, of course. And then you take the rewards and where you can see big successes. And that really stands by you.
Matt Egan ( .688) Okay.
.639) I sold that company in 2006 and then set up Lemongrass, the one I work on in 2008. And that was a similar type sort of motivation, but very focused this time around much more of the technology, the underlying technology for enterprise, cloud largely and automation and AI.
So those are all just sort of passions, things that I enjoy doing. and we found like-minded people who wanted to get into it as well.
But that's, the enterprise angle here, work with some of the biggest companies in the world, means that you get to talk about bigger topics, you get to influence bigger things, you get involved in more more discussions and groups and that's really where I am now.
As I said, I'm still very much a technologist, but I spend a lot of my time talking about it now and showing people. But I still absolutely like to roll my sleeves up and learn the technology myself. Otherwise, I lose credibility for sure. Matt Egan (
.414) Well, and the satisfaction of solving bigger problems for your customers as well, that is pretty, pretty huge, I would imagine. So it's interesting because one of the next questions I would ask normally is about like mentors and bosses, right?
You know, if, and I will ask you that question, but also what's coming across clearly is, is in both of those scenarios, both of those organizations you set up, you talked a lot about the colleagues, right?
The people you worked with kind of, and maybe that becomes almost part of it as a supportive network of, of people who can help you move forward. Because basically you've had two organizations that you set up yourself, right? You've not climbed a corporate ladder here.
You've built the ladder kind of thing. So I don't know, there any great bosses or mentors around there and or has it been about those collegiate relationships where you've been supported and mentoring within the organization? Eamonn O'Neill (
.159) Yeah, I would say that there's always, I'd say everybody, well, anybody I worked for in the early days, I absolutely took a lot away from that. You know, some, just different small things, some them are slightly bigger.
I think the really tough times, you have to, you know, have to hope that your colleagues are Matt Egan ( .461) Yeah.
.076) are there for you and they were. There's always tough times but you've also got to dig deep in yourself. You've got to figure out how do you deal with that. That's something that's unavoidable because other people are relying on you as well.
it's not just you're the center of this universe. what I'd say, I think for me, the one thing I would say is Matt Egan ( .546) for sure.
Yeah. Eamonn O'Neill (
.256) I've always tried to keep an open mind about people and I've always tried to learn from people. And I can see even today the team that we've got in Lemongrass, there are plenty of people that I absolutely trust and learn from every day.
It's people I rely on completely. And we've got a fantastic, exact team now in Lemongrass that's made up of people with very different backgrounds, but all able to do things I can't do. Or I'm not even in doing. Matt Egan ( .928) Yeah.
Yeah, I don't want to do. Eamonn O'Neill (
.014) Well exactly and that's one thing that you do sort of learn a little bit when you start a company is you know yes you want to influence everything, yes you want it to go a certain way but at some point you know you're not as good as other people at doing that and you're far better served by getting good people to do that and focusing on what you are good at yourself and then it becomes not just more effective but way more fun.
Matt Egan ( .05) Yeah.
Yeah, no, I'm sure. And I think that also speaks to where we started here, where you talked about levels of excitement around technology. if you are like to get good things from the people you interact with, and I completely agree, right? Nobody's perfect. Everyone's got something to offer.
And we tend to look at people through the prisms of ourselves on our best day. But actually, the people who are very different are often the people who can help you the most. But you have to be willing to look for and find those things, right?
Which requires a certain amount of humility and a lot of curiosity and empathy.
And I think that to my mind, that does relate to your opening statement about being excited about new technology, Like you need to be excited about the possibilities of learning from the people you work with and for. Eamonn O'Neill ( .263) Yeah.
Eamonn O'Neill ( .517) Completely correct.
I mean, I think it's… and that evolves. That's something that as you mature becomes a bit more obvious. know, that largely through making mistakes, it becomes more obvious as well. So, you know, I wouldn't expect a 22 year old to come out understanding all that.
If they listen, yes, absolutely great. You can accelerate your learning, but sometimes you actually have to experience it to get it. know, and most times… Matt Egan ( .204) Yeah.
Yeah. Matt Egan ( .71) Yeah, completely.
Yeah, well, let's let's jump to that. Because it's all been too positive so far. So we're going to move to section two, which we call first fails. And you trailed this quite nicely, first of all, by describing somebody else's mistake, which has a massive impact.
But also, as you just said, right, like, you know, that 22 year old person or whomever, you kind of need to make the mistakes to get the scars to learn. Eamonn O'Neill ( .298) the Matt Egan (
.246) So I'm just wondering if in your career, like there's any particular one or first big mistake that you recall and either it keeps you awake at night or it's just that was a good learning experience kind of thing. Eamonn O'Neill (
.286) Well, I suppose if I was to look back, I would say more on the business side than on the technology side was where I would see mistakes. And I would say my recurring failure is to not move quickly enough.
I'm a bit of a procrastinator by nature, which isn't always a bad thing, I've learned. Sometimes procrastinators can manage to squeeze out a lot of… Matt Egan ( .294) Hey Right.
Matt Egan ( .336) Definitely.
.831) things quickly when they need to but at the same time I would certainly look at examples where I kick myself for deferring the work or the decision or you know and if I'd moved quicker I would have been better off.
So I do think that's something that I could see a bit of a trail of mistakes in that respect. Matt Egan ( .186) Yeah.
Yeah. Matt Egan ( .1) Yeah.
But to your point, it's not always the worst thing, right? I remember I used to work for a CEO who used to say, always put off until tomorrow what you don't have to do today.
Like any, you know, it's kind of, it was kind of tongue in cheek, but, know, to your point, procrastination is fine if you're able to make the decisions when you need to make the decisions. Right. Because, because some people do kind of go too fast into things.
Eamonn O'Neill ( .381) Thank Matt Egan (
.712) But I guess, are there any specifics you can think of, like, or is just a general trend through? Eamonn O'Neill ( .223) for sure.
.925) Yeah, I can think of some examples. Eamonn O'Neill (
.569) Although I'm not quite sure which ones would be the most appropriate to reveal, but certainly… If I think about… One example, guess, was we, for many years, we started working with AWS since 2010. And that's quite a, it was fairly early on.
So I certainly wouldn't say that was a late decision, but we, and AWS is such an amazing company, an amazing technology that, you know, we built our company in the back of that. But there was a time, I think in 2016 or so.
Matt Egan ( .626) Hmm Eamonn O'Neill (
.03) where we started working with Microsoft and I realized that while AWS was still the leader in the space for sure, Microsoft would definitely become, with their Azure product, would become a big player.
Very, very obvious to me that the whole Microsoft office angle was going to be a big factor. And we started talking with Microsoft and we actually did strike up a pretty good relationship quite early on. Matt Egan ( .667) Yeah.
.189) But then we recognized we were still very small. We didn't have the capacity to take it on. And it was just a sense of, maybe we just stay focused on AWS. And we kicked it to touch for a few years. We came back eventually and did it.
But there was three or so years where, in retrospect, I wish we had done it. We had pushed ourselves a little harder, because that would have put us in even better situation over that period.
There are a couple of other examples like that, which I look back on and go, yeah, we did it probably for the right reasons. I mean, there's always a temptation to do everything and then you start to lose focus.
But at the same time, getting that balance right is very difficult, but in retrospect, it's very obvious. And I think we probably could have pushed ourselves a little harder back in 2016. Matt Egan ( .508) Yes.
.79) But obviously not a critical mistake, right? You weren't wrong in thinking we should be focused here. It may have been better to be focused there as well, you know, that's decision made for the right reasons that may in retrospect have not been optimal, right?
But it's obviously not a good thing. Eamonn O'Neill ( .369) Yeah.
Eamonn O'Neill ( .245) Correct, yeah.
Yeah, wasn't a disaster, but it was a missed opportunity for sure. Matt Egan ( .012) Yeah.
Well, another question that I like to ask around about now, which, you know, you never know what you're going to get right, but in that context, you know, can you think about a time when you realized something that you thought you knew might actually turn out not to be true?
I'll give you an example because it's related. I was speaking to a group of consultants recently and they were talking about how they'd spent years telling their clients that cloud would always be cheaper. then FinOps wouldn't exist if we didn't have to optimize costs.
Public cloud definitely can be cheap, but it isn't always the case. It's not a truism. So don't know if you've had anything like… that you can think of. Eamonn O'Neill ( .18) Well definitely.
I think some of the predictions can go spectacularly backwards here, right? mean it's all due to extrapolating the data but then maybe not understanding the technology well enough. But I have to say Matt Egan ( .36) Yeah.
Matt Egan ( .267) Yep.
.972) I think in some ways we were maybe over optimistic on the adoption rate for cloud because it was as obvious as day to me that this is you should run everything.
But then what I hadn't taken into account was what are the reasons some people wouldn't move to cloud, for example. And some of those were, a lot of those were commercial, not financial, not like the finance model, but contractual.
And then there were incumbents who Matt Egan ( .621) Alright.
Yay! Matt Egan ( .072) Yeah.
.736) didn't want to do this or didn't want their customer to do this that blocked the cloud adoption. And I suppose the one thing that we maybe missed that was a very good point was around operational model and changing the operating model around cloud.
And that's something that we kind of missed certainly at very start. I would say for the first five years, we didn't really appreciate the impact, the way people should work with cloud. would have on the teams that were in place.
So one of the things you mentioned is FinOps. It took us a while as well to realize that, yeah, this price, everything's cheaper, but actually, if you don't know what you're doing with it, it can be end up more expensive. Same thing for security.
Yeah, it can be absolutely more secure, but if you don't know you're doing, it's less secure. And finally, just the way you make changes. We thought early on that Matt Egan (
.05) Yeah, yeah, Big time. Eamonn O'Neill (
.588) doing that for SAP would be way too risky, automating SAP changes. We thought that was actually a really bad idea. And we were completely wrong. We were 180 degrees wrong in that.
And we ended up, when we realized how to do it, we suddenly, the penny dropped because we understood it better and went, actually, this is absolutely the way to do it.
So in those early days, the way we thought you would operate a cloud was just pretty much copy paste from what people did in data centers. But we were completely wrong in those sort of assumptions. And that was good that certain customers were challenging us.
Surely we need to change things here. And we were saying, no, no, it'll be the same. And then we pivoted after about four or five years. We started to realize, no, no, there's far more to be gained here by adopting the modern ways of working. Matt Egan (
.228) Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Matt Egan ( .981) Yeah.
That's kind of what I was hearing when you said that though. Again, these are not kind of critical errors. are like maybe not immediately jumping on the optimal solution. And let's not forget, like this was happening for the first time.
No one had been through this kind of change. And then also the final point goes right back to the beginning when you talked about talking to customers and being interested in technology. The organization I knew were obviously open to getting that feedback from customers.
Eamonn O'Neill ( .401) Mm.
.59) which is how we move forward, right? So I think it's a pretty cool learning experience that you're describing. Eamonn O'Neill (
.741) And maybe that's a point to kind of re-emphasize as well is the importance of customer feedback. Again, something that sounds trite, it sounds like everybody says it. But to me, it's almost like being asked an exam question and somebody giving you the answer.
And the customer's telling you what they want to buy. The customer's telling you and they're very happy to tell you what they want. Matt Egan ( .405) Yeah.
Matt Egan ( .269) Hehehehe Matt Egan (
.418) Yeah.
Matt Egan ( .792) totally.
.796) just have to open your ears and realise, well, why would I go off and try to second guess them if they're saying this what they want? so we are. And again, that took a while for me to really, for the penny to drop on that one too.
But it's, but it's such a great lesson for people to learn is when they start to realise that it's a shortcut. It's almost like a hack. Matt Egan ( .954) yeah.
Matt Egan ( .296) Yeah.
Matt Egan ( .63) This is good.
Yeah, well, no, is because and again, this is the downside of being invested in the technology itself is we all have met people in our working lives who are brilliant with the technology, but don't know how to create solutions and solutions are mapping together the technology and the customer's problem.
And like you have to hear from the customer to do that is such an important point. Eamonn O'Neill ( .06) All right.
Matt Egan ( .702) This is amazing.
I'm in a great time. We could talk probably for hours, but we haven't got hours. So I'm going to move on to section three, which we call quick fire firsts.
This is where we want to get to know you beyond and behind your professional veneer by asking you frankly, stupid questions. So we do that by using a piece of proprietary technology I developed, which we call our random question generator.
So if you could please aim and pick a number between one and 13. Eamonn O'Neill ( .788) What a 39, please.
Matt Egan ( .838) Number nine.
okay, this one comes up a little bit actually. What would be the first thing you would buy if you were to win the lottery? Eamonn O'Neill (
.964) I really want a golf simulator. I've just dreamed about having a golf simulator for so long. But A, you need the space. B, you need to pay for the kit. I'm convinced it'll be my breakthrough and get me on to the PGA Tour.
Matt Egan ( .438) there you go.
Tell me about your golf. Matt Egan ( .587) Yeah.
.136) So do you think, so this is to improve your performance in real life. Okay. And tell me about it, like how are we doing today and what's it gonna take to get you onto the PGA Tour? Eamonn O'Neill ( .995) Yeah.
.795) So a bit of a miracle I would say. So I'm playing off a 17-18 handicap. Yeah, well I've been playing for a long time but I've never really, until the last few years. Matt Egan (
.816) Proper golfer, bogey golfer, okay, yeah. We can never play because you just get annoyed with me taking two shots. Eamonn O'Neill (
.058) But I do, just love, mean everybody who plays golf loves the two things I think. One is there's always a chance you're going to get better and there's always room for improvement.
And then secondly, I think what every golfer loves is when you watch it on TV and you realise that every so often there's a shot that you fit which is better than the person that And that sort of sense that Matt Egan ( .067) Yeah.
Matt Egan ( .0) Yep.
.915) world classes, all beautifully, it can't be within your reach. Yeah. Matt Egan ( .288) Just there, yeah.
Well, and also, you know, I play football, I play soccer, I have played cricket. You don't get to play at Wembley or Lord's, right? Whereas, you know, when you're playing golf, you're playing exactly the same game in the same conditions as the pros.
And you only need one good shot to want to go back again, right? That's what I always find. Eamonn O'Neill ( .607) Yeah, exactly.
.347) That's all the text. Matt Egan (
.418) All right, OK, let's go for one more. Can you give me one more between one and 13? Eamonn O'Neill ( .854) Seven Matt Egan (
.394) Number seven.
Okay. The first place you would travel if money, time, commitments were no object. You can just go right now. Where would you go? Eamonn O'Neill (
.931) I either Thailand, Bali kind of area. I'd say Thailand maybe. I've been there before. Absolutely loved it. Just incredible country, lovely people, great food. Obviously the weather's amazing. I had a really good time. Yeah. I mean there's loads of places I'd love to go though.
I really enjoy it. I did travel quite a lot when I was younger. I got a really good sense of… Matt Egan ( .792) Doesn't hurt.
.569) some places in the world. Africa is not always a very big place, it's like sub-Saharan Africa specifically. I thought it was incredible. And obviously, well, I say obviously, but Latin America to Brazil is stupendous. I love it over there.
So yeah, there's lots of places I would like to go, but if you had to pick one, probably would pick Thailand. Matt Egan ( .104) Hey.
Yeah. Matt Egan (
.063) Okay, and maybe Thailand, but there's like a really excellent golf course just over there. Eamonn O'Neill (
.931) They have plenty of good courses apparently. I've never played there but I would certainly look to get a round in when I was there. Matt Egan (
.716) Actually, should, if you like, there's a golf course I played once in the Gambia, talking of sub Saharan Africa, where there's no grass, there's no grass in the Gambia.
So you have to take around a square of, in effect, it's like, it's like you're getting greengrocers, you where they put the, like, and you have to put, you land on the sand and then you put that down and hit again. But it's just stunning.
Like, and again, that's another great thing about golf, right? Wherever you go in the world, you can have a different experience. Eamonn O'Neill ( .288) Bye bye.
Eamonn O'Neill ( .337) Yeah Eamonn O'Neill (
.795) It's like.
.729) Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Matt Egan ( .086) Okay, wonderful.
We always get something interesting from those questions. we're now, I'm sad to say, we're now going to move into our final section. We're almost at the end and we call this First and Final Thoughts.
And I'm excited to ask you, actually, Eamonn, what's the first piece of advice you would give to someone who's just starting? Eamonn O'Neill (
.779) I think the advice I have given a few people in the past is Eamonn O'Neill (
.316) is you get into really good company. I know it sounds really picky and cheesy, but my experience of working with a bigger company was very, very positive. I think bigger companies tend to have a lot of opportunities to move around inside.
So I think that's a great start. It's not the only way to do it, of course. Smaller companies have their own strength as well, obviously. But with smaller companies, you can progress faster. Matt Egan ( .202) Yes.
.515) But bigger companies, certainly if you're starting out, give you a bit more time, a bit more support, and you can maybe pick a different direction more easily if you need to. So I think that's always a good place to start.
at the same time, no matter where you start, spending the time to learn the technology that you want to be good at, it doesn't take a lot, but you should read the manuals. That's something else. Matt Egan ( .304) Yeah.
.834) Yeah, do the learning. Eamonn O'Neill (
.293) And something else I find people mess all the time is just read the manual and read the documentation. It's incredibly helpful. Matt Egan ( .58) Yeah.
It kind of speaks to what you were talking about earlier when I think about myself as a 22 year old. It took me three years of university to realise I liked learning at university and then do the work kind of thing.
And I think when you talked about getting into a good organisation, I think that's so true in the sense that what you're reflecting there is you get out of it what you put in. Eamonn O'Neill ( .171) Yeah.
Matt Egan ( .49) Right.
So in a large organization, if you're prepared to take the opportunities, do the work, find out about the technology, you're going to get more back from it. But it does require that mindset as well.
Eamonn, what's the first project or achievement that you would want to tell people about? What's your masterpiece? And I'm guessing it might be Lemongrass, right? Eamonn O'Neill ( .533) Absolutely.
think what we've done in Lemongrass is fantastic, but what we're doing right now in Lemongrass is more exciting than anything that I've done before, which is using AI to drive a lot of the services we're delivering.
And some of the latest productization of that is as good a technology as I've ever seen. yeah, I I think we're entering a world where Matt Egan ( .854) I Eamonn O'Neill (
.579) I know it's overblown sometimes, what AI will do, certainly in IT services, it will be incredibly disruptive. But just like every disruption that's happened to date, there will be people who will lean into it and people who will shy away from it.
And it's just obvious that what we're saying is that if you're a technologist, you should always be leaning into these changes. Matt Egan ( .906) Yeah, no, 100%.
.611) Mastering and get good at it and then you help other people take advantage of it as well. Matt Egan (
.54) Well, yeah, I completely agree. And the final question we ask is always for an audience of technologists, which this is, what are your final thoughts? And I wonder if in the context of what we're talking about here, because this is a real inflection point, right?
It is a very disruptive time. But I mean, it feels to me like the wisdom of Eamon, the final thoughts are about that, right? Which is taking together everything you've said in this era of AI as a technologist.
like lean into it and look for the solutions and the upsides rather than worrying about the disruption. Eamonn O'Neill (
.823) Yeah, mean, one of things I've seen, and this is what I get quite excited about, is when I see a technology starting to get used properly, then you can extract that out of that, what's going to come next, I guess. And to be perfectly frank, Gen.
AI specifically, has been overblown, oversold quite a lot. I actually see why people have made this mistake. This concept of a declarative technology, do this. You just ask for it and it gets done. Matt Egan ( .678) Mm-hmm.
.017) Yeah, it's sort of, it's very tempting to get carried away with that. And I've seen people make that mistake, very experienced people just totally miss what are the limits of this.
But when you see how to wrangle those limits, and you start to see how it can be helpful, then what we're seeing is, as I've been saying internally to our team is, we're no longer a technology enabled services company, we are now an AI enabled services company.
And there's a subtle difference, but it's a very practical, pragmatic and real difference there. And what I'm telling people is, because this is what I'm starting to see already in lemmon grass, is that good people will be even more capable with AI.
Bad people will be even more exposed with AI. Matt Egan ( .413) Mm-hmm.
.342) Yeah, it's exponential, right? It's an amplifier. Eamonn O'Neill ( .886) Exactly.
It amplifies your behavior, your talent. And I think that for very talented people, AI is going to be an incredibly exciting thing to use. For people who shy away from change, it's going to be a constant sword over their head.
It's going to feel like that, at least anyway. And I do believe there will be a lot of disruption. There will be a lot of job displacement, but not as much. It's not going to be a catastrophe. It's going to be a very fluid change.
But you will absolutely see strong technology leaders will have a fantastic opportunity ahead of them with this. Matt Egan (
.436) Yeah, I quite agree. And that's a very positive message to end on. If you're, if you're adding value, you're to add more value with AI. And if you aren't, that's the problem. It's not the AI. My thanks to Eamonn O'Neill for this amazing conversation.
And thanks to you for watching or listening to First Person, the show where we meet the most interesting people in IT and learn from them what makes them tick by focusing only on their firsts.
I've been your host, Matt Egan, and I'm asking you to enjoy, like and subscribe. Eamonn O'Neill ( .891) Exactly.
.108) And if you're an interesting person in IT, let us know. You might be the next first person. But today's guest has been Eamon O'Neill. I'd like to leave him the final word. So I'll say goodbye and thank you so much, Eamon. Eamonn O'Neill (
.29) Thanks a lot for having me and thanks everyone for listening.
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