Will Hackett is an Australian software engineer based in London, currently serving as CTO of Flowstate.

What does Will Hackett do?

Will Hackett is the CTO of Flowstate, where he leads technical strategy and development of dynamic workforce planning tools. He brings expertise in AI/ML, software engineering, and FinTech, with a background in building SaaS platforms.

Where is Will Hackett based?

Will Hackett is based in London, United Kingdom. Originally from Australia.

Is Will Hackett the character from Hollyoaks?

No, this Will Hackett is a real person - a software engineer and entrepreneur based in London. He is not the fictional character from the Channel 4 soap opera Hollyoaks. This is the professional website of Will Hackett, CTO at Flowstate.

How can I contact Will Hackett?

You can connect with Will Hackett through his professional profiles on LinkedIn (linkedin.com/in/willhackett).

Will Hackett - London, United Kingdom

I'm Will, a software engineer based in London and the CTO at Flowstate. We're building real-time workforce modelling for engineering teams—giving engineering and finance leaders the data they need without drowning in spreadsheets.

Europe's quiet revolt against US cloud

In 2025, several European governments began phasing out Microsoft 365 due to concerns over the US CLOUD Act. Switzerland is the latest to act, declaring most public sector use of Microsoft 365 unlawful.

Will Hackett·Fri, Nov 28, 2025

Big teams, small team energy

It's IEEE Spectrum time again, so it's time to talk about why adding management layers early is the real problem behind $2 trillion in annual software failures. From Canada's Phoenix payroll system to the UK Post Office's Horizon fiasco.

Tue, Nov 25, 2025•Will Hackett

Search kind of sucks now

Google's AI Overview recently told users that astronauts met cats on the moon. It suggested adding glue to pizza to stop cheese sliding off. For a brief period in early 2025, it claimed we were still in 2024. These aren't edge cases—they're symptoms of a much larger problem that's quietly dismantling the internet's economic foundation. LLMs are fundamentally breaking the internet's business model.

Sat, Nov 15, 2025

How do you explain the £20M engineering spend?

So you're spending 20 million on engineering. What are you getting for it? Software engineering organisations struggle to answer basic questions about costs, and PE scrutiny is changing the game. It's more important now than ever to treat engineering like the investment it is.

Will Hackett·Wed, Nov 5, 2025

Fixing email spam with AI: When traditional filters aren't enough

89% of malicious emails bypass SPF, DKIM and DMARC. Your inbox is already compromised—authentication protocols failed and nobody told you. Here's how AI catches what traditional filters miss.

Will Hackett·Sun, Nov 2, 2025

Pragmatic: Lessons from building (and winding down) an AI startup

Reflections on building Jamie, an AI assistant for email, and the decision to wind down Pragmatic after not finding product-market fit.

Will Hackett·Fri, Oct 17, 2025

Analytics is fine, tracking is the problem

Analytics is curiosity about what works. Tracking is surveillance. I run Umami on Vercel with Neon Postgres for zero-cost, banner-free analytics. The irony? My joke LLM needs consent, but tracking 16,000 visitors doesn't.

Will Hackett·Sun, Oct 12, 2025

AI everywhere is AI nowhere

The tech industry's rush to embed AI into every product is creating exhausted users and half-baked features. Real AI success comes from solving specific problems, not sprinkling chatbots everywhere.

Will Hackett·Tue, Sep 30, 2025

Escaping the AI cost trap

AI is cheap for end-users right now, but only because venture capital is picking up the tab. The reality is that training and inference are still expensive, and someone has to pay. Billions raised by OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral and others are spent on compute, staff and Nvidia GPUs. Consumers see subsidised pricing, but the underlying costs are enormous.

Will Hackett·Fri, Sep 26, 2025

Web 4.0: The Pragmatic Internet

My take on the next version of the web given the failures of Web 3.0 and the need for a more organised, user-centric approach.

Will Hackett·Wed, Aug 27, 2025

Foto von Jeison Higuita auf Unsplash, veröffentlicht unter der Panoramafreiheit in Deutschland.

Berlin Airport reflections: on polymaths, ownership and execution

Reflections on meeting a team of scrappy, multi-faceted engineers and what makes the best startups work

Will Hackett·Fri, Aug 15, 2025

How to Not Decrypt WhatsApp Web (But Still Win)

A tale of 6,000 f-bombs and one accidental victory. What started as a simple integration for Jamie turned into a deep dive through WhatsApp's encryption, the Signal Protocol, and eventually finding a simpler path through DOM scraping.

Will Hackett·Thu, Aug 7, 2025