Say something true, or atleast useful.
Austin, TX
Joined July 2021
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this is insane. i genuinely don't understand why ambitious people aren't shown this lecture before their careers start consuming their entire lives.
clayton christensen spent his career studying why successful companies collapse. in his final class, he asked students to apply the theory to themselves: if you keep allocating your time the same way, what life are you actually building?
he had already seen the answer in his own harvard mba class. everyone looked successful at the fifth reunion; by the 10th, 15th, 20th, and 25th, many were unhappy, divorced, and living far from their children.
work shows you the score immediately. close a sale, ship a product, finish a presentation, earn a promotion, get paid.
an hour with your child may produce nothing you can measure today; it may take 20 years to understand what that hour built. so the next free hour goes back to work, one rational decision at a time.
this is how people build lives they never planned: through hundreds of right decisions that lead in the wrong direction, day after day.
money, titles, and headcount are easy to count. christensen believed a life should be measured by the people who became better because you were there.
he died in 2020.
one question remains: if someone saw only where your time, energy, and attention went this year, what would they think actually mattered to you?
the full 19-minute lecture is in the video below.
Great AI writing policy. We’re adopting some version of this across our portfolio.
As someone tired of reading AI slop documents all the time love this policy from Clay
linkedin.com/posts/vaanand_w…
The future of engineering is akin to monks uttering koans to one another.
"Design the system that survives its own deletion."
Great post.
You can’t keep entire programs in your head.
Now what happens when AI 10,000x’s the amount of code? Codebases are going to be so large it will be even more impossible.
Therefore,
Vibecoding fully hands off will be the default.
Everyone who says otherwise is wrong.
Human brains will not keep up.
The engineer must learn to work within a mental labyrinth with only imperfect information
Live free or die is as relevant today for you in your cubicle as it was 250 years ago for our founding fathers.
Except the stakes are lower for you and no one is actually out to kill you.
How quickly you sell yourself into servile fear.
Live free or die. Today.
It’s funny because it’s true.
I have read approximately 3,000 10-Ks in my life. I have read my wife’s emotional state correctly maybe 11 times. This is troubling because the skills should transfer. Both require you to look past the headline. Both require you to read the footnotes. Both require you to notice what was said last quarter that is not being said this quarter.
I can spot a goodwill impairment from 40 pages away. I cannot spot that my wife has been quietly furious since Tuesday. In a 10-K I notice when management changes the word “challenging” to “dynamic” and I correctly interpret this as a warning. In my marriage my wife changed the word “fine” to “fine.” and I did not notice the period. The period was the entire disclosure.
I missed it. I read a footnote last week in a packaging company’s annual report that disclosed a related-party transaction worth $400,000 and I caught it in 90 seconds. My wife told me three times this month that she was tired and I interpreted this as “tired” when in fact it was a Level 3 disclosure requiring immediate management response. I have a system for 10-Ks. I read the MD&A first, then the risk factors, then the cash flow statement, then the notes. I have no system for my wife. She is a company that does not file. She reports continuously and without warning and the format changes every quarter. Her risk factors are not enumerated.
Her MD&A is delivered through sighs of varying length and I have not yet developed the ear. Last week she said “do whatever you want” and I did whatever I wanted and it turns out the correct interpretation of “do whatever you want” was “do not do that specific thing” and I have no idea how I was supposed to know that, and yet, looking back, the signals were all there. The signals are always there. I have been trained to find signals. I find them in companies I will never meet. I miss them in the person I have lived with for nine years. My wife has started saying things like “you would notice this if I were a stock” and she is correct. She is correct. If she had a ticker I would have already built a 6,000-word model on her. I would know her seasonality.
I would know her capex cycle. I would know which quarters historically run hot. Instead I treat her like a private company and I am surprised every time the auditors arrive. I am going to bed now. She said good night in a tone. I do not know what the tone meant. I will find out in the morning. Or I will not. The 10-K of my marriage is filed in real time and I am, as always, three quarters behind.
“Hiring competent people doesn't solve the slop problem at scale. Individual taste compounds only against a company's philosophy of business.”
This is why most PE backed software companies are toast. They are run by managers without a real opinion on the “why” of the business.
Core argument is that AI commoditizes yesterday's competence, which creates sameness, which creates demand for difference. A few loose thoughts:
1. Dan says the value moves to the "framer," the human who supplies live judgment that the model can't generate. How do you keep the "frame" consistent across an organization?
2. The frame problem is a narrative problem before it's a talent problem. A company without a worldview has no basis for distinguishing its AI-assisted output from anyone else's.
3. This is why I'm less excited about "10x employees" or whatever the new meta is. Hiring competent people doesn't solve the slop problem at scale. Individual taste compounds only against a company's philosophy of business.
4. Who is building the narrative infrastructure to frame every output against what they actually believe?
"If products can be copied, categories can be renamed, and technical advantages can collapse in months, then the enduring question is what kind of organization you build around the people capable of building it. The shape of the company itself is becoming the moat."
Love this: "If products can be copied, categories can be renamed, and technical advantages can collapse in months, then the enduring question is what kind of organization you build around the people capable of building it. The shape of the company itself is becoming the moat."
"It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do."
There's something very true here, and in a weird way I think it rhymes with the Jack Dorsey insight that organizations are going to be the first AGI.
How bonkers is it that we've conjured an alien intelligence that has hidden inner thoughts.
"Just swing the bat and pray is a viable approach to most things in life."
Jerry Seinfeld on why chasing your "passion" is embarrassing, and what to do instead:
Seinfeld pushes back against the popular advice to find your one great passion in life.
In his view, it's not just unnecessary, it's a little ridiculous.
"Let go of this idea that you have to find this one great thing that is my passion. My great passion with your shirt torn open and your heaving pec muscles. It's embarrassing."
Instead of chasing something dramatic, he offers a quieter alternative:
"Find fascination. Fascination is way better than passion. It's not so sweaty."
He explains why the heavy-breathing version of passion is actually counterproductive:
"Just be willing to do your work as hard as you can with the ability you have. We don't need the heavy breathing and the outstretched arm from your passion. It makes co-workers uncomfortable in the cubicle next to you."
Then Seinfeld offers what he calls his three real keys to life, no jokes:
"Number one, bust your ass. Number two, pay attention. Number three, fall in love."
@JerrySeinfeld elaborates on the first one:
"You obviously already know whatever you're doing, I don't care if it's your job, your hobby, a relationship, getting a reservation at M Sushi, make an effort. Just pure stupid… effort."
And here's the part worth sitting with:
"Effort always yields a positive value even if the outcome of the effort is absolute failure of the desired result. This is a rule of life. Just swing the bat and pray is not a bad approach to a lot of things."
things you read that make you go, "ouch... too plausible for comfort."
Obligatory reference to this alternate explanation (which, even if totally inaccurate, is also an extremely normal type of thing for a technology to say about itself)
nitter.cf/QiaochuYuan/status/204…