"Parenting is a mirror that forces you to look at yourself."

why i write george orwell: (i) Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. :-)

The only thing harder than focusing is staying focused. Sean Byrnes

"The essayist does not sit down at her desk already knowing all of the right answers, because if she did, there would be no reason to write." -Dinty Moore.

“Productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run, it’s almost everything” -Paul Krugman.

https://ngrok.com/blog/prompt-caching/

"Unless European strategy towards Russia changes considerably, I don’t think it will bring even an imperfect peace for the people who actually deserve it: Ukrainians." -Jade McGlynn.

Pupils are more like oysters than sausages. The job of teaching is not to stuff them and then seal them up, but to help them open and reveal the riches within. Sydney Harris

"High trust teams are hard to build! You also need to work harder as a leader to build and earn trust, and be sure to never lose it."

Engineering management's foundational skills

"I’ve learned that reading is an endurance sport. The first time I tried to seriously read again, it felt like the first time I went for a run: awkward and painful and shorter than I would have hoped." How to end your extremely online era

“I will behead you.” Well, when did I ever tell you that mine was the only neck that could not be severed?” Epictetus

Consumers are unpredictable, varied, fickle, stupid, shortsighted, stubborn, and generally bothersome. :))) Marketing Myopia - Theodore Levitt

“A master craftsman doesn’t dumb down his craft.”

Cool technologies are absolutely cool, but you know what’s even cooler? A great business model. -Cloudflare co-founder.

"Driving a slow car fast >> driving fast car slow".

Attack the category, not just the leader. Create a villain and a story. Don’t stop at one-off stunt. Punch up, never punch down. Lessons from Salesforce

“Telling coding agents what to do is not management.” Stay SaaSy

"Good engineering management" is a fad

Europe’s War

The AI Wildfire Is Coming. It's Going to be Very Painful and Incredibly Healthy.

"if you could easily see the problems via the pre-existing dashboards, they’d already be on their way to being solved. Dashboards are like alerts and tests in this way, they tend to catch what you know could go wrong, but rarely the surprise problems that lead to big incidents."

Everyone, write an agent

“Either Europe grabs hold of its own destiny or China and America will.” -Economist топить за EU single market.

«Довелось повірити, що це можливо» Тарас Чмут.

“I don't make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.” -Kurt Vonnegut.

Jack Reacher 🔥

People say, “Hire people who are better than you.” I don’t think that really works. People who are better than you don’t want to work for you for long. Curate People - Nav.al

How To Not Get Acquired Allen Pike

“If AI does nothing more than spur the creation of massive amounts of new power generation it will have done tremendous good for humanity.” Ben Thompson

“most organizations are incredibly inefficient at making decisions.”

How to be "high agency" at work

"Your agent doesn’t need a career trajectory" (c) Geoffrey Litt

Code like a surgeon

“Surrounding yourself with beautiful things that give you joy”

Fuck Everything, We're Doing Five Blades 🔥🔥

«Радянський пломбір не коштує 22 копійки, його ціна – ГУЛАГ і неіснування»

«Донбас думає, що він такий особливий, що так ніхто не страждав, як вони. Але вони просто не бачили, як в Бельгії люди жили»

“One of the most important questions modern man must ask himself is how much time he is willing to spend being passively entertained.” How to end your extremely online era

“Impatience and laziness, applied to process, are the key elements to focus.” The Managers Path

Why books don't work

How to Compete in SaaS Stay SaaSy

"You care a lot about your startup. You have no idea how little a potential user cares." -pg

"One of the most challenging, yet rewarding, changes an engineer can make is the transition from maker to manager." Marc Hedlund

If there’s a complicated project, put a star performer on it. You can empower them and use them like battering rams that smash your worst problems into little splinters. Leveling Up Teams Fast and Slow

“I expect we’ll see a Cambrian explosion in Skills which will make this year’s MCP rush look pedestrian by comparison — simplicity is the point” Simon WIllison

“France, as its debt mounts, is getting through prime ministers faster than Versailles went through wigs.” -The Economist.

Setting goals is a big part of leadership, but if your team never achieves them you aren’t really leading them. Sean Byrnes

Social Status as a Theory of Everything

To be a top player in your space, you need to either be the #1 player in a reliable subset of the market, or you must be the overall category leader. Stay SaaSy

"Product managers don’t create products, product teams do." Marty Cagan

You’re either given features to build or problems to solve, it’s pretty binary. Marty Cagan

Hofstadter’s Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.

The wheel of learning is difficult to start and hard to keep moving. -Age of unreason

When it’s time to scale you really want to focus your team on a singular task — AngelList CEO, explaining why they spin-off AngelList Talent, AngelList Talent and ProductHunt into three separate entities, with separate CEOs and corp entities.

You can grow rich via foreign direct investments and Poland is a prime example. Noah Smith

How to get better at strategy - Will Larson

​Reflections on Palantir​

“Meetings are the most expensive thing you do at any business, and they should be reserved for making decisions and driving outcomes.” Sean Byrnes

"Working well as a team is less about creating happy place and more about solving hard problems together." -The Culture Code

Don’t waste your time looking for advice from people who faced the exact same problem you are facing today. They don’t exist. Gather advice from multiple people and use their versions of the problem to put it all into perspective. Sean Byrnes

Why retention is so hard for new tech products -- Andrew Chen

Open Social -- overreacted.io

“Outlast your cravings and you’ll become a new person.”

“Consuming is necessary but only gives you short term dopamine hits. Producing / building things makes you happy long term” -Petier Levels.

“Imagine a huge country on NATO’s borders bitter and betrayed, awash with weapons and angry ex-soldiers, and under Vladimir Putin’s thumb.“ Коли The Economist робить темою номеру внутрішньо-політичну ситуацію в Україні- це теж сигнал.

“A blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization” -Demon of unrest 💪

“Any convertible at speed above 40 mph are basically the same. So much going on, you might get a Miata as well. Definitely no 4-seater." Jeremy Clarkson

"Я принципово не користуюся соцмережами. Я зрозумів, що це на мене погано впливає — притуплює мої розумові і інші здібності." -Грицак в інтервʼю на ДОУ Пікнік.

“Rather than climbing until 2084, as the UN currently foresees, to 10.3bn people, it may stop growing in the 2050s and never exceed 9bn.” -Economist пише про peak humanity.

“If you find yourself yelling at people it’s probably a sign you need to sit down and explain in writing what you want” -іноді людям треба пояснити, що ти від них хочеш.

“European security is not possible without the Ukrainians” -Anders Puck Nielsen.

“Once you started a war it’s very difficult to stop. Your opponent gets a vote too”

I made no attempt to empty my mind of rage. I used it. Maybe it wasn’t bushido, but it felt good. -Jurek on his first 100mi run.

"Who wants Russian territory?! It's full of Russians" -Sarah Paine

"The best way out is always through" -R Frost

“Я не знаю нічого безглуздішого, ніж цей культ темних глибин, цього галасливого та порожнього сантименту до “слов’янської душі” Трагедія Центральної Європи Кундера

“Startups is a game of getting distribution before the incumbents can copy your product”

Дуже цікава розмова про економіку (й фізику) solar power в контексті розбудови AI дата центрів: China is killing the US on energy | Casey Handmer

“If you define something too early you limit what it could become” -Speeed

Tesla forgotten founder Кльове інтервʼю з засновником Tesla Motors

“I started coding again last year. First time in 13 years. Not because I believe AGI is coming. I think it's alchemy-level nonsense. I started because I suddenly could.”

“Doing as much as you can every day is a form of life extension.”

Печальна історія Medium- спалили купу грошей, проспали Substack. Fell in a hole, got out: Medium’s recap, financial turnaround, and difficult path back to health

If you’re torn between multiple choices, the path that makes you most uncomfortable is almost always the right one. Stay SaaSy

It’s your job to have a vision. And it’s your job to hire talented people and articulate it to them. And they take your vision and they create it. -Quentin Tarantino.

"People vastly overvalue work, money, and real estate .. and vastly undervalue intimate bonds and the importance of arduous challenges." -The Social Animal

“Read books instead of scrolling social media feeds.”

Empirically, the way to do really big things seems to be to start with deceptively small things. Paul Graham

“Taking advantage of every opportunity to give negative feedback is part of your obligations as a manager” Manager Tools

“If you don’t like your boss find a new one or get promoted twice” Manager Tools|MT podcast

“When the student is ready teacher appears”

My routine - Hugh Howey (Silo guy)

From Building SaaS to Building a Home in Tokyo 🔥🔥

Movement is your medicine

Learning by writing

"I don't have work ethics. I only have work"
Principles - Nabeel S. Qureshi

"Rather than having some central architecture or planning committee, decisions are typically made by whichever team plans to do the work." Reflections on OpenAI

“leaders are promoted primarily based upon their ability to have good ideas and then execute upon them.” ^^

Staring into the abyss as a core life skill

It’s not prioritization until it hurts

“In six months if I’m telling you what to do I’ve hired a wrong person”

“Your first few hires in a startup are really more like founders—they are your peers basically, you don’t have to (or want to) manage them. They have to be self-motivated” -pg

“There are basically two ways to be right. First is to always be right and second is to change your mind if you're wrong.”

"Money can't buy you happiness but it will pay for therapy" -Kalanick

“Read three books on a topic and you know more about it than 99% of the world."

“People with drive push and push and push and push and push until they succeed.”

"Team satisfaction typically follows success, not the other way around."

“There is no medium like writing that allows your ideas to travel far.”

AI 2027

“I don’t think the dot-com bubble is a fair analogy. This is going to be bigger.” -Scaling AI.

"Writing every book, the writer must solve two problems: Can it be done? and, Can I do it?"

”LLMs are power-user tools—they’re chainsaws disguised as kitchen knives.” @simonw

Тарас Чмут "Є одні, які вічні і ТОП, от перші - це DOU. DOU з "Повернись живим" з 2014 року. https://youtu.be/8wiglOm1M5k?t=1946

Our ancestors were not wise kings and majestic emperors. They were filthy apes who dared to look up at the stars. That struggle is your blood and your heritage, and it is greater than any empire that has ever existed. Noah Smith

Читаю Co-Intelligence, кльова книжка від Ethan Mollick

Most of the interesting conversations in tech now happen in private group chats

It is much better to find some people who have tried in the past to solve a problem and bring them together to solve it, than to solve it yourself—even if it means being a footnote (or less) in the announcement. gwern.net

Everything takes longer than you think

Читаю Scaling AI: Oral History Era

“You can’t build a new product and hire a team at the same time” Eric Migicovsky

Hard work is a literal requirement for new ventures or "impossibly difficult" projects. Steven Sinofsky

Дочитав Without a doubt, по рекомендації з подкаста. 4/5 але історія цікава. І фаундер фігачила що проклята. Driven.

Дочитав Character Limit. Два висновки: 1/ Twitter brought it upon themselves 2/ Якщо хочеш мати незалежність (agency) до цього треба йти, щоб потім не розповідати всім, як у тебе «не було іншого вибору». Вибір був і ти його зробив раніше, коли змарнував 10 років життя компанії. А книжка топ.

“My favorite analogue for what’s AGI is gonna be like is a transistor” Sam Altman

As we grew bigger we also started going slower. There was a tipping point somewhere around 50-60 people. DHH re scaling 37signals back to ~60 people.

From Bootstrapped to $12B Mailchimp's Ben Chestnut on Life After the Exit
Топовий епізод з фаундером MailChimp 🔥🔥

“We knew it’s gonna be expensive, we were just off by 100x” Sam Altman re fundraising for OpenAI.

“You can infuse business with cash but you can’t with credibility. It needs to be built/earned.” John Gruber

“Give your team problems to solve, not things to do.”

People underrate how significant and fast-moving AI progress is. (..) AI systems can now recover from errors without you telling them that they’ve made a mistake - w/ reasoning models.

“Dunbar number is much lower for remote teams.”

“When networked products start to work, they can really work.”

Agency > Intelligence Andrej Karpathy

“Of all the paths you take in life make sure a few of them are dirt” -John Muir

”Don’t just build a product, define a category.” Alex Komoroske

"it's not a midlife crisis, it's an awakening" Why Life Really Begins at 40

Teams own software, not individuals, so the most important metric is how productive the team is. Turn “normal” engineers into superstars that push the business forward. Charity Majors

If you run an engineering org, stop competing for the already pedigreed, and build an org that rewards curiosity, effort, hard work, teamwork, and caring, as well as brains. Build your own fucking pedigree. Charity Majors

“Better than nothing” is not a standard. Hold out no matter what. Keep saying No until you find the right person." Manager Tools

50 Years of Travel Tips

“If you do all the thinking for your team, you don’t have a team.” Sean Byrnes

“Deep Research is a bargain” Ben Thompson

“The world teaches you all the time but you only notice when you ready to learn” Manager Tools|MT podcast

“Sand is overrated. It’s just tiny little rocks.” -Eternal sunshine.

“AI helps you figure how to do things, but not what things to do”.

«Все тримається на ініціативних людях» стаття на ДОУ про армію

"Because I’m the founder, I can take risk nobody else can" // Axon Grit podcast notes

Exponential stock plan Harnessing the Magic of Elon for Everyone - Infinite Equity

It is hard to do more than two or three big things at a time, no matter how large you are. Fred Wilson

"Managers can’t be emotionally reactive. They need to remain rational even in the face of severe stressors, allowing them to remain unflappable when shit goes down." Soft Skills for Managers

"Never bet against compute as the upper bound for achievable intelligence in the long run." Andrej Karpathy

"The biggest lesson that can be read from 70 years of AI research is that general methods that leverage computation are ultimately the most effective" Rich Sutton

"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." -H. L. Mencken.

“If you want something and don’t get it, there are only two reasons. You either really didn’t want it, or you tried to bargain over the price.” -Kipling

"History is replete with examples where even though the Best Possible Logic by the Best Minds Of The Day have concluded something, some unexpected variable or discovery caused the outcome to be something else." -Yishan on Twitter

Smaller teams are almost always faster teams. The SaaSy Guide to Hiring

"If you’re building a great team you have hire like it, every day, every month, every year. " Engineers Are Not A Commodity - Stay SaaSy

“We’re at Stone Age applying AI, rubbing two sticks together.” Alex Komoroske

"We have a situation where AI models are teaching AI models, and where AI models are teaching themselves. We are watching the assembly of an AI takeoff scenario in realtime." Ben Thompson

“There are usually four to six metrics that will be sufficient to determine the overall health and growth trajectory of the business and it is best to focus the team on them.”

“Cars won’t make you happy. Driving can”

“People stay at shitty jobs for longer because job interviews can be so genuinely crushing to your spirit and sense of self.“

“Building product is not about having a large team to manage. It is about having a small team with the right people on it.”

“HR doesn’t run your company. Managers do”