Still mulling over the Block layoffs, and one thing that caught my eye was how many folks who were let go were there for easily 6, 8, even 10 years or more. People who gave literally a decade of their life, jettisoned in an instant.

In addition to the cruelty of it, there’s is NO WAY that you lose that much institutional knowledge and keep rolling along anywhere close to full operational efficiency, maybe not even 50%. There is a 0.0% chance that your fancy AI tools have that kind of context. And they certainly don’t have the collective centuries of technical, product, or design judgement of those people.

At the risk of sounding corny, as a grizzled (but experienced) old dude, I can tell you with great confidence that your values – what you believe way down deep – is the best thing to help you navigate your career choices. Over the long run it’s what’ll make you successful.

Definitions of success may vary wildly and it’s easier said than done, but if you can consistently align your values with your work, you’re already mostly there.

There are people in 2026 talking about how many lines of code they shipped with a straight face. Well, I think they’re people at least. 😑

Just read an AI hype post saying their vibe coding got them 90% complete on a project. Woo hoo! The “only” things they had to engage an engineer to finish off: authentication, API keys lockdown, VPN protection, and a full security audit.

Funny how all these over the top “AI is changing everything!” posts are largely from people running AI startups. Totally not suspicious at all and very believable.

Emily Gorcenski on Bluesky:

“But guess what—they all require you to still be a good software developer. Engineering has always been about tradeoffs and judgment and I have seen nothing that indicates that this will change.”

“You hear all these stories of people vibe coding a SaaS alternative in a weekend. That’s great for N_users=1. That’s not the hard part.”

This, this, this, this. 💯

I’m well past just muting folks with AI slop takes (“3 engineers can outperform 8 with just AI, here’s how!”). Full blast ridiculing and blocking now. ✌️

💯 You Can’t Prompt Your Way to Judgment by Dr. Claire Knight is a good one! A few nuggets of wisdom from the post:

But most of the software world isn’t Stripe. Some companies still have six-month release cycles. Some are still in the middle of their cloud migration. Panic-adopting AI in those environments doesn’t produce 4x productivity. It produces faster slop.

AI amplifies your existing engineering culture.

Experience debt is what accumulates when you’ve never been through a catastrophic release, never owned a 3am system failure, never made an architectural decision that seemed brilliant and then cost you eighteen months of pain to undo. It’s the absence of pattern recognition that only comes from proximity to failure."

This conversation on AI with Anil Dash is so good. I don’t know how anyone could argue with what he’s saying — measured, realistic, and well reasoned throughout. Y’all need to give it a listen.

Kind of hilarious to see a company make a big deal about how rigorous they are about hiring, but also have the same role open for literally a year in a market flooded with candidates. That’s not rigor, that’s just being bad at hiring.

This post by Naoko Takeda on their experience with the Block layoff (not being laid off but leaving anyway) is hardcore. I cannot express how much respect I have for people who have a strong ethical compass and act decisively. 👏

Instant block for anyone who even remotely attempts to piggyback on the Square/Cash App layoffs to advertise their product. Absolute vultures. 🚮

If there were a Mismanagement Hall of Fame, Jack Dorsey would be a first ballot inductee.

I am so fucking angry about the Square/Cash App layoffs (I refuse to call them by the other stupid name). It’s not about me, but it is about us, and I’m so tired of these assholes getting away with mismanaging companies so hard with zero consequences to themselves, and getting even richer from it.

People are the only thing that matter in companies. Every product you ship is because of their talent. If you actually believe you can slash 40% of that unique and precious resource and still survive long term, you’re already cooked.

The worst people you don’t know are coming out of the woodwork with their “thoughts” about AI and the Square Cash App layoffs. Now would be an excellent time to build up your mute / unfollow / block list. 🙅‍♂️

Kelly Vaughn on the Block layoffs:

“You don’t lay off 40% of your staff of 10,000 because of AI. You lay off that many people because you mismanaged your headcount. I’m not buying the AI excuse.”

This EXACTLY.

Dorsey sucked as Twitter CEO and the company burned to the ground. He sucks as the Square/Cash CEO and is in the process of burning it to the ground. He left the Bluesky board because he didn’t like the direction and the network is thriving.

One thing I’ve been historically terrible at doing is regularly keeping track of my accomplishments while they happen. Day to day all those small things you do which are “just part of the job” seem like they’re no big deal, but for an engineering manager (or any manager), all those little things in aggregate ARE accomplishments. And because they’re smaller they’re naturally much harder to recall later when you need them (eg, reviews, career development, interviews).

Liberally blocking / muting / unfollowing on LinkedIn is underrated. Might feel a little weird to cut someone off on a “professional network”, but it’s a way to guard your headspace against AI slop, influencer clickbait, and “what this life experience taught me about b2b sales” posts (yes, these actually still exist).

These aren’t going to be folks you’ll ever need or want to connect with anyway.

This article by Siddharth Khare is the best thing I’ve read about AI and the potential (or perhaps more accurately, likely) detrimental effects on engineers and some strategies on how to help manage it. It is so spot on.

One of the few silver linings to come out of a couple of my old jobs imploding is to see the amazing people I worked with go on to do truly great things. It’s so heartening (and kinda wild!) to see pals working on/running major products and teams across the industry.

I would of course never have wished those hardships on us at the time, but it’s also wonderful and amazing to see how far and high they’ve gone. Y’all are the best and it shows! 🏕️🐦🫡

I started reading some random post here and the second sentence started with “Marc Andreessen said…” and that’s when I blocked that person forever. 🙂‍↕️

Every layoff announcement should have a corresponding section for executive salaries and the pay cut they’re taking as part of the reduction. Oh wait…

This is not how engineers work together. On real teams, we review code asynchronously, take time to understand context, ask clarifying questions, form opinions, get feedback, collaborate, and refactor. We don’t debug unfamiliar systems while someone silently watches us sweat bullets. When interviews are built around live performance, they’re not measuring engineering ability.

This exactly . Well said, Zoë Hall. 🎯