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 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.

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. 👏

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

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

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.

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.

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. 🙅‍♂️

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).

So don’t be like old me, be like new me. Think about your career WHILE it’s happening, not after. New me has a weekly reminder and a long running document to force me to write down my accomplishments, no matter how small, and I’m committed to sticking with this. I’ve been at it about a month and the doc is already a full page long!

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.

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! 🏕️🐦🫡

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.

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. 🎯

“Don’t worry, you’ll end up getting a job where you belong.” — my extremely wise, much-smarter-than-me partner

Amazon’s surveillance camera maker Ring announced a partnership on Thursday with Flock, a maker of AI-powered surveillance cameras that share footage with law enforcement.

If you’ve ever thought about getting rid of your Ring products or disconnecting from Amazon in general, now would be a good time.

Two things that I’ll forever remember from my extended job hunt…

💙 The kind folks who went out of their way to refer me internally, send me potential opportunities, share advice, help me prep, and acted as references.

👻 The companies/people that totally ghosted me.

Standard Chet Haase writing — salient, important points wrapped in humor. In particular this is stuff that I’ll keep in the back of my head when small, effective projects or teams start lean but get heavy. Might be right and/or necessary, but it’s important to at least stop and think about the long tail of added weight.

• Incredible energy and ideas, sparks flying everywhere
• Slogging through turning those ideas into an abstract
• Excitedly submitting your abstract that took way too long
• Nervously waiting to see if you’re going to be rejected
• The amazing feeling when your talk gets accepted
• The complete and utter dread you feel approximately 10 seconds after getting accepted knowing you now have to put a talk together
• World class procrastination until maybe a week before, including total paralysis on how to get started
• The extreme rush of energy once you figure out your angle and seeing the talk come together
• The terrifying realization that you actually have to give this talk to an audience
• The crippling nervousness before you walk on stage
• The relief you feel / the zone you enter the moment your talk starts
• The absolute rush of accomplishment and success you feel the millisecond you finish
• Walking off stage and instantly saying “I want to do that again!”

It’s so strange and upsetting to me to see companies that completely ghost candidates after just the first step of submitting an application. I don’t mean later in the process (which is also painful and common), I mean the application is received by the company and the candidate doesn’t get as much as an automated email when they’re rejected at that stage. Just complete silence, like the candidate never existed.

Such a weird, unfriendly way to treat candidates who took time and put forth effort to submit.

Head nodding my way through this entire post. I was a little skeptical going into it because, well, Google, but the lessons are pretty universal. Worth a read.

Because people who work in tech still believe in the power of tech to do good things, many of us won’t just dismiss outright the possibility that any technology — even AI tools like LLMs — could yield some benefits. But the optimistic takes are tempered by the first-hand knowledge of how the tools are being used as an excuse to sideline or victimize good people.

Anil is on an absolute tear with his writing. 🔥