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.

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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.

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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. 😑

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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.

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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.

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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. ✌️

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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.

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jack and elon, two turds in a turdpod 🖕

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wait so you’re telling me this guy doesn’t actually know what the fuck he’s doing? [obviously-high-out-his-mind-jack-with-stupid-beard.jpg]

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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