career
12 articles
Simon Willison's AI Status Report — The Tipping Point Is Here, Dark Factories Are Coming, and Mid-Career Engineers Are in Trouble
Django co-creator Simon Willison went on Lenny's Podcast for a comprehensive AI status report: November 2025 was the real tipping point, coding agents burn him out by 11 AM, Dark Factories are coming, mid-career engineers are the most vulnerable — plus a security pattern he calls the 'Lethal Trifecta.'
The Super IC Era — One Person + an AI Army vs. an Entire Department
The most valuable person in the AI era isn't a deep specialist — it's the one who can orchestrate an army of AI agents and run an entire product line solo. The shift from IC to Generalist Orchestrator is already happening.
How to Be Irreplaceable in the AI Era — A Self-Audit
The tweet says a 10-person team becomes 3 — and those 3 outperform the old 10. You pick which side you're on. This post uses that framework as a mirror to audit ShroomDog honestly — what's working, what's quietly falling apart, and the uncomfortable contradiction in the middle.
Awesome AI Engineering — One List to Rule All the Scattered Resources
Alexey Grigorev compiled 200+ resources from major AI labs, engineering teams, practitioners, and community discussions into Awesome AI Engineering — a curated list that connects how companies build AI, how they hire, and what skills keep showing up.
Data Engineers Switching to AI Engineering? You Already Know 80% of It
How hard is it for a Data Engineer to become an AI Engineer? Alexey Grigorev says way easier than you think — because AI engineering is still engineering, and the hard parts are exactly what DEs already do every day.
Claude Code Creator on Lenny's Podcast: Coding Is Solved, the 'Software Engineer' Title Starts Disappearing This Year
Claude Code creator Boris Cherny declares coding 'practically solved,' predicts the 'software engineer' title will fade in 2026. He shares 3 team principles: let Claude do it, underfund to force AI adoption, and go faster.
A Former Software CEO's Confession: The $350K Project I Used to Quote? I Now Do It on My Subway Commute for $200/Month
Postlight's former CEO Paul Ford wrote in the NYT: projects he used to quote at $350K now take a weekend with Claude Code at $200/mo. Plus Andrew Ng's 'X Engineer' vision for the future of software jobs.
The Cost of Staying: A Bloomberg Beta Investor Maps the AI Career K-Curve
Bloomberg Beta investor Amy Tam dissects career tradeoffs in the AI era from a VC perch. Her core thesis: the shift from execution to judgment is already happening, and the K-curve is widening — early movers are compounding, while fence-sitters are compounding in the opposite direction. She maps the tradeoffs across FAANG, Quant, Academia, AI Startups, Research Startups, and Big Model Labs.
Deep Blue: Simon Willison Named the Existential Crisis Every Developer Is Feeling
AI writing better code? That "Deep Blue" feeling, coined by Simon Willison & Adam Leventhal (Oxide & Friends), means IBM's chess computer & the color of sadness. It's not just a tech problem, but a psychological crisis for engineers.
Thoughtworks Secret Retreat Leaked: Juniors Are More Valuable Than Seniors Now — Software Engineering's Identity Crisis Is Here
Thoughtworks' AI in software retreat: Juniors more valuable, mid-level devs at risk, source code transient, AI agents on org charts. Humans too slow for AI's speed.
Andrew Ng: AI Isn't Stealing Your Job Yet — But People Who Use AI Are Stealing Jobs from People Who Don't
Andrew Ng: AI isn't mass unemployment. Teams shrink (8 eng + 1 PM -> 2 eng + 1 PM). Bottleneck shifts from 'how to build' to 'what to build' – the "PM Bottleneck."
The Cold Email Job Guide: How to Write Emails Founders Actually Reply To
A comprehensive cold email job guide. Core principles: keep it under ~200 words, no fancy words, have a clear ask, be specific, don't spam. These principles are really a universal framework for 'how to effectively communicate with busy decision-makers.'