Interesting to see so many apps / companies launching with the positioning to gather CONTEXT in a single space. Pitches like: "work is scattered across many apps / websites / windows. What if..." "you keep moving between tools / sites / docs to get your work done. What if..."

One of the easiest ways to stand out when writing or creating videos or posting: DONT. USE. AI. Suddenly you sound distinctively different from 80%+ ppl who do and output the same verbose + nicely formatted stuff that feels all the same (+ most ppl stop paying attention midway)

A senior software engineer identifying as a “creator” working at an e-commerce company sent an AI-written email, asking to recommend their Substack. I checked out a few articles. All are… slop. Stuff that feels like it was output from ChatGPT. It’s all AI. My response:

There’s a popular theory that AI will finally make formal verification mainstream because mathematical proof of correctness will be needed when machines write most or all of the code. But will this happen? Hillel Wayne is one of the best people to answer: • YouTube: youtu.be/KSkcgIYQy0U  (cont'd)

So many interesting details. Here's one: "One thing I’ve heard from some people is “we have two humans and a bunch of agents.” I reply that this isn’t where we’re at: we still have teams with 6-8 people on average." - Katelyn Lesse, Head of Engineering, Claude Platform, Anthropic

The Pragmatic Engineer.@pragmaticengineer.com · last wk.

How is building software changing inside of one of most "AI-pilled" companies, Anthropic? We talked with engineers inside the AI lab to get more details. Spoiler: two-pizza teams have not gone anywhere! Full: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/inside-ant...

Interesting trend: CTO/ Head of Eng / VPE folks at startups and mid-sized companies are... leaving / burning out. Hiring for these roles is HARD, but even after filling the role, they will often leave a few months later and take a career break And they have v good reasons

Meta's performance review culture is becoming very problematic for its engineering culture. I said this a month ago in @pragmaticengineer.com (screenshot #1), and Semi Analysis said the same last week (screenshot #2). Engineers at Meta are world-class at optimizing for PSC...

From a friend who joined a fast-growth, later-stage startup: "I was wondering why no one is doing PRDs here. Then I realized that the Head of Product and most PMs are 25-year-olds who don't have the attention span to *read* even a 1-page doc. You lose them after 3 bullet points."

OK this made my life easier: my backend (for my admin portal) had an error popping up, and Sentry was bugging me about it. Sentry now built an AI agent (called "Seer") that can analyze the root cause, make a plan to fix, draft a fix, then open a PR. Just pushed it to prod after review!

These Google Workspace ads (for *paying* customers!) are driving me crazy I don't know why I would need a "virtual receptionist", what "Voice Standard" is, who "my callers" are, and why I would need to "guide them automatically" Is Google Workspace losing its mind? What next: proper ads?

OK this is a HILARIOUS story I heard from inside Meta: You know when Director+ folks post AI slop as "thought leader" posts? But everyone is too polite to say anything. Happened a ton inside Meta's internal "LinkedIn" (Workplace**) BUT morale is so low that lots of devs no longer gave a damn. So:

My kids keep pointing out how so many ads involving kids are AI-generated. This is one example from a government agency. It’s in so many other places as well tho with kids’ posters Kids that look more like adults, have 4 fingers…is this the “modern” advertising? All AI?

The last 7 weeks, Spotify had 4 outages when publishing my podcast episodes (!!). After outage #3, I asked the Podcasts team to share how they are improving reliablity. They didn't share - and it just got worse. So I am no longer publishing video podcasts on Spotify, but redirect my audio RSS.

One thing I am hearing that is top of mind for many eng leaders "What are we doing to deal with this ongoing increase in code review load?!" Everyone is seeing it, no one seeing a solution, but lots of experiments from better tooling to starting to admit code review wont scale

Knowing how LLM contexts work and how to work around context limitations – aka “context engineering” – is becoming more important for software engineers working with LLMs. Dex Horthy coined the term "context engineering," and shares practical details on it: YouTube: youtu.be/Usufn8IQJgw (cont'd)

The amount of AI writing on OpenAI's docs makes me sick. Filler sentences for nothing. Mannerisms and phrases humans would not write. Has a human even read this? And all of this will change how other docs are written, and how we all talk-for the worse IMO. 🤮 developers.openai.com/cookbook/exa...

With every new model, I put it to the test in writing - to see if I could do what I do - I give it a bunch of interviews I did on a topic, and ask to write an article in my style. The models fail spectacularly, Fable and GPT-5.6 no different. Lots of words, but no understanding

Been looking into "loop engineering" this, and also experimenting myself... and I'm not (yet?) buying that it's a new paradigm. Yes, we can set up triggers and cron jobs involving agents. But while agents are new, the concept doesn't feel revolutionary. Do you have"loops" you regularly use?

One thing that I no longer hear much talk about: Whether AI would help with formal verification go mainstream. Formally verifying programs is pretty hard and is a niche skillset! Doesn't seem like AI has made a difference in that field. Worth asking: why?

I did my first-ever AMA episode. Your questions, my answers! Watch or listen: • YouTube: youtu.be/cSIMVYjVF28 • Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/1fqJ... • Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

"We would never be comfortable to give a 3rd party tool access to our database" - from a dev at a mid-sized company that built its own coding harness that is used by 70%+ of all PRs They would not let any vendor run this kind of infra, so they brought it in-house. They are happy they did this

Talking w a larger startup whose product seems to not have degraded (vs many other products), even though they also use a AI for coding everywhere. Asked an infra lead: how? "Even before AI, we were paranoid about quality, and built this irrationally thorough E2E testing system"

Heard from a friend working inside sports betting: Interest in this field is spiking, business booming. Internally, the assumption is that thanks to AI, when nothing can really be trusted anymore (photos, videos, text on social media etc) one thing still is real: live sports And ppl want real.

AI, of course, is impacting the tech jobs market. Hiring managers say that: - Cover letters are pretty much all AI-written, and thus useless - Inbound applications are 10x, probably in-part thanks to automated resume submission tools (many using AI to automate more submissions)

The Pragmatic Engineer.@pragmaticengineer.com · 4w ago

"HMs are saying that highly-skilled talent (senior+ devs) is not available to be recruited, at the same time as experienced, proven professionals find their applications ignored by employers. What seems paradoxical here is how both can be true." newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/tech-jobs-...

From a Head of Engineering who spent a week in SF, meeting a bunch of AI startups: "When I was back, I wrote a memo about my impressions. The #1 was how these amazing startups I met: they mostly did not have a business. But we do. So be VERY careful in copying what they do." (cont'd)

From a hiring manager in Czechia: "We are struggling to fill our senior software engineer role... one frustration I have is that speaking the Czech language at B2 level is a hard requirement, so it's limiting our pool of candidates even further." That blocks off EU hiring...

Amusing observation: Many of us devs are becoming as opinionated and knowledgeable about SOTA models (and their coding performance) like we used to be about programming languages and the tips-and-tricks to be more productive with them + now we don't really talk about prog languages all that much..

Let me know if this is just me: Noticed someone I know who is very "AI-pilled" and uses agents 24/7 to... start to talk IRL noticeably more like these LLMs write. Eg more heavily using adjectives like "geniune", frequently terms like "the shape of" and many more examples

There are few people who have impacted the software engineering industry like @kentbeck.com has. He'd never before told his career story from start to today in one sitting - until now. What a treat: • YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddHQ... • Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/3M6h...

Tomorrow on The Pragmatic Engineer podcast - with a legend, @kentbeck.com