Danny Thompson

@dthompsondev.bsky.social

Senior Developer Advocate at Atlassian | Co-Host of The Programming Podcast | I've helped 1000s of people land jobs in tech | Get all my details, links and more at Dthompsondev.com

Most people are trying to build one AI agent that does everything. I’m experimenting with the opposite: small, specialized agents with clear responsibilities, handoffs, and validation. Here I am with 18 agents working together. I am constantly thinking about my agents in a pipeline and handoffs.

Dark-themed interface showing a vertical list of software development backlog items labeled A01 through A17 (including tasks like Abuse Controls, Frontend Observability, and DB Integration) with status indicator dots and export icons. Near the bottom, one entry is highlighted in a dark pill container reading "BACKLOG.md Is our entire backlog right now. I was thinking..." accompanied by a loading spinner icon.

WE NEED VOLUNTEERS! Commit your Code is 30 days away! The Call For Volunteers is now open for in person in Dallas! We need around 40 volunteers to help but we don't want you to miss the whole experience. Volunteer shifts are 5 hours long. Then we want you to be an attendee! forms.gle/aMSof79f9LfF...

CYC'26 Call for Volunteers

This form is a call for volunteers to assist with the setup and facilitation of the Commit Your Code Conference of 2026. All volunteer submissions must be able to be present in person. This is a gener...

forms.gle

When people wonder how I feel better about AI writing a lot of code. This is how. When it runs all of these tests and I know things are working the way they should be. This gives me confidence. Pre-AI I used to talk about unit testing a lot. Post-AI I talk about it even more!

A screenshot of claude that says "Ran 2 commands, searched code, read and edited resume... 
All 125 tests pass, including the two new regression tests."

Opus 5 has not been a great experience for me so far. Either I am missing something or they tweaked something that shouldn't have been tweaked. I'm genuinely confused about this. The last 2 days I've been testing it like I do with every model release but this has been rough.

I have fixed more AI generated resumes than I can count. The problem is the amount of money people end up losing just trying to get hired. I have been building Undersold because you have been underselling yourself for years. In interviews, resumes, LinkedIn and more. Time to fix that! ⤵️

A full-page screenshot of the Undersold website. At the top left is the logo "UNDERSOLD" with a top navigation bar on the right.
The hero section reads, "You have the experience. We'll help you prove it," with a sub-headline explaining that while other tools just reword resumes, Undersold uses a conversation to fix underselling. There is a dark green "Upload My Resume" button and a "See How It Works" video button. Beside this is an image of a man looking thoughtfully at a laptop. Hovering over the image is a mockup of a chat interface where an AI bot asks targeted questions about the user's work experience (e.g., "What did you build that made the biggest difference at your job?"), and the user responds with specific achievements.
The middle section is titled "What Undersold Builds With You" and features four columns with icons: Career Evidence Audit, Discovery Conversation, Positioning System, and Job Search Toolkit.
The bottom section is titled "How It Works" with the headline "From your experience to a job search that works. We handle the hard part." It displays a four-step horizontal timeline: 1. Share What You Have, 2. We Uncover the Proof, 3. We Build Your Story, and 4. You Show Up Ready.

LAST NIGHTS MEETUP WAS A HUGE SUCCESS! Every quarter we try to do one "code together" A night with no speakers, no agenda, just a software developer community BEING a community and last night was amazing! Developers supporting other developers and just geeking out together!

A collage of photos from the meetup.

IF YOU EVER WONDERED WHY I make it mandatory for the projects being built in the cohort solve real problems, this is why right here. HE GOT THE JOB Y'ALL!! "I got this job mainly talking about the project from the cohort the way we used AI for 1 week."

A screenshot of a chat message in a channel called "# celebrate". The message reads:
"OFFER LETTER RECEIVED @here
You are looking at IBM's new Full Stack Software Engineer! Definitely couldn't have done it without the support from our Dallas community; thank you everyone & thank you @DThompsonDev NO DMS PLZ for creating a warm and knowledgeable community!
After my layoff in May 2025 I came out of a startup that went bankrupt, I just had a newborn on the 16th and STRONG imposter syndrome in my self getting into another role as my last mentor was pretty harsh on everything I created.
I jumped into a bootcamp, paying for it with unemployment, also doubled down on freelance gigs taking anything I could. I got recommended DSD meetups from @Kelz who worked with me at the startup. When it came down to networking, I was terrified and in my shell, but she told me to wear an anime item and go in so I did. It helped me with conversation starters and got me out of my shell.A screenshot of the bottom portion of a chat message in a dark-themed application. The text reads:
"from there I grew some connections and solidified them even stronger at CYC 2025. I kept hearing about the cohort and told myself that one day I'll sign up for it no matter what I have going on.
The day came for signups for the 2026 cohort and I did. I had my bootcamp I was still in, a freelance gig and talks of a second cohort to do simultaneously that's required for my bootcamp.
I got accepted.
I got this job mainly talking about the project from that cohort, the way we used AI for that 1 week, and how we approach business problems with technical solutions and that's exactly what they were looking for.
It took a month for them to reach out with the offer letter, and trust me, I WAS ANXIOUS all last month. But 07/15/2026 I got the offer letter and even when some said I couldn't I am a Full Stack Software Engineer. (edited)"
Below the text are four reaction buttons: a purple heart with the number 11, a fire emoji with 18, a custom photo emoji of a person with 10, and a red heart with 11. At the very bottom is a message input field that says "Message #celebrate".

"I officially pushed to prod last week!" All these years later we still have people landing jobs in tech successfully 🥹 If you ever wondered why I still do it, it's these moments. What was the first solution you pushed to prod in a company?

A screenshot of a chat conversation on a dark mode interface. It shows a user named DThompsonDev replying to a message from @Salmon that begins, 'Hi everyone i'm not entirely sure where to put this but I wanted to say thanks to this community, years ago I started'.
DThompsonDev replies at 10:31 AM: 'Let's goooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That's what I am talking about! It is a big win just to get all of this and to get buy in from your Manager.'
Below this, Salmon replies at 10:32 AM: 'officially pushed to prod last week as well, so now I have code being used by millions of people! It's a crazy thing to think about!' The message has a fire emoji reaction with the number 6.

Cursor just got acquired by SpaceX for $60 billion. - IDEs already existed - VS Code was free - JetBrains was around Cursor didn't invent the category. Stop thinking you need to cure cancer with code to succeed. Build YOUR solution It might be exactly what someone else needs.

THE BEST PART from Seattle last night at the Atlassian office: watching the room go from leaning back in their chairs to leaning forward, taking notes, when we started showing what Rovo, Teamwork Graph & Forge can do! My heart is full y'all Thank you for making my first trip to the PNW amazing! 🧡

A collage of photos with the top one being a large group photo and the other 3 being speaker photos

Last Night was a HUGE SUCCESS San Francisco! I wish I took more pics! - I showed how I use voice messages in Whatsapp to orchestrate agents in Jira - Reign showed teamwork graph & Agentic building! So many great people showed up to last night's meetup! Now headed to Seattle!

A collage of pictures from last nights meetup

18 months of work Countless revisions Sleepless nights In just 3 HOURS, "The Developer's Guide To AI" is officially live everywhere! I just wrapped up the book website & I'm so hyped with how it turned out. Check it out and let me know what you think! www.developerguide.ai

The Developer's Guide to AI: From Prompts to Agents

Build real AI systems, not toy demos. A hands-on field guide for working developers. From No Starch Press.

developerguide.ai

SPEAKERS FOR THE COMMIT YOUR CODE CONFERENCE! Spent my Sunday working on this. We have 112 speakers this year! Still adding more to the site but I love seeing these amazing people in the same place! 100% of ALL ticket sales donated to charity. The conference FOR the community!

A collage of speaker from the commit your code website speaker page.A second collage of speakers from the commit your code website speaker page.

HE GOT THE JOB Y'ALL!!! He did it 🥹 He has absolutely poured in so much effort to make this happen! Going to meetups, networking, cohorts and more! He absolutely did it y'all! He got the new company laptop so now it's official! Show Jim some love y'all!

Screenshot of a discord message that says
i can say i has a job, as in the wise words of Dthompsondev , i now own company property, hooray

We might be on track to have 112 speakers this year for CYC26.👀 CFP is closed and we are going through all the submissions now trying to narrow everything down. As a reminder, Virtual tickets are free. In person is $40 and 100% is donated to charity! food covered!

screenshot of the speaker selection on the homepage of the commit your code website

Hopefully we will have the full speaker lineup for Commit Your Code Conference 2026 announced this week on the website! I think we have around 30 of the 100 speakers currently on the site! 95 Days away! 🤯

A screenshot of a section of the homepage that shows some images of the conference and that it is 95 Days away

After 2.5 weeks of traveling I'm finally home 😮‍💨 Exhausted but going to rest up because I'm less than 2 weeks I will be in San Francisco and then Seattle for meetups Atlassian is hosting!!

Right now, there are two extremes with AI: 1. Total AI Slop 2. Refusal to use it/bare minimum use In between is the sweet spot where real value, progress, & success are. The problem? Everyone is so busy jumping to the extremes that they're missing the actual opportunity.

Here's the math nobody runs that will change how you think about this: You are interviewing for a job that is offering $100K per year. Standard annual raise = 3% or in this case, $3,000. You negotiate +$20K at the offer stage of the job interview. ⤵️