I got to join Marc and Ben from the Supra podcast to talk about how AI is changing how software teams operate.
Three things I took away from this conversation.
First, is that there are some things that AI doesnāt change. At the end of the day, youāve still got to define the problem, define the approach, define the details. AI changes the tools, the artifacts, and the process, but it doesnāt change the basic facts of problem solving.
Second is AI is changing how software is made at three levels simultaneously: individuals, teams, and organizations. Individuals are trying out tools (e.g., Claude Code) and putting them into their workflow. Then there are some teams that are starting to adopt some of these tools en masse and reorganize their processes around them. Finally, there are organizations that are trying to figure out what all of this means for the āstandardā way of working and shipping software.
Tools - What are the tools that are available to us? What are their benefits and limitations?
Tactics - How do we coordinate with these tools to achieve a result? What are the artifacts that are created? What is the size and roles of people on the team?
Training - How do we build competence on these new tools and tactics? How do we give people space, opportunity, and resources to experiment?
Values - What does great work look like? What is important and celebrated?
Without all of these working together, organizations will fail to get value out of a transformative technology ā and I have to be honest, now is a moment where Iād rather be at a small company experimenting with new ways of working than at a large company where I have to be concerned about how this works at scale.
Similar to Shoe Dog ā and different in the way that Nike is different from Trader Joeās.
Three things I want to take away from this book:
Joe was incredibly structured in how he thought about problems. He wanted to have a retail store where he paid people well which required him to have goods that had a high price per amount of space they took up. He was willing to cycle through lots of weird ideas (including things like gun ammo) as long as they met this criteria.
Discontinuities. Trader Joeās would specifically target little edges in product categories. As an example, they would become experts in the regulations for say cheese or butter to build limited edition products. In particular they did this on the product side, carefully understanding product categories, and on the regulatory side, carefully reading the fine print to find edges that others didnāt have. An example of a discontinuity is being willing to sell coffee in non standard container sizes or for a limited period of time.
The concept of double entry retailing, which is another way of saying that decisions are interconnected. As an example, paying people more reduces shrinkage.
I didnāt know whether or not to laugh or cry when he said that Trader Joeās target customer is overeducated and underpaid.
This book helped me better understand how retail, goods, and media are interconnected. The transition from network tv to cable tv happens at the same time as Trader Joeās is shifting away from homogenized consumer packaged goods to the more varied assortment we see today. A similar version of this happened with Facebook and the DTC brands of the 2010s.
My guilty pleasure on YouTube right now are videos claiming Ancient Egyptians had access to advanced technology that allowed them to machine vases out of hard stone. Iām agnostic as to whether or not this is true, but I canāt look away! A second thing that makes these videos delightful is that they all pit themselves against mainstream archeology which just cracks me up. Who are these mainstream archeologists? What are they doing to hinder this message? I see the evidence for advanced manufacturing but these mainstream archeologists seem like a mythical species.
Why is Switzerland so rich? This is good, but I think it misses a couple of things. First, Switzerland was spared the physical and human losses of both World Wars. Second, thereās a cultural element that the post doesnāt speak to. Switzerland is both highly individualistic and highly communal, a mix of live-and-let-live and weāre-all-in-this-together that I believe allows it to make more pragmatic decisions, the benefits of which compound over time.
Someone told me this week that in France they say that there are six reasons someone will pay for something: Security, Pride, Novelty, Comfort, Money, Friendliness.
Dead Framework Theory - the idea that LLMs are freezing frameworks like React into the internet. I thought like this at first, but I no longer think that this is true and I actually think LLMs will make it easier to bootstrap new frameworks provided those frameworks have real advantages over what theyāre replacing because LLMs make it so much easier to adopt new tools.
The actual question was much funnier. My 5 year old made a piggy bank at church, causing my 3 year old to ask, āDaddy, do pigs have banks?ā As I think about this, it gets even more puzzling, because I'm not sure he's ever been to a bank.↩
Person Do Thing is on Amazon. Youāre here so you know Uri already, but Iāll just say that my family loves this one and that it makes a great gift for the person in your life that loves games.
The universe as an evolving organism. I have no idea whether or not this is true, but I really enjoy this style of conversation about black holes and space and what we know and what we donāt. There should be more of this.
"Life is 10 per cent what you make it, and 90 per cent how you take it" āIrving Berlin. Sometimes I think the quotes at the end of The Browser our aimed directly at me. I promise you my kids will grow up with this one memorized.
A little bit of SSP
I was on the Demystifying Cosmetics Podcast talking about what I learned making high performance biomaterials from kelp.
If thatās not enough, weāre doing a live show of --dangerously-skip-permissions on Friday at 2 pm ET. Come and hang out.
(I have to be the only person putting out a podcast on beauty ingredients and coding with AI the same week)
Best enjoyed this week in a sunny corner of a park
Worth your time
If youāve ever wanted to buy a life sized dinosaur, now is your chance. Someday my son is going to find out I had this opportunity and didnāt take it and will never look at me the same way again.
The Quiet Ones by Nikunj Kothari. An ode to the people that do the little things to make a company or a team effective.
I now realize that everything I lorded over other peopleāall the things I gatekept without consciously understanding that this was what I was doingāI didnāt need to do that. It really didnāt help anything. For some number of people who interacted with me, Iwas the problem. I couldāve been more tolerant or forgiving, I couldāve said āletās find out together,ā I couldāve let other people have the fun once in a while.
Iāve become obsessed with the tops of trees, in particular in the morning or the evening when the sun is hitting them. For some insect or bird or leaf that spot is the center of the world.
Letās see if I can land the plane on this one. Iām surprised that there isnāt more nostalgic fiction about growing up in evangelical Christian circles. Thereās satirical stuff like Saved but nothing that Iām aware of like The Big Sick that both pokes fun at being a child of immigrants while also on some level clearly feeling affection for it. Is this out there and I just donāt know about it?
Are we at the point where āyes, andā¦ā is overrated? If not, how long until we get there?
Something I struggled with this week: for someone like you and me, in 2025, what does it mean to live a good life? At 19, it was easier for me to articulate an answer to this question I actually believed than it is now in many ways. If you feel like you have a good answer to this, consider this me humbly requesting that you write it and share it.
Things I learned
Apparently Marie Antoinette never said āLet them eat cakeā, according to a recent Rest Is History Bonus episode. Iām a sucker forthings we think that arenāt actually so. Also from a RIH bonus episode: apparently the US now requires people to share their social media handles to get a travel visa. What are we doing here people?
China installed more industrial robots last year than the rest of the world combined. This is one of those stats that a 17 year old is going to be citing in an AP History Exam in 2084 about why China won the war for Taiwan.