Scott Fox 🦊🔟

I know a little bit about a lot

[Scott Fox 🦊🔟 @TenenbaumAI]

Isn’t a big risk to the US wining the ai race that employees of leading labs get retirement-level rich too quickly and then stop working?
Are there any historical precedents of this? @grok ?

[Deedy @deedydas]

The vibes in SF feel pretty frenetic right now. The divide in outcomes is the worst I've ever seen.

Over the last 5yrs, a group of ~10k people - employees at Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, Nvidia, Meta TBD, founders - have hit retirement wealth of well above $20M (back of the envelope AI estimation).

Everyone outside that group feels like they can work their well-paying (but <$500k) job for their whole life and never get there.

Worse yet, layoffs are in full swing. Many software engineers feel like their life's skill is no longer useful. The day to day role of most jobs has changed overnight with AI.

As a result,
1. The corporate ladder looks like the wrong building to climb.
Everyone's trying to align with a new set of career "paths": should I be a founder? Is it too late to join Anthropic / OpenAI? should I get into AI? what company stock will 10x next? People are demanding higher salaries and switching jobs more and more.

2. There’s a deep malaise about work (and its future).
Why even work at all for “peanuts”? Will my job even exist in a few years? Many feel helpless. You hear the “permanent underclass” conversation a lot, esp from young people. It's hard to focus on doing good work when you think "man, if I joined Anthropic 2yrs ago, I could retire"

3. The mid to late middle managers feel paralyzed.
Many have families and don't feel like they have the energy or network to just "start a company". They don't particularly have any AI skills. They see the writing on the wall: middle management is being hollowed out in many companies.

4. The rich aren’t particularly happy either.
No one is shedding tears for them (and rightfully so). But those who have "made it" experience a profound lack of purpose too. Some have gone from <$150k to >$50M in a few years with no ramp. It flips your life plans upside down. For some, comparison is the thief of joy. For some, they escape to NYC to "live life". For others still, they start companies "just cuz", often to win status points. They never imagined that by age 30, they'd be set. I once asked a post-economic founder friend why they didn't just sell the co and they said "and do what? right now, everyone wants to talk to me. if i sell, I will only have money."

I understand that many reading this scoff at the champagne problems of the valley. Society is warped in this tech bubble. What is often well-off anywhere else in the world is bang average here.

Unlike many other places, tenure, intelligence and hard work can be loosely correlated with outcomes in the Bay. Living through a societally transformative gold rush in that environment can be paralyzing. "Am I in the right place? Should I move? Is there time still left? Am I gonna make it?" It psychologically torments many who have moved here in search of "success".

Ironically, a frequent side effect of this torment is to spin up the very products making everyone rich in hopes that you too can vibecode your path to economic enlightenment.

[Scott Fox 🦊🔟 @TenenbaumAI]

If I’m fresh out of college and wondering what career is worth pursuing, it’s this.

And you don’t have to land a job at Google or Anthropic. Literally go down the street to your nearest shopping center and do it for those businesses.

[nader dabit @dabit3]

Forward Deployed Engineer is the hottest, and one of the most in-demand, jobs right now.

Every major AI company is hiring including companies like @OpenAI @cognition @AnthropicAI and @Google

If you possess a combination of soft skills (good communication), have an engineering background, and are up to speed on the latest and greatest in agentic coding you're probably able to land one of them.

They pay well and offer a foot in the door to some of the fastest growing companies in the world.

[Scott Fox 🦊🔟 @TenenbaumAI]

@ConradBastable 10/10

[Scott Fox 🦊🔟 @TenenbaumAI]

You can't un-say something in a real client meeting. That constraint isn't a bug — it's what makes the data real. Build the constraint in. The limitation IS the feature.

[Scott Fox 🦊🔟 @TenenbaumAI]

I added a Back button to my AI interview tool. Then I deleted it on purpose. Here's why that was actually the right call.

[Scott Fox 🦊🔟 @TenenbaumAI]

But the deeper reason: a discovery session is a conversation, not a form. Forms let you tab back. Conversations don't. The irreversibility is the point. It's what keeps answers honest instead of optimized.

[Scott Fox 🦊🔟 @TenenbaumAI]

@_chenglou Really cool

[Isaac 🇺🇸 @returntoquality]

"Slop" is real.

It's more than a digital phenomenon. It dominates our physical lives too, in the products we use and materials we consume daily.

As a result, true American Quality has become hard to find. But there is a better way.

➾ https://t.co/mwFAd3lhsa

I've spent the last few weeks building a curated list of quality goods that contain zero plastics and are made to last. In most cases they are also made in the USA, in all cases they come from American companies 🇺🇸

I will be adding more items weekly, and I hope you'll join me in the return to Quality.

Unslop your life.

[Scott Fox 🦊🔟 @TenenbaumAI]

@recap_david Calico

[Scott Fox 🦊🔟 @TenenbaumAI]

Lesson: always try the direct route first, even when it seems broken. Third-party wrappers are great for prototyping but the cost adds up fast at scale.

The dashboard now tracks packages, sends daily email summaries, and alerts on exceptions — all hitting UPS directly, all free.

[Scott Fox 🦊🔟 @TenenbaumAI]

Update on the UPS tracking API saga:

Got approved for UPS's native tracking API. Ripped out EasyPost entirely. Every tracking lookup is now free.

The client ships 1,000+ packages per order. That's $20/batch we were paying just to check status. Now it's $0.

[Scott Fox 🦊🔟 @TenenbaumAI]

The irony: UPS flagged my original developer account for fraud. Wouldn't respond to support tickets. Made me use a paid third-party.

Then my client's account got approved same day, no issues. The onboarding experience is a coinflip.

[Scott Fox 🦊🔟 @TenenbaumAI]

The dashboard itself took one session — upload a spreadsheet of tracking numbers, get live status, morning email summaries with delays and exceptions, admin controls, the works.

The tracking data part should've been the easiest piece. It was the hardest.

[Scott Fox 🦊🔟 @TenenbaumAI]

Built a package tracking dashboard for a client today. The hardest part wasn't the code — it was getting tracking data.

UPS's developer portal flagged my account for fraud. Their support is a black hole. Turns out this is a known issue with no fix.

[Scott Fox 🦊🔟 @TenenbaumAI]

There's a real gap here. No free, reliable API for UPS package tracking. The official API has a broken onboarding flow. Every third-party charges per lookup.

Someone's going to build the Stripe of package tracking and make a killing. The bar is embarrassingly low.