Matt

A creative technologist / DevX Eng currently @googlelabs
Developer Relations
Software, apps, visualizations, drones & embedded AI

[Matt @agentdevrel]

@DynamicWebPaige this stuff is moving so fast,
what does this mean for our internet?

does everything need to change?

[Matt @agentdevrel]

@gregisenberg This is not happening,
it was a theory thrown against the wall

no one is working on personal projects from a corp computer or corp account unless it's dogfooding

just from an IP perspective alone, no way

[Matt @agentdevrel]

Lee nails it again
Roles are collapsing but people still have specialties

[Lee Robinson @leerob]

"Engineering, product, and design are all merging into a 'builder' role"

Yeah... I'm not so sure. This feels like an oversimplification and podcast talking point. Reality is a lot more complex.

Even with 1000 "Member of Technical Staff" titles, someone still has to wake up and care 100x more about Product or Design than anyone else. It is their Main Thing™

That's not to say MTS titles are universally bad, but I think they're an example of this 'builder' talking point that's become bastardized.

AI and coding agents have made generating code easy and yet... you're in for a world of pain if non-engineers ship a bunch of slop and don't have great engineers to tame the complexity.

The SF hivemind has a tendency to overfit what works at startups for every company. And to be fair, sometimes this is true! Startups can be a leading indicator for how the industry is changing and often cause disruption.

However, it is going to be incredibly hard to disrupt the extremely human parts of corporate jobs. You really think there's going to be a PM who also does some engineering and design on the side at JPMorgan Chase?

This is true for the simple parts of most jobs, like people wanting to have ownership over something and do good work, move up a career ladder, support their family, get paid well, make an honest living...

And also the hard parts: internal politics, some critical business system that has a bus factor of 1 which has been running for 15 years and isn't documented anywhere because it's that guy's job security. The real world has a lot of this stuff.

It's easy to pontificate about all roles collapsing but it's actually really nice to have a specific person or team who is an expert in one thing that you can work with. I don't expect that to change. Further, I think AI disruption to knowledge work will take decades to play out because it is more fundamental to the human condition (e.g. sociological/organizational) than pure intelligence.

[Matt @agentdevrel]

I'm pretty new to this game but I think this means I'm losing?

[Matt @agentdevrel]

That's not the reason

The plane need the engines running to power the air cycle, if they don't have bleed air they need to rely on auxiliary power which is not enough to cool

[@levelsio @levelsio]

Is it really true the EU does not allow airlines to use AC when the plane is not flying yet?

Every EU plane I board is a sauna until it takes off?

[Matt @agentdevrel]

@dfeuling_ @IterIntellectus agreement is not the guiding principle of alignment

[Matt @agentdevrel]

@dfeuling_ @IterIntellectus morality isn't a stakeholder requirement?
nor is it the guiding principle of alignment

but glad you are a software engineer!

[Matt @agentdevrel]

@dfeuling_ @IterIntellectus moral alignment isn't technical alignment

@IterIntellectus actually conflates this as well re: xai, since their "truth seeking" is aligning to what their creator wants and expects the output to be

[Matt @agentdevrel]

@MTSlive The precedent, of course, was set by the current administration.

[Matt @agentdevrel]

I like my voice but I always look like a goblin on camera

[Matt @agentdevrel]

@zeeg @ThePrimeagen Very good suggestion
Children of Time is in the same group

[Matt @agentdevrel]

In the era of "role collapse" people are doing more across different domains

I also think devs have always done this work to an extent, and we have unfairly tried to index on particular behaviours that most resonate with us rather than the whole that is the modern dev of today

[Kath Korevec @simpsoka]

This shouldn't be a hot take, but I think it's gonna be. Devs do a lot more than "just coding." They write docs, design apps, design architecture, manage devops, work with data, etc. It's no wonder codex is so good at "all the things." It's because we built it for developers.

[Matt @agentdevrel]

I worked in Dumbo for a few years and I loved it.
Biked across the Brooklyn Bridge twice a day

This article presents a different world
jeez, it was so incredible there

[New York Magazine @NYMag]

“From a governance standpoint, we seem to be treated like any other neighborhood — like Cobble Hill or Boerum Hill — and we are actually more like Times Square,” said Jamel Talbi, a 15-year Dumbo resident and condo-board president. “We are at our wits’ end.” Talbi should know; he lives on the cobblestoned stretch of Washington Street leading from the Brooklyn Bridge pedestrian walkway to the waterfront that is said to be the most Instagrammed location on the planet.

Talbi launched an 11-page online petition, directed at elected officials and signed by nearly 400 Dumbo residents, which includes a list of demands one might expect from folks living in a neighborhood so dense with tourists that it’s sometimes hard to push a stroller down the sidewalk: restrictions on street vendors and tour buses, for instance, and a crowd-management plan.

While the petition is just the latest in an ongoing crusade to tame the streets, tension in the neighborhood is building up, and for good reason. “People are anxious because there is a World Cup village under the Brooklyn Bridge this summer, the 250th anniversary of our independence, the Macy’s fireworks, and the tall ships coming,” said Lincoln Restler, the city councilperson representing the area. “They look ahead to June and July and say, ‘Holy shit! This is going to get a lot worse!’”

Some residents are now taking cues from global anti-tourism tactics — such as Amsterdam’s “Stay Away” campaign discouraging British tourists from traveling to the city to party and Seoul’s visiting hours for Bukchon Hanok Village — and suggesting measures far beyond the usual.

Read Anne Kadet’s report on the Dumbo residents losing their patience against tourists — and resorting to guerrilla tactics: https://t.co/PTvTe3eIZa

[Matt @agentdevrel]

We're over indexing on skills
Some of them are genuinely helpful

Most of it you can just talk to the models. You don't need to buy a course or use someone's skill repo

[Matt @agentdevrel]

I think now, more than ever, we need to have uniquely human experiences

[Matt @agentdevrel]

They are very convincing, though

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

Artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships, and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean. Nor do they have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good and evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations, or bear responsibility for consequences. They may imitate or even simulate, but they do not understand what they produce, for they lack the affective, relational, and spiritual perspective through which human beings grow in wisdom. #MagnificaHumanitas

[Matt @agentdevrel]

Aren't we all vibe coders at the end of the day?

[Matt @agentdevrel]

I just got my first PR merged into a production product at @GoogleLabs

Turns out I'm good at what I do
Imposter syndrome, be gone

[Matt @agentdevrel]

For the design curious out there, stitch has a competition!

Come join!
You might surprise yourself with what you're capable of with Stitch

[Stitch by Google @stitchbygoogle]

What will you build with Stitch?

The Stitch build challenge with Contra starts now!

$10k in prizes. Link in 🧵