Azhar

macOS + iOS engineer building AI things

[Azhar @azharcode]

@kenwheeler Thank you for BEARISH

[Azhar @azharcode]

@EthosVentures @mitsuhiko Yeah that's definitely a pain point. I felt it but it's been infrequent enough that I wouldn't look for an alternative just yet

[Azhar @azharcode]

@chesnyfcb That's very pretty looking but what's the point and how is it useful?

[Azhar @azharcode]

@ThePrimeagen I have no model loyalty. I'm going wherever the tool fits the job

[DHH @dhh]

You can’t outwork the whole world. There’s always going to be someone somewhere willing to work as hard as you. Someone just as hungry. Or hungrier.

Assuming you can work harder and longer than someone else is giving yourself too much credit for your effort and not enough for theirs. Putting in 1,001 hours to someone else’s 1,000 isn’t going to tip the scale in your favor.

What’s worse is when management holds up certain people as having a great “work ethic” because they’re always around, always available, always working. That’s a terrible example of a work ethic and a great example of someone who’s overworked.

A great work ethic isn’t about working whenever you’re called upon. It’s about doing what you say you’re going to do, putting in a fair day’s work, respecting the work, respecting the customer, respecting coworkers, not wasting time, not creating unnecessary work for other people, and not being a bottleneck. Work ethic is about being a fundamentally good person that others can count on and enjoy working with.

So how do people get ahead if it’s not about outworking everyone else?

People make it because they’re talented, they’re lucky, they’re in the right place at the right time, they know how to work with other people, they know how to sell an idea, they know what moves people, they can tell a story, they know which details matter and which don’t, they can see the big and small pictures in every situation, and they know how to do something with an opportunity. And for so many other reasons.

So get the outwork myth out of your head. Stop equating work ethic with excessive work hours. Neither is going to get you ahead or help you find calm.

[The Outwork Myth — It Doesn't Have To Be Crazy At Work, 2018]

[Azhar @azharcode]

@thorstenball Biggest take away: “I don't like the look of most Ferraris” Yep this is true especially when I see a middle-aged man drive it in New Jersey suburbs

[Azhar @azharcode]

@alxfazio I just appreciate that Codex doesn't vomit word salad the way Claude does. At least I have a chance of understanding it

[Azhar @azharcode]

@ryanbrewer The name of the company is the only good thing about it

[Azhar @azharcode]

@Bfaviero The comparison is all it take huh, nice

[Azhar @azharcode]

The AI era has ushered in some of the worst leather jackets I have ever seen

[Azhar @azharcode]

@coffeewithone Sincerely hope you find clarity sooner than later

[Karri Saarinen @karrisaarinen]

I get that business insurance is similar Nobel level type of pursuit as ground breaking physics and the Manhattan project. Hopefully the blast radius will be contained.

I don’t think the disagreement is whether hard problems require intensity.

The disagreement is whether intensity has to become a permanent operating model, and whether working seven days a week is the thing that compounds.

My argument is that for most startups, the real compounding advantage is not raw hours. It is clearer thinking, better judgment, learning, and a team that can sustain high-quality work for a long time. You can always spend a lot of time working, but the PMF might never arrive.

There are moments where extraordinary effort is necessary. Launches, incidents, existential deadlines, customer commitments. Those moments matter, and great teams rise to them.

But if the company requires heroics every day of the eek, that usually points to a system problem. It means the operating model depends on burning reserve capacity instead of building it. Company that is constantly on fire is company that is not operating well.

Whenever you put something out there, people will argue and people can argue the way I run Linear. The reason I comment on these things to offer some counter point.

There is a growing cliché in startup culture where founders and startups feel the need to perform intensity publicly. How hard they work, how little they sleep, how many tokens they spend, how busy they are, how much personal sacrifice they make.

You almost never see this from the most successful companies or people. Even if they work that way, they usually don’t make it the story, because they have more important things to talk about, like the product, the customers, the insight, the strategy, the quality of the work.

That’s my issue with the narrative and why I think startups shouldn't blindly follow it. Not that is bad to work hard but grindmaxxing narrative can become the greater goal and become counterproductive. The performative intensity becomes the thing, and loosing sight of what actually matters.

Lets check back in 7 years.

[Azhar @azharcode]

@TobinSouth Yes, the only way Claude speech to text looks good is when compared with Siri. It’s order of magnitudes worse than OpenAI

[Azhar @azharcode]

@GergelyOrosz $600 is responsible spending. $3000 is irresponsible spending, simple as that. There is no rationale that justifies a $3000 monitor.

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

In the era of #ArtificialIntelligence, when human dignity is threatened by new forms of dehumanization, ours is the pressing duty to remain profoundly human. We must lovingly safeguard the grandeur of humanity bestowed upon us and revealed in its fullness in Christ, the splendor of which no machine can ever replace. #MagnificaHumanitas
https://t.co/6i9MWs6LJl

[Mario Zechner @badlogicgames]

if we see this, we know

[Azhar @azharcode]

@thsottiaux GIPPITY

[Azhar @azharcode]

@shadcn I think there’s something to be said about ensuring your wok compounds and the. Template-izing it, which I can see hints of in his work. Us engineers are very good at starting from scratch and throwing away something in-flight, I.e we kill compounding gains

[Mitchell Hashimoto @mitchellh]

Fork your dependencies, trim them to only your use case, never update unless it breaks for your users. I’ve been vocal about this for 10+ years. I’ve always said that updating is way riskier than latent bugs (which can be tracked and CVEs monitored).

If you are updating a dependency, it’s on you to analyze every single commit in the full transitive set of dependencies. If you dont see anything compelling, dont update!

I remember at HashiCorp once in awhile an engineer would try to update a dep or replace a DIY lib with an external one and id always ask “show me the commit we need.” Dont update for the sake of it.

Feeling pretty swell about this mentality with all the supply chain attacks happening.