Batchema Sombie

Engineer, Entrepreneur, Investor. Filling my life one venture at a time. RIP Joseph🙏🏾

[Batchema Sombie @batchprocessor]

@GeminiApp Gemini model is the best non-coding writing and deep research model I’ve seen and it’s not particularly close. It does make sense that Google would nail that down when you think about it.

[Batchema Sombie @batchprocessor]

Nothing is free, but sometimes the cost is negative

[Batchema Sombie @batchprocessor]

never put sleep last

[Batchema Sombie @batchprocessor]

@CompSciFact @TheGingerBill This!

[Batchema Sombie @batchprocessor]

Yeah, the big labs found a way to turn safety into a marketing gimmick and it’s only going to lead to bad outcomes

[dax @thdxr]

i hope it's clear now why open source models are important

i've said before i can respect the position around safety but it's completely naive

even if you think you have superior morality and should control it someone will kick you out and take control

[Batchema Sombie @batchprocessor]

Opportunities so plenty in West Africa across all domains that it’s getting harder and harder to justify having businesses in North America only

[Batchema Sombie @batchprocessor]

@mitchellh consistently has the best takes on AI coding. If you want to be a useful programmer in the age of AI and don’t know what to do, just copy him

[Mitchell Hashimoto @mitchellh]

The problem with the "if it works who cares what the code looks like" mindset for agentic work is that it assumes the agent has a perfect understanding of "works." Realistically, things are underspecified, agents make bad assumptions, etc.

To be fair, agents are pretty good at unit test coverage. They're pretty bad at designing human experiences (API, CLI flags, etc.), especially cohesive ones for future roadmap plans they may not have visibility into (unless your backlog is perfect and vision fully laid out, which I doubt). They're bad at knowing where performance matters and what type (CPU vs memory tradeoffs). They're bad at where compatibility matters and where it doesn't (and tend to err on the side of preserving it without further guidance). Etc.

Unless you have this ALL specified, you can't possibly claim "it works" without taking a look and thinking about it.

[Batchema Sombie @batchprocessor]

I’m totally convinced that all the people losing their minds over 100% LLM-produced work on loops either don’t actually read the outputs, have zero domain knowledge, or are lying

[Batchema Sombie @batchprocessor]

My number 2 fav player beat my number 1 fav player in the nba finals. I’m having schizophrenic emotions right now 😂

[Batchema Sombie @batchprocessor]

@AnthropicAI Is this not a self-inflicted wound from Anthropic? I love their models but they always feel the urge to scare the sh*t out of people on releases. This was just a matter of time and it sets a very very very bad precedent.

[Batchema Sombie @batchprocessor]

@dariusparzygnat @the2ndfloorguy I don’t like how this guy thinks😂. Corporate life is toxic and often invasive enough as is

[Batchema Sombie @batchprocessor]

@the2ndfloorguy New Model => New Dashboards always

[Batchema Sombie @batchprocessor]

I hate being a fan sometimes. Now I can’t sleep and have to reflect on my life choices that pushed me to be a spurs fan on this day😂

[Batchema Sombie @batchprocessor]

WTH did I just watch? Knicks are the team of destiny this year fr! My week is ruined😂

[Batchema Sombie @batchprocessor]

If knicks win this, I’m blaming Mitch Johnson. What is he saving them timeouts for?😪

[Batchema Sombie @batchprocessor]

Fable reaching token counts for a single prompt I didn’t know possible 😰

[Batchema Sombie @batchprocessor]

@neetcode1 !!!

[Batchema Sombie @batchprocessor]

I missed the Knicks-Spurs game and just checked the score. Knicks up 2 nothing. Although Brunson is my second fav player after Wemby, I can’t be happy Knicks will probably be champs. My fandom for Spurs is that high I guess. My Saturday is ruined😩

[Karri Saarinen @karrisaarinen]

The fallacy of this is that more creates more. More hours, more hiring, more something.

And it is true in a sense. If you put in more work, more work will happen. But I think for most startups, the leverage is really in how differently you approach the problem, how well you cultivate your team, and the strategy.

Any large company can outspend you on hours. They have thousands or tens of thousands more people, spending more hours. If hours worked were the metric, every large company and government organization would always win and do the best work. More hours, better output.

This thinking is often representative of younger founders, where the startup becomes their identity and life. They have a hard time doing anything else, and cannot understand that your work is not the person that is you. But activities outside of work can grow you as a person too and make you do better work.

I’ve never worked this way. As a designer, I always saw the need to take a step back, to take a break. At times, I might work 12 hours or 16 hours, or whatever amount was needed, but it wasn’t the norm. You just can't grind design, you need inspiration. But taking that step away from the work, would give me more perspective, inspiration and I could approach the problem differently or I could just see the solution.

Grinding is never good for any creative problem, and startups or creating new products are often mostly about creative problem solving. Grinding works ok for email jobs, or where you just executing on very clear playbook.

With Linear, we’ve never worked this way. We work reasonable hours, 5 days a week. All of us founders have families. Many of our employees have families. I personally stop every evening, spend time with the family, cook dinner for the family, eat dinner together, and focus on things outside of work. Sometimes I work in the late evenings or weekends, but to me the pride is that I don’t need to. Company should be succesful without it.

My goal is to build a company that is sustainable in the long term, and doesn’t require heroics or personal sacrifices every single day.

There are times when our team is heroic. Launches, incidents, some other work that just needs to be done. They will work late into the night because they know it is the right thing. But we don’t require that every day or every week, and the more this happens, the more I think it is a failure of our company and leadership. The team and the leaders should always keep a reserve to use when something is needed.

Our thinking was also that quality, which we value, doesn’t emerge from working more or stressing people more. It emerges when you create the conditions for it to emerge. Often it is the appreciation, space, time, and how the person feels. A person who is rested will do better work.

I wouldn’t attribute much of our success to working a lot. The success came from having clear thinking, ideas, and focus to do the right things.

I sometimes wish we could move the culture more toward a Zen master.

Real mastery is not exerting the most effort. It is achieving the outcome with the least necessary effort.

[Batchema Sombie @batchprocessor]

@GurneyJourney @paulg The amount of jolly I see about AI wiping out job categories shows there’s been a lot of resentment and jealousy for people who happen to work hard and acquire an in-demand skill.