Chitrang Dave

Have we been creating training data for #ai and LLMs all this while? #tech #data Views are my own.

[Chitrang Dave @dChitrang]

@HamelHusain Yep. Been trying @pidotdev & @opencode

[Chitrang Dave @dChitrang]

@buccocapital 🤣

[Chitrang Dave @dChitrang]

@anshublog On openness, @databricks > @PalantirTech @tasso

[Chitrang Dave @dChitrang]

@HamelHusain Fan of both. Not many (even fewer outside tech) can do #1 effectively today. FDEs bring an external perspective and end-to-end focus on outcome.

[claire vo 🖤 @clairevo]

I spent the weekend with dozens of VP+ leaders on how to ai pill their team, and here were the things that hit them hardest:

- yes, you are behind
- most are willing to add tools and spend tokens. few are willing to kill process & change jobs
- a leader’s lack of ai hard skills is a drag on their org
- teams that swallow the pill of investing in internal devx get ahead faster
- you think you can’t afford to dedicate time to AI, but teams are getting massive gains w just 1-2 people
- you’re underspending tokens
- if you think tokens are expensive, tally up the cost of your “alignment” meetings
- design is getting left behind
- your engineers don’t know these new tools as well as you think
- competition is not about product features but about how whole teams operate
- you were unprepared for the last 2 years. Don’t be unprepared for the next

[Chitrang Dave @dChitrang]

So good…

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

USA. A Mexican restaurant. We had not yet ordered anything, and the food was already arriving.

Chips. Salsa. Unrequested. Free.

I stopped the waiter. "We have not earned these."

"They just come with the table, man."

They come with the TABLE. In my land, hospitality is a debt. Every gift creates an obligation, weighed carefully, returned in the proper season with interest of feeling. Here, the gift arrives before you have even proven you can pay for dinner.

This is not an appetizer. This is a declaration: we trust you. Eat.

I ate with the gravity the moment deserved. And then — I must report this calmly — the basket emptied, and a new one appeared.

"Did we…?"

"Refill," the waiter said. "It's bottomless."

Bottomless. They have wells of salsa. The supply lines of this nation are beyond anything my ancestors imagined.

My friend warned me. "Don't fill up on chips, dude."

Too late. I had accepted three baskets. Honor demanded each one be finished — an unfinished gift is an insult. By the time my actual food arrived, I was a ruined man.

I was not hungry. I was not comfortable. I had been defeated by a courtesy.

Generosity that arrives before the request cannot be repaid. It can only be survived.

I know the rule now. I have made my peace with the basket. One basket. Two at the most.

Who am I deceiving. There is no number of baskets I would refuse. The trust of a nation is in that salsa, and I intend to honor all of it.

[Chitrang Dave @dChitrang]

Bloomberg Tech SF kicking off with @tsgiles and @emilychangtv @BloombergLive

[Chitrang Dave @dChitrang]

Forget jobs of the future. These are jobs of the here are now - FDEs "are a mix of deep technical skills, often CS majors or minors. You must be great at understanding problem solving, how to have systems thinking, and have a strong business acumen." + AI fluency-agents/coding..

[Aaron Levie @levie]

If I were a college career counselor or in career services, I’d quickly be figuring out how to get students to understand these forward deployed engineer jobs exist and how to get them.

The requirements are a mix of deep technical skills, often CS majors or minors. You must be great at understanding problem solving, how to have systems thinking, and have a strong business acumen. The kicker, of course, is to make sure you’re very deep in AI agents; you need to have fluency in coding agents, MCP, CLIs, Skills, and so on.

Hundreds (thousands?) of technology companies will be hiring for these roles, same with any consulting and IT services company, and the vast major of mid-size and large enterprises will be hiring for this talent internally as well.

One great example of opportunity for highly technical talent out there.

[Chitrang Dave @dChitrang]

Well said @clairevo

[claire vo 🖤 @clairevo]

On topic: there is a mistake I saw large companies make in late 2025/early 2026 which is they picked their coding model provider, chat tool, and harness and put the whole company on it. There was a big leap in model ability and folks felt confident.

I have been walking into these teams and they have no idea how good codex is or that notion AI is sick af, of what’s what in the agent world.

And now they’re sunk in a contract AND internal intertia while missing out on the best & most efficient tools of the moment.

Let me say it again for people in the back:
We are pre convergence on tools!!! Keep your organizational options open!!!

Consumer (well, enterprise) choice is a gift when everyone is competing for your business and capabilities jump every month.

Leverage it.

[Elad Gil @eladgil]

People at major AI labs (using internal models) 3-4 months ahead of startup silicon valley engineers

SV founders/eng 3-6 months ahead of NY

NY founders/eng 6-12 months ahead of rest of world

Most people have no idea how fast AI shifting as 1-2 years behind SOTA

"The future is here, just not equally distributed" - Robert Heinlein

[Chitrang Dave @dChitrang]

@swyx Great idea! Now let's do Enterprise Software

[Chitrang Dave @dChitrang]

@artman @linear Building for the future

[Elad Gil @eladgil]

What a moment of acceleration

Breathtaking moment in Silicon Valley (and the world)

[kache @yacineMTB]

you can outsource your thinking
but you cannot outsource your understanding

[Chitrang Dave @dChitrang]

@buccocapital Well said. I am coming to the same conclusion from the other side. I am increasingly positive about AI's impact and as leaders we need to think about people first.

[Elad Gil @eladgil]

Entrepreneurship is a distributed search job across the surface of commercial opportunities

[Chitrang Dave @dChitrang]

@david__booth Good points all @david__booth Recruiting / hiring today is broken - rarely a great user experience for hiring managers or candidates.

[Chitrang Dave @dChitrang]

@dampedspring Great list. As a technologist, email and then building for web felt like magic magic to me. Most recently @Waymo followed by ChatGPT, specifically when the models could reason and take actions .

[Chitrang Dave @dChitrang]

@anshublog @barrald @prukalpa @Snowflake @databricks @Workato This is the crux of my issue with Palantir - bundling forces a lock-in.

[vas @vasuman]

I interviewed over 100 candidates for Varick over the last 3 weeks. Here's how to get hired at the startup you want to join:

1. Balance expertise with low ego. No one wants to hire someone who knows nothing and agrees with everything you say. But also don't pretend to have all the answers. Be confident in what you know, be honest about what you don't.

2. Stop rambling. Your intro should be 45 seconds tops. Biggest hits only: school, latest role, what you did there. I promise no one cares about the internship you had 3 years ago.

3. Communicate clearly. It doesn't matter how talented you are if you can't get your point across. Your interviewer is likely doing 15 interviews a day and won't be paying close attention, so it's on you to emphasize what you want remembered.

4. Keep it simple. Don't apply to 5 very different roles at the same company. Bring up visa requirements and start date conflicts proactively. Don't say "I can't do the interview process for 2 weeks." Make this as painless for the startup as possible.

5. Make it a good fit. Research the company so it feels like you actually want to join, not just that you need a job. Applying blindly is a red flag, coming across like you'll jump ship in 3 months is a red flag. Sound genuinely bought into the company mission.