Gary Hili

Tech lead @threlsltd 🚀 | Custom software, AI, team leadership | Human-centered tech that actually works | • #BuildWithClarity

[Gary Hili @garyhilii]

AI explores what’s likely.

Humans define what’s next.

Use AI to accelerate execution—
but don’t outsource taste, vision, or direction.

Where are you still relying on your own thinking?

[Gary Hili @garyhilii]

AI is trained on the past.

On millions of examples a human will never see in a lifetime.
Patterns, decisions, designs that already exist.

So if we rely on it too much—
are we just rebuilding what’s already been done?

#AI #TechLeadership #SoftwareDevelopment #FutureOfWork #BuildWithClarity

[Gary Hili @garyhilii]

LLMs are incredible at recombining what exists.

They give you fast, clean, “correct” outputs —
but often safe, familiar, expected.

That’s not innovation. That’s compression.

[Gary Hili @garyhilii]

Linear Agent is one of those “why didn’t this exist sooner?” tools https://t.co/6KhoZSZjuo

It works with the rich context we've already refined and discussed in our tasks, not just generic chat. Most AI tools ask you to paste details or discuss plans. Linear Agent already has it: roadmap, issues, code, decisions. That’s the difference between a chatbot and a real business conscious teammate.

We use @Jira, so I’m curious: is Atlassian building something similar with agents in Jira? They announced agents in open beta — but how deep is the workflow integration?

Drop a 👋 if you’re testing AI agents in your task tool — and which platform you’re using (Linear, Jira, or something else). Would love to compare notes.

#AI #SoftwareDevelopment #Productivity #TechLeadership #BuildWithClarity

[Gary Hili @garyhilii]

Slow periods aren’t wasted: refactor, experiment, breathe. They make the next busy period healthier. What do you use slow weeks for? 👇 #BuildWithClarity #SoftwareEngineering

[Gary Hili @garyhilii]

If you could go back and advise yourself as a junior developer starting today - in the age of AI-driven dev - what's the ONE thing you'd say?

Would it be:
→ "Learn the fundamentals, ask AI to teach you why"
→ "Don't compare your pace to AI's pace"
→ "Build things manually first, then use AI"
→ "It's okay to not know everything about every AI tool"

Or something completely different?

Drop your advice below 👇

#BuildWithClarity #AI #SoftwareDevelopment #DeveloperExperience #CareerAdvice

[Gary Hili @garyhilii]

@kaaaash____ Javascript

[Gary Hili @garyhilii]

Mentors tell their devs: "Just use AI, you should be able to ship this fast."

But they don't have the experience to know when AI is cutting corners. Or when "fast" sacrifices maintainability.

We're teaching speed over craft. And wondering why tech debt is exploding.
Learning opportunities like PR Reviews are left to AI, because quite frankly it will give a better explanation than us most of the time.

The pressure needs to be controlled. Not the developers.

How is your team balancing speed with quality? 👇

#BuildWithClarity #TechLeadership #SustainableProductivity #DeveloperExperience #AI #SoftwareDevelopment #FutureOfWork

[Gary Hili @garyhilii]

We're shipping more code than ever. Velocity metrics are up. Token usage is a new metric. Stakeholders are happy.

But the reality is, even with planning and ultra planning modes. Initial versions of a feature is slop. Beautiful, demo-ready slop that depending on your experience will be iterated and re-iterated.

AI helps us hit the numbers. But the pressure to produce - especially on junior and mid-level devs - means we're optimizing for output, not quality.

[Gary Hili @garyhilii]

Forget the tech terms for a second.

Here's what good software delivery feels like from the business side:
✓ No surprises in production
✓ Features ship when promised (or you know early if they won't)
✓ Problems get fixed fast, not "next sprint"
✓ You can change direction without throwing away months of work
✓ Customer feedback reaches you in days, not months

Bad delivery feels like:
✗ Everything is "almost done" for weeks
✗ Every release is a nail-biter
✗ "Quick changes" take 6 weeks
✗ You learn what customers think 3 months after shipping

You don't need to understand DevOps to know which one you have.

You feel it every time you try to respond to the market.

The question isn't "are we doing CI/CD?"
The question is: "How fast can we learn and respond?"
That's what delivery speed actually buys you.

[Gary Hili @garyhilii]

@md_kasif_uddin Atom. Haven't checked it out in ages and seems its been discontinued.

[Gary Hili @garyhilii]

Good delivery leadership is part engineering, part translation.

If you can connect lead time to response speed and batch size to risk, the conversation changes.

What’s the biggest tech-to-business translation gap you see in your org?

#BuildWithClarity #SoftwareDevelopment #TechLeadership #AI #Productivity

[Gary Hili @garyhilii]

Your team says “CI/CD.”

The business hears “technical overhead.”

That’s the translation gap — and it slows delivery, not because the work lacks value, but because the value isn’t being translated

[Gary Hili @garyhilii]

What they’re really asking for is simple:

ship faster, reduce risk, and respond to customers sooner.

When that message gets lost, you get missed market windows, slower fixes, and bigger release

[Gary Hili @garyhilii]

@GergelyOrosz You do have to learn from your competition, showing it is a hiccup on their end, but hopefully they use it to improve their own LLMs. Maybe Codex will even tell them to put back the IDE

[Gary Hili @garyhilii]

@DanielSmidstrup I would end up seeing myself be too slow now compared to what we re able to do with our day

[Gary Hili @garyhilii]

@Ruturaj48987393 I use VS Code with Claude.
Switched over from Antigravity - just stops working for days on end.
Before that used windsurf, great tool - had switched cause Antigravity’s planning was amazing at the time

[Gary Hili @garyhilii]

That’s the hard part with AI tools:

the first impression can be exciting,

but reliability is what decides whether a team keeps using them.

Is it worth trying again, or still more of the same?

#AI #DeveloperExperience #TechLeadership #FutureOfWork #BuildWithClarity

[Gary Hili @garyhilii]

So we switched to Claude.

And honestly, I haven’t opened Antigravity in a couple of months.

[Gary Hili @garyhilii]

And it wasn’t a one-off.

Days went by where we couldn’t reliably prompt at all,

while still paying for Ultra.

That’s not a feature gap. That’s a trust gap.

[Gary Hili @garyhilii]

Then the cracks showed up:

“Agent terminated”

“Something went wrong, please try again.”

[Gary Hili @garyhilii]

The planning mode felt genuinely useful.

Simple inline comments.

Low effort, good output.

I started encouraging teammates to try it.