If you approach work as “learning methods and techniques” you are going to be very disappointed at how the world responds to you
No one reads a basketball manual, takes a basketball test, and then expects to be winning championships within the year
All work has a deep, intuitive, tactile element that you can only learn through longterm repeated practice. It’s more like learning reflexes than learning “how to do X”.
You can read a page on how to throw a basketball in 5 minutes, but still need to practice for a lifetime to learn the intuitive reflexes to do it well
I hear from a near-dead legal AI company looking to get acquired every 3 weeks or so.
They all have one thing in common: they trained their own models rather than building on top of foundation models
And unfortunately those model assets are basically worthless
How do you design a CLI for both humans and agents?
That's the question behind ntn — the Notion CLI. Carter and Anthony break down the 4 principles that shaped it.
0:00 How we built the Notion CLI
0:21 Progressive disclosure
2:26 Actionable error messages
4:04 Separate data from messages (stdout vs stderr)
5:27 Interactive vs non-interactive modes
"Can you just show me the demo?"
Every AE hears this request.
Most say yes immediately because they're excited someone wants to see the product.
What that question actually signals is that the buyer doesn't yet trust you understand their problem well enough to make the demo worth their time.
"Show me the demo" is code for "I don't believe you have anything specific to say to me yet."
The right response isn't to refuse.
It's to earn it: "Absolutely. I want to make sure we focus on what matters most for you, so can I ask two quick questions first?"
Two questions.
Then the best demo they've ever seen.
Worst sales advice I ever received:
"Always be closing."
It creates desperate, pushy, approval-seeking behavior.
The best advice I ever received:
"Always be diagnosing."
Diagnose the problem deeper than anyone else.
The close takes care of itself.