Jon Moter

American expat in Germany, father, Senior Principal Engineer @ Zendesk, he/him

[Jon Moter @jonmoter]

@__apf__ One of our cats escaped while a friend was cat sitting. Was missing for almost a week. When we got back, we searched all over, to no avail.

Then we tried just leaving the front door of our house open for a few hours. The little sh*t waltzed right in

[Addy Osmani @addyosmani]

https://t.co/ze3x7bgsL4

[Swanand @_swanand]

My preference for sync and async discussions have flipped 180°. I no longer favour receiving written documentation. Instead, talking, either on a call or better, in person, is 100x more effective.

What used to be in neat tidy one pager, what used to force people to think, which is the process of writing, has now turned into a lazy process where people scribble something into the AI prompt and send you garbage.

[Meredith Whittaker @mer__edith]

One of my most deeply held beliefs is that refusing to name truth makes you stupid--literally degrades your intellect.

Engaging in mental gymnastics to justify what's convenient but unevidenced, unjust but personally beneficial, 'rewires your neural map' in ways that degrade your overall ability to understand and analyze the world around you, which is a precondition for intelligence and creativity.

[Jon Moter @jonmoter]

@engineering_bae That being said, I think interviewers still want to see you demonstrate you understand things, and can discuss tradeoffs, and WHY you'd choose option A over B. That's still valuable, whether you're writing code by hand or using agents.

[Jon Moter @jonmoter]

@engineering_bae I think the tech companies are still figuring out what role AI tools should play in their day-to-day work. Then there's the question of what skills they should test for in interviews, and how to do that.

It'll be a mess for a while, IMHO

[Mario Zechner @badlogicgames]

I'm usually not one to write thought pieces without much technical depth. But here we go.

Slow the fuck down.

https://t.co/dcOwPK357F

[Jon Moter @jonmoter]

@NatPurser I think of it more like "wait to see how this plays out, and some bits will turn out to be hype and some will have real value."

Big shifts like the internet and mobile and cloud computing caused real change, but none of them required people to frantically adopt new tools ASAP

[Jon Moter @jonmoter]

@ashleymayer For me, coding is definitely thinking, like writing is.

I can have a jumble of thoughts which look coherent until I write them down. Coding is where the rubber meets the road.

I think some of that can be done with an LLM. But I think it needs to be done with care.

[Jon Moter @jonmoter]

@SocialZac101 @ClaireMax I thought that was someone's "law", and after a quick google search, sure enough!

https://t.co/Sq3VGHmm1h

[Meredith Whittaker @mer__edith]

Writing is not just spewing pre-chewed thoughts onto a page.

It’s a difficult process of getting clear about what you think by struggling to synthesize various ideas in language.

It’s hard, and most time “writing” is actually spent deleting and rephrasing and confronting the chasm of your own ignorance and coming back for more. It’s vulnerable.

But if you stay with the difficulty and do so honestly, you will end up crafting a durable and unfuckwithable analysis that you can defend from every angle.

Outsource writing (and with it thinking) at your peril!

(I first posted this as a QT and then realized I was a bit overzealous in making a point that, while very dear to me, wasn’t exactly responding to the OP’s more nuanced observation so, anyway, I’m reposting my beloved point without dragging OP into it)

[Jon Moter @jonmoter]

Totally agree. I enjoyed reading the linked essay much more than I would've guessed.

[Eric Levitz @EricLevitz]

This is so much better than I ever imagined an essay psychoanalyzing Scott Adams could be.

Not the main point, but this bit amused me.
https://t.co/W4WPnA1xCE

[Jon Moter @jonmoter]

@potatoslav @texasgermanbre Especially complaining about Deutsche Bahn.

[Jon Moter @jonmoter]

@engineering_bae Ah yes, the well known "successful and respected software engineering manager to OF creator" pipeline.

[Jon Moter @jonmoter]

@__apf__ @tomekkorbak TIL that the Westfield Mall no longer exists. For a while that was a pretty nice mall.

[CIX 🦾 @cixliv]

Using a mocap suit to kick yourself in the balls with a robot is a great metaphor to close out 2025.

[Jon Moter @jonmoter]

@ananthdurai Ooh, I'm bookmarking that quote

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

Last quarter I rolled out Microsoft Copilot to 4,000 employees.

$30 per seat per month.

$1.4 million annually.

I called it "digital transformation."

The board loved that phrase.

They approved it in eleven minutes.

No one asked what it would actually do.

Including me.

I told everyone it would "10x productivity."

That's not a real number.

But it sounds like one.

HR asked how we'd measure the 10x.

I said we'd "leverage analytics dashboards."

They stopped asking.

Three months later I checked the usage reports.

47 people had opened it.

12 had used it more than once.

One of them was me.

I used it to summarize an email I could have read in 30 seconds.

It took 45 seconds.

Plus the time it took to fix the hallucinations.

But I called it a "pilot success."

Success means the pilot didn't visibly fail.

The CFO asked about ROI.

I showed him a graph.

The graph went up and to the right.

It measured "AI enablement."

I made that metric up.

He nodded approvingly.

We're "AI-enabled" now.

I don't know what that means.

But it's in our investor deck.

A senior developer asked why we didn't use Claude or ChatGPT.

I said we needed "enterprise-grade security."

He asked what that meant.

I said "compliance."

He asked which compliance.

I said "all of them."

He looked skeptical.

I scheduled him for a "career development conversation."

He stopped asking questions.

Microsoft sent a case study team.

They wanted to feature us as a success story.

I told them we "saved 40,000 hours."

I calculated that number by multiplying employees by a number I made up.

They didn't verify it.

They never do.

Now we're on Microsoft's website.

"Global enterprise achieves 40,000 hours of productivity gains with Copilot."

The CEO shared it on LinkedIn.

He got 3,000 likes.

He's never used Copilot.

None of the executives have.

We have an exemption.

"Strategic focus requires minimal digital distraction."

I wrote that policy.

The licenses renew next month.

I'm requesting an expansion.

5,000 more seats.

We haven't used the first 4,000.

But this time we'll "drive adoption."

Adoption means mandatory training.

Training means a 45-minute webinar no one watches.

But completion will be tracked.

Completion is a metric.

Metrics go in dashboards.

Dashboards go in board presentations.

Board presentations get me promoted.

I'll be SVP by Q3.

I still don't know what Copilot does.

But I know what it's for.

It's for showing we're "investing in AI."

Investment means spending.

Spending means commitment.

Commitment means we're serious about the future.

The future is whatever I say it is.

As long as the graph goes up and to the right.

[The Onion @TheOnion]

Just Six Corporations Remain https://t.co/3SJdikUfh4

[Jon Moter @jonmoter]

@AlexMillerDB Have you read Staff Engineer by @Lethain? Or his more recent book on Crafting Engineering Strategy?

He doesn't have a step-by-step guide on what skills to learn and how. But it touches on quite a few skills, at least indirectly.