James Stanier

Dad. CTO. Compilers Ph.D. Wrote some books. I post when I write something.

[James Stanier @jstanier]

Expanding on what we looked at last week on distilling principles from leaders, what happens if you distill yourself?

Here’s a bunch of techniques to do so, including what I got as output as my own principles.

https://t.co/LnapYQTCLc

[James Stanier @jstanier]

Building on last month’s article about my CTO daily driver: one neat trick is that you can use LLMs to distill the wisdom of the legendary people you wish you could work with into a coach you can talk to every day and use to help make decisions.

https://t.co/5Bysur4rqC

[James Stanier @jstanier]

But hey, don’t listen to me, let Claude Code’s /insights command tell you what it’s about(!):

“You've turned Claude into a genuine chief-of-staff, running full-day CTO workflows that span morning briefings, performance review prep, weekly updates, and EOD captures.”

[James Stanier @jstanier]

A deep dive into the Claude Code setup that I use to run my day and automate pretty much everything.

https://t.co/KkC7tibiYn

[James Stanier @jstanier]

The senior engineers of 2035 are being shaped by decisions happening right now: who gets hired, who gets mentored, and who gets the chance to experiment.

What can you do about it, regardless of where you sit?

https://t.co/mgmmWrO0De

[James Stanier @jstanier]

What did I do in my first 90 days as CTO?

I distilled everything I did: the listening tour, the two-question survey, picking one gnarly battle, and the crucial difference between principles that transfer and prescriptions that don't.

https://t.co/8NrV4TtJx5

[James Stanier @jstanier]

@sebflorent This is really cool!

[James Stanier @jstanier]

AI is extraordinary at fast execution. But when execution is cheap, the leverage shifts to the decisions that precede it: specs, designs, and problem framing.

But it can also improve your System 2 thinking, so you can actually slow down to speed up.

https://t.co/DtWwAxtq6s

[James Stanier @jstanier]

I've been building my own management tools with AI instead of buying software.

These included a bragdoc generator, a planning tool, Christmas 2025's R&D Wrapped with collectible holofoil cards, and a daily driver that runs my whole day from my terminal.

https://t.co/lHN8nLBZgE

[James Stanier @jstanier]

The word "priority" was singular for 500 years. We only started saying "priorities" in the 1900s.

Your team, department, or company should have one list, stack ranked from top to bottom; no ties allowed.

https://t.co/ZFBfcKzImn

[James Stanier @jstanier]

The traditional career ladder assumed a stable world. But the last few years make the old mental models harder to rely on.

Define your north star instead: who you are, what you value, and what kind of work you want to be doing.

https://t.co/tTm4VxakzV

[James Stanier @jstanier]

Your system has exactly one bottleneck limiting throughput right now. Improving anything else just creates pile-ups at the constraint.

https://t.co/frVXAHk0Ey

[James Stanier @jstanier]

@samjarman Thank you, Sam! :-)

[James Stanier @jstanier]

@pierrickbignet Should be fixed.

[James Stanier @jstanier]

@pierrickbignet In the meantime there's the Substack: https://t.co/zOrK1zD3KV

[James Stanier @jstanier]

In this article, we look deeply at how to make cultural change and also how to make budgeting work so that you can have your Finance team (and other leaders!) on your side.

Enjoy.

[James Stanier @jstanier]

In this month's article for subscribers, we turn our attention to the question that's on everyone's mind in engineering leadership: how do I actually get everybody to use AI?

https://t.co/hHqXDNpnPU

[James Stanier @jstanier]

As leaders, we face pressure from industry and our companies to dramatically increase AI uptake, and we find ourselves having to walk the tightrope of gentle persuasion and mandates.

[James Stanier @jstanier]

Another mental model from Munger this month: use it or lose it, and how we need to be mindful of what we're fully delegating to AI, versus what we critically think about first.

https://t.co/q8AtbR5XKa