💥 After years in the C-suite, I reopened VS Code and built an AI-native product—solo.
Here’s what a few gritty weeks shipping code with AI teammates taught me. 👇
Just saw play in Texans vs Patriots. Houston receiver catches ball, doesn’t make a football move, on way to ground knee hits, right afterwards Pats defender rips ball out. They call it down by contact. Exact same scenario but this time down by contact. This logic that it’s an interception just doesn’t hold. He’s down by contact.
If a player is contacted by another player in possession of the ball and on the ground (knees, etc) the play is dead. If we open that interpretation up to the ability for other players to rip the ball out while they are on the ground then we’ll get defenses now basically spearing players again while on the ground to jar the ball loose or rip it out to turn the catch into a no catch. It would be different if the ball was not in control before the defender contacted him on the ground. But he was clearly in control of the ball, in contact with the ground and the defender ripped it out. So evidently that continuation rule is taking precedent but logically it just seems backward and against the spirit of the rules.
Agency > Intelligence
I had this intuitively wrong for decades, I think due to a pervasive cultural veneration of intelligence, various entertainment/media, obsession with IQ etc. Agency is significantly more powerful and significantly more scarce. Are you hiring for agency? Are we educating for agency? Are you acting as if you had 10X agency?
Grok explanation is ~close:
“Agency, as a personality trait, refers to an individual's capacity to take initiative, make decisions, and exert control over their actions and environment. It’s about being proactive rather than reactive—someone with high agency doesn’t just let life happen to them; they shape it. Think of it as a blend of self-efficacy, determination, and a sense of ownership over one’s path.
People with strong agency tend to set goals and pursue them with confidence, even in the face of obstacles. They’re the type to say, “I’ll figure it out,” and then actually do it. On the flip side, someone low in agency might feel more like a passenger in their own life, waiting for external forces—like luck, other people, or circumstances—to dictate what happens next.
It’s not quite the same as assertiveness or ambition, though it can overlap. Agency is quieter, more internal—it’s the belief that you *can* act, paired with the will to follow through. Psychologists often tie it to concepts like locus of control: high-agency folks lean toward an internal locus, feeling they steer their fate, while low-agency folks might lean external, seeing life as something that happens *to* them.”