My 2 cents to anyone early in their careers trying to pick between a startup and a large company.
Join a startup once in your career. Preferably early so the opportunity cost is low. A startup will help you master chaos and earn a scrappy mindset. Will give 10x returns later.
@mgsiegler As a car or as a Ferrari?
Personally, I feel the entire design team at Ferrari needs to get fired for the cars (except the Roma and 296) they have been creating post Pininfarina.
There’s the La Ferrari. And then there’s this. Granted, it’s maybe not as bad as the Cybertruck.
If you're stuck in the Bay Area tech rat race / psychosis, make time to travel to other places.
Go to a small town in Europe or visit Asia - you'll see that life can be about much more than whether you're IC7 or IC8 or what company you work for.
Don't be the person to put on your tombstone: "He got divorced and neglected his kids but at least he made D2 at FAANG"
“While spacewalking I realized something, I used to think I was scared of heights but now I know I was just scared of gravity.”
― Artemis II Astronaut Reid Wiseman
@elonmusk Maybe in a straight line, which as you know, is about torque vs. handling. I’d love to see a Cybertruck beat a 911 up a technical mountain road. Joy of driving more than straight line speed.
Also, a 911 is a thing of beauty. Cybertruck polarizing at best, ugly at worst.
I have so much gratitude to people who wrote extremely complex software character-by-character. It already feels difficult to remember how much effort it really took.
Thank you for getting us to this point.
Software engineering changed more in the last 3 months than the preceeding 30 years.
Everything about running a software company needs to be rethought from first principles.
Anthropic is at $14B run rate revenue, the fastest growing software business of all time.
– Claude Code run rate is $2.5B in <1yr
– $0 -> $100M -> $1B -> $14B in 3yrs
– $100k+ customers 7x'd last year
– $1M+ customers 40x'd last year, 500+
– 4% of Github commits by CC
Insane.
The clearest thinkers here have a few things in common.
They think in vector sums. They observe from reality, not from the opinions of the chronically online. They allocate their finite resources wisely (time + attention). They change their mind often. And they never convince themselves they’re smarter than they actually are.
These are the ones worth paying your own attention to.
I’m increasingly convinced that the willingness to change your mind is the ultimate sign of intelligence. The most impressive people I know change their minds often in response to new information. It’s like a software update. The goal isn't to be right. It's to find the truth.