RunT1ME

Tech, OSS, big data, distributed systems, coffee, & functional programming. CT dabbler. Read books instead of college. @ GOOG creating a more resilient cloud.

[RunT1ME @runT1ME]

I've been thinking about the Halting Problem on and off lately, and how it relates to the unbounded recursion of PA. Unbeknownst to me until recently, Gödel put it brilliantly in his letter to Von Neumann:

[RunT1ME @runT1ME]

@LoveAndMoney15 @sunnyright sorry bro, ethnically British just means you talk funny, like bad food, eat fried fish, and have a queen. He fits.

[RunT1ME @runT1ME]

@Duderichy Ivy League schools are not really that impressive in tech.

[RunT1ME @runT1ME]

@laurenlself just speculation, not saying you're doing anything wrong with your approach, if you want kids soon, good to bring up.

[RunT1ME @runT1ME]

@laurenlself 1. Bringing it up too early might seem like a means to an end. Some guys (myself included) want to be seen as a person, not just a provider of financial resources and DNA.
2. Some guys will change their mind on kids or big life things for the right woman. Love takes a bit of time

[RunT1ME @runT1ME]

@HankHeil sorry i'm so confused, what is the issue here? My wife and I waited to have kids (35 and 40 for her). She got pregnant both times within a month, it's been great, we're enjoying parenthood, what's the problem?

[RunT1ME @runT1ME]

@thaiscbranco_ More companies should embrace small satellite offices. The choice is not "WFH" or "Everyone pile into an office in SoMa".

[RunT1ME @runT1ME]

@beffjezos I'm not depressed. I do think about how life would be a bit different if I was at Anthropic making 5M a year but my life is pretty good.

[RunT1ME @runT1ME]

@gwern @Alech_andro everyone is inferior to Godel.

[RunT1ME @runT1ME]

@PackBropagated My flex is keeping the internet up.

[RunT1ME @runT1ME]

@CourtneyLC80 @wil_da_beast630 @MonicaMAlmaguer skill issue on the part of the man.

[RunT1ME @runT1ME]

@JFPuget Google has to do buybacks because it gives its employees ~50 billion in equity each year.

[RunT1ME @runT1ME]

@wil_da_beast630 I dunno, it seems dumb to put a knee on someone's neck and act surprised they can't breath. Would have been way better to just choke him out intentionally, put cuffs on, and then let him come to.

[RunT1ME @runT1ME]

Right right, some guy who...checks notes...runs a small software company for the insurance market is bewildered by the lack of talent that is applying to his company. 😲

[John Loeber 🎢 @johnloeber]

Notes on 100+ Recent Technical Interviews

I interview a ton of engineers. Recruiting is the single most important technical CEO activity. Here are a bunch of impressions

1. There is a severe ZIRP engineering overhang that is currently washing out. They're getting laid off, managed out, etc. after having been massively overhired around 2020-2022. This is worst for Tier-2 big tech (think PayPal, Bill, etc.) but also FAANGs. These are overwhelmingly bad engineers.

2. This flood of unqualified but good-on-paper candidates makes this the hardest SF hiring market I have ever seen, due to the amount of nominally strong-looking candidates that you need to grind through.

3. I am highly skeptical of "AI as a cause for engineering layoffs". I think this is a large-scale polite fiction -- the companies don't want to admit they overhired, the engineers don't want to admit they are bad at their jobs. Everyone's blaming AI when it's really just the market rectifying itself.

4. Many of these engineers appear never to have had a real engineering function at their corporations. They're sitting in meetings, "making decisions about technology" but are unable to write software. I leave many interviews baffled by what exactly they were doing for so many years, let alone what their manager was doing.

5. I have interviewed some engineers from FAANG companies so shockingly nontechnical that I am forced to conclude that there is either (1) a lot of resume fraud going on or (2) that there are kickback grifts within those organizations -- people hiring their cousins and splitting the pay, that kind of thing. I have no other explanation.

6. There's a fun side-effect where after interviewing 20+ people from certain small but public companies, I actually feel like I am gaining a short sellers' advantage: there are financial technology companies out there that, knowing what I now know, I would never deposit a single dollar into.

8. Based on this "exhaust" data, and extrapolating a little bit, maybe aggressively so: I think folks like @pmarca are basically right when they say that ~every tech company is overstaffed by a factor of 2-4x. Whatever the reason -- staffing ahead of need, monopolizing certain engineer types (Google-style), headcount-driven promotion incentives, the reality is that a lot of these companies are not being run for the shareholders. The aggregate SBC expense is insane, and I expect this is going to get rectified eventually.

I'm sure that AI will play a role in rectifying this -- but I fear that people are going to blame AI for taking people's jobs when the reality is that the jobs were already long-gone, possibly always useless, but the highly-paid butts-in-seats remained. People will be mad at AI for taking away their lucrative sinecures. Maybe that's the same effect from a public policy perspective, but it feels different morally.

[RunT1ME @runT1ME]

haha, I love the image of Dario making some VCs buy him a steak dinner and just waiting till the end to tell them "nah fuck you".

[Sam @futurenomics]

Anthropic’s last round was apparently a bloodbath behind the scenes. A GP at a prominent fund had dinner with Dario three times before their allocation was slashed to zero. At least four other tier-one funds got pulled at the last minute.

Their crime? Passing on the Series B, the hardest round Dario ever had to raise (led by Spark). In venture conviction is all that counts.

[RunT1ME @runT1ME]

@ThomasDonadei @ThePrimeagen dude, you gotta tell him there's no third book. 🥲

[RunT1ME @runT1ME]

@beffjezos @elonmusk *best infra on earth*

Beff you had too many drugs at lighthaven, Come down and rethink this. JFC.

[RunT1ME @runT1ME]

@MegaBasedChad You don't need to ask someone to work 7 days a week if they have a significant equity stake, belief in the product, and a once in a lifetime opportunity.

[RunT1ME @runT1ME]

@beyondwaiting @Crawbaddy Grappling vs striking.

[RunT1ME @runT1ME]

@PatrickHeizer Do you even know how expensive base model 911s are these days???

[RunT1ME @runT1ME]

@beffjezos People who post this shit have 100% never worked in a high performing team. There's a reason OAI, GDM, Anthropic and more don't demand 7 days a week. Plenty there work like animals because they love the work, but demanding that schedule is an anti-signal.