Ryan Monahan

I gambled my mortgage on LLM tokens for my startup and lost big. Proud AI Vampire

[Ryan Monahan @ryanaldo34]

I sat in my bed last night ready to go to sleep but then a thought hit me like a speeding bullet train. “What would the opportunity cost be if I sleep for the next 8 hours here?”. And then, it dawned on me. I weighed the options; it was just too great and the trade off of sleep is certainly not worth it. I proceeded to get my lazy ass out of bed and immediately went back to prompting. You sleep while I prompt. We are not the same… I am a proud AI vampire.

[Polymarket @Polymarket]

JUST IN: Marc Andreessen reveals “AI vampires” are emerging in Silicon Valley — coders getting so little sleep because they stay up all night building with agents.

[Pleometric @pleometric]

IMPORTANT UPDATE:

[Ryan Monahan @ryanaldo34]

@ThePrimeagen So we aren’t using GStack? wtf how do you even ship?! I need to make sure I short the startup because WOW! Your competitors out ship you by LOCMaxxing.

[Ryan Monahan @ryanaldo34]

I think the AI bubble is people living in such a bubble they refer to AI coding as “free”. Like do you not check your fucking bank account 😂

[Ben Cohen @blc_16]

I’ve decided to leave @AnthropicAI

Never thought I’d say this so soon. The pursuit of AGI has truly been my life’s work but something more important has emerged.

In 1942, hundreds of America’s best scientists made huge sacrifices and joined the Manhattan Project to protect this nation against immense evil.

Today, America faces a similar danger. Over the last few years sparks of AGI have been felt across the world.

In order to protect this great nation against the threat of AGI ending up in the hands of evil, I have decided to join the modern day Manhattan Project.

I’m excited to announce that I’ll be joining (and moving into the office) @UseCorgi as a sales development representative!

[Ryan Monahan @ryanaldo34]

Bro is acting like he’s curing cancer with start up insurance

[nico laqua @nico_laqua]

The bigger problem with startups and the culture of innovation in general is that there’s a pervasive nihilism that nothing really matters, that companies and technologies can’t do good or make the world better, that chasing money is the solution. And that’s expressed in the visceral reaction that people have to going all in, to trying to be ambitious, to trying to do important work. It’s a bit like de-growth as a philosophy, which might be pretty zen, but isn’t the way that the world becomes a better place.

[Milo Smith @mil000]

AI is doing [X thing]

It should be doing [Y thing that is better]

Introducing [name you got from Claude], the first [AI thing] that actually [does thing]. 👇

[Ryan Monahan @ryanaldo34]

They must not be using office hours

[Karri Saarinen @karrisaarinen]

We keep hearing about 10x or 100x productivity gains in engineering and knowledge work.

But outside the model labs, I haven’t seen the corresponding 10-100x revenue growth across the market or increase in quality.

So where is the productivity going?

[Ryan Monahan @ryanaldo34]

@iruletheworldmo Just open X

Write some BS about what you are “building” with agents.

Take home the money

The new algo is simple

[Ryan Monahan @ryanaldo34]

@mitchellh It’s the em dash or “canonical” of web design

[Ryan Monahan @ryanaldo34]

@nic_carter “Flawless production code” “Pass any exam with flying colors” bro has full blown psychosis 😂.

[Ryan Monahan @ryanaldo34]

Goosebumps reading this level of raw self-reflection and honesty in the AI-Native era. The next step is to get those 10x gains and get to 100x. This is where the cognitive load bottleneck comes into play. Here are 10 Claude code skills I use to start my day and has ACCELERATED me to the top as a 100x engineer…

[Michael @michael_chomsky]

Today I was part of the 22% reduced by a San Diego startup.

The business is the strongest it’s ever been. So I think it’s important to be direct about what I’m seeing and why.

First, they made this decision and they own it. I was let go because the way to operate at the highest level of productivity is changing, and to win the future, I needed to change with it.

Second, this wasn’t about cutting costs. I was told most savings from this change will flow directly back into the people who stay. Apparently they’ll be introducing million-dollar salary bands. If you create outsized impact using AI, you’ll be paid outside of traditional bands.

Unfortunately, I only had 90x impact.

And in the new world, 90x doesn’t cut it.

THE 100X ORGANIZATION

The primary change is that we’re restructuring around what they call the 100x org. The goal is 100x output. The roles required to build at the highest level are fundamentally different than they were a year ago.

Incremental improvements to my existing workflows weren’t enough. I was still looking at the PRs I merged, instead of having an army of agents reviewing them.

I was still talking to other engineers, instead of my agents talking to their agents.

Sometimes I even deleted code and features, which means my output was technically negative.

The common narrative is that AI makes everyone more productive. It doesn’t. Many of the workflows of today, if left unchanged, create bottlenecks in AI systems.

I was one of those workflows.

THE BUILDERS, AGENT MANAGERS, AND FRONT-LINERS

— THE BUILDERS: 90X ENGINEERS

I don’t think most employees have internalized what’s actually happening with AI in engineering.

The common narrative is that AI makes all engineers more productive. That may be true in isolation, but at an organization level, that is the farthest thing from reality.

Here’s what we validated recently at this San Diego startup: the great engineers, the ones who can orchestrate, architect, and review, are becoming 100x engineers.

They’re not writing code. They’re directing agents that write code.

The skill is judgment.

Unfortunately, I was still occasionally using mine manually.

AI makes the best engineers wildly more productive, and everyone else using AI slows these engineers down.

Think about it. The bottlenecks are orchestration and reviewing. Everything else is leapfrogged and no longer needed.

So who do you want orchestrating and reviewing code?

Apparently not me.

The new world is about enabling your 10x engineers to become 100x.

I was only at 90x, which is basically a performance issue now.

The wrong strategy is to push every engineer to use infinite tokens. Companies doing this are celebrating 500% more pull requests. But customer outcomes don’t match the volume of code being generated.

I actually made this worse by sometimes deleting code.

Less code is technically less output.

In hindsight, this was not aligned with the 100x org.

— THE SYSTEM MANAGERS

Ironically, the people who automate their jobs with AI will always have a job.

They become owners of the AI systems. Agent managers.

I, regrettably, was still a person.

I had agents, but not enough agents. My agents had tasks, but not managers. My managers did not have agents. And my agents were not yet talking to other agents’ agents.

The underlying systems in which we operate are absolutely critical to get right. I now understand most companies are delusional to think they can iterate on existing humans and compete in this new world.

You must create enough disruption so old systems are deprecated entirely.

In this case, I was the old system.

— THE FRONT-LINERS

In a world that will become saturated with AI communication, the human touch will matter more than anything to customers.

This is a bottleneck that you shouldn’t replace.

I was not customer-facing, so unfortunately I was replaceable.

REWARDING 100X IMPACT

In a world where companies are able to do so much more with less, where does that excess money go?

In their case, much of the savings in this new operating model will flow directly back to those who enabled it.

Not me, because again, 90x.

We must reward people that create productivity accordingly. This aligns incentives on both sides. Plus, in a world where your best people create 100x impact, you can’t afford to lose them.

You can, however, afford to lose the 90x people.

Compensation bands of today should be thrown out the door. They’re introducing $1 million cash/year salary bands with a path available to nearly everyone in the company if they produce 100x impact by creating or managing AI systems.

I was apparently ten x short.

THE FUTURE

Nearly every company will make changes like these. The ones that do it proactively will define what comes next.

The future is not fewer people. It’s different work, new roles, and better rewards for those who embrace it.

We’re already seeing entirely new roles emerge, like Agent Managers, that didn’t exist a year ago.

And we’re seeing old roles disappear.

Like “engineer who personally reads his own PRs.”

I’ve never been more certain about where we’re headed.

[Ryan Monahan @ryanaldo34]

@ThePrimeagen I heard the NPM registry is enriching uranium to build a Nuclear Weapon

[Ryan Monahan @ryanaldo34]

@ryancarson HR better start shipping to prod TODAY!

[Ryan Monahan @ryanaldo34]

@ThePrimeagen I heard the NPM registry is enriching uranium to build a Nuclear Weapon

[Degen CPA @DrewVento]

BREAKING: Victor Wembanyama has joined Anthropic.

[Ryan Monahan @ryanaldo34]

@ctatedev The company that has their web framework hacked every other day with RCE vulnerabilities has now made their own systems language! What could go wrong!

[tmuxvim @tmuxvim]

I put a prompt injection into my LinkedIn bio and recruiters are messaging me in Old English and calling me Lord.