Buy them the tools
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Jensen Huang wants engineers spending $250k/yr in tokens. Others say that’s reckless. But the debate over company-sponsored tool budgets isn’t new — and neither is the answer.
Business
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The Gravity Problem: Why Defense AI Companies Drift Toward Offense
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The Secretary of Defense has pressured Anthropic to permit military use of its AI for “all lawful purposes,” threatening to invoke the Defense Production Act. Anthropic refuses to enable mass surveillance or autonomous weapons, highlighting the industry’s shift from defensive to offensive applications. The situation reflects broader challenges in maintaining ethical AI boundaries amidst government…
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Short Stints, Real Experience: Rethinking Career Tenure
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The hiring world still clings to tenure requirements that ignore reality. I’ve been on both sides — rejecting candidates for short stints and creating holes in other engineers’ resumes myself. It’s time to rethink what “experience” actually means.
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Gratitude
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Another leader once encouraged managers to express gratitude to their teams through hand-written thank you notes. This has evolved into an annual tradition for me. Sharing gratitude with your team is a way to show leadership, even outside of a management role.
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Burnout Prevention Through Strategic Reassignment
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Corporate burnout prevention programs often miss the point entirely. Instead of addressing workload, unrealistic expectations, or systemic issues, they treat burned-out employees as the problem to be managed or removed from the equation entirely.
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When it rains …
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Planning for an AWS outage might seem like overkill until you need to evacuate vacation rental guests during a tropical storm and your entire infrastructure goes dark. Sometimes the improbable becomes critical, and understanding your business continuity options can mean the difference between frustration and tragedy.
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Your Return-to-Office Policy is Killing Your AI Strategy
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Organizations struggling to trust and manage remote workers will find themselves completely unprepared for the autonomous nature of AI agents. The same control issues that drive return-to-office mandates will cripple AI adoption.
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Finding Balance: Building Scalable Systems While Paying the Bills
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Engineering leaders face a constant tension: building the perfect, scalable system versus shipping products that generate revenue. Learn how successful technical leaders navigate this balance, keeping engineering excellence in sight while delivering business value that keeps the lights on.
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Simplify, simplify, simplify
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Recently, I’ve been diving into Walter Isaacson’s biography of Elon Musk, which offers insights into his approach to business. Musk’s approach to process improvement isn’t dissimilar from my own. He suggests that if you’re not reintegrating at least 10% of what you cut, you’re not being aggressive enough in your simplification. In my experience managing…
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WordPress Drama: Crossfire
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Automattic faces a cease-and-desist letter over alleged trademark violations concerning WP Fusion Lite. But it really does look like their use could be classified as “fair use.” If not, any WordPress site using the .org repo is also in violation …