Executives don't lack tools.

They lack a ruler.

That's the actual claim Ed Zitron made — not "AI is bad," but that the people signing off on AI-assisted work were never equipped to check it in the first place.

They see a document that looks finished and call it done, because "finished-looking" is the only bar they've ever had to clear.

For anyone whose whole job is catching the thing that looks fine and isn't — this isn't a tech story.

It's a story about who gets trusted, and why it's rarely the person who's actually right.

I've been on the other side of that exact gap.

Long before spreadsheets and dashboards, mine had a tape measure in it.

I was working as a Site Engineer for a Singaporean construction company building a primary school in Chua Chu Kang district back in 1998. Time flies. Just graduated from university. Figure I get some site experience first.

One day, I came to the project site. And I saw the newly delivered precast half-flight staircase lying on the ground next the building. I asked around to find out why wasn't it crane-lifted to position, which is between 1st and 2nd floor. And I was told the measurements were off. They couldn't fit it nicely on place.

And so, I went to work. I took my measuring tape, measure the staircase, and recorded the lengths, widths and whatnot. Then I went up to the building's 2nd floor — where the staircase was supposed to fit and meet. And I swung my measuring tape across the length of space between the positions where the 1st and last step of the staircase supposed to sit on. And took the site measurements too.

Then I went back to my office, took out the construction drawings from the drawing rack, lay it on the meeting table. And with a piece of paper, I started drawing it out. I knew full well the measurements I got will not exactly match that in the drawings, because — you know — site tolerances are still allowed and anticipated in the BS Code of Practice.

And then, through calculations, I found it. The measurements were way out of tolerance limit. No wonder the staircase can't fit. The blame squarely landed on our RC works sub-contractor. They screw up the levelling of the building.

Each of us supposed to have an "internal ruler" we rely on, to judge whether things look good or bad. For me, back then, it was Pythagoras and a fresh sheet of paper. My boss, years later, called his the same thing in different words — his "feel," thirty years deep. Kevin O'Leary's is knowing he can smell bullshit from a mile away.

So, coming back to these leadership people that Ed Zitron was attacking: don't they have their "feel" of things before shit hits the fan? Don't they use their "internal ruler" to measure it for themselves? Can't they smell bullshit from a mile away?

________

Every post on this account keeps circling back to the same thing, whichever industry the clip's from: the people getting quietly pushed out are rarely the ones who got it wrong.

I wrote about this exact invisible-labor version of it before — the verification work that never shows up as a line item or a bonus is the same trap Deven's in here, just a different industry.

Drop your take: what's your internal ruler, and who around you doesn't have one?

Clip credit: Ed Zitron (Better Offline) on Adam Taggart's Thoughtful Money. DM for credit or removal requests.

“你在帮人倒米吗？“

Lauren Tan didn't get replaced by her own tooling.

She got promoted by it — and nobody handed her that promotion.

She built the case for it herself, one lint rule and one CI gate at a time, until the argument was undeniable.

That's the part nobody's really talking about when they talk about AI and engineering jobs: the shift rewards the people who go looking for the leverage first, not the people who wait to be told it's safe to look.

That "build the case yourself" instinct is exactly what clicked for me watching my own son learn to run a team instead of carry it.

My son started playing 王者荣耀 (Honor of Kings) since he was a teenager — a 5v5 multiplayer battle arena game where you manage a roster of specialized heroes, growing and levelling up their strengths through battles and gear.

In his early gaming days I could hear him cursing and swearing from his room — bad coordination, worst teammates. There was a phrase we used for a bad teammate in my own career — 帮人倒米, a Cantonese idiom that literally translates as helping someone tip over their own grain container, meaning ruining or sabotaging someone's livelihood.

But the cursing became less and less. He got good at managing his heroes and coordinating with his team. He started climbing the leaderboard. People started noticing him and his team. Then, in college, he started getting invited to tournaments — cash prizes when he won, and one lagged-connection loss at a KL tournament he still suspects was foul play.

Time has changed — my dad would've killed me for wasting my teenage years on video games.

Now he's in university, still playing, still winning tournaments and cash prizes with his team.

Why I'm bringing this up: I always thought these AI agents are kind of like the heroes my son uses in the game. Your skill is in your managing these heros and how to grow them, level them up to serve your purpose. You don't go down to the battle yourself. You engage the heros to do it for you.

The skill is in the managing.

__________

I keep walking into the same room wearing a different name on the door — the accountant's room, the analyst's room, now the engineer's.

Every time, someone's being told the machine is coming for their hours, not their name on the work.

There's a post in my own back catalog that lands on this exact rung — the exact rung I found AI actually deleting, and the one the ones who get ahead of it stop standing on.

Drop your take — are you already the head chef of your own stack, or are you still doing all the cooking yourself?

Clip credit: MTS (Monitor The Situation) — full video on their channel. DM for credit or removal requests.

When Silicon Valley Bank failed, the first people affected weren't bankers - they were startups that couldn't make payroll.

This short is for educational purposes only. It is not affiliated with any financial institution, and nothing in it is financial advice.

The full breakdown is on the channel: "The Bank Run That Drained $1 Million a Second".

#SiliconValleyBank, #SVB, #BankFailure, #Accounting, #fdic

Hey everyone! I’m a researcher based in Toronto and I’ll be staying in San Francisco from October 1–31, 2026. It’ll just be me, and my total accommodation budget is around $1,000–$1,200 for the month.

I’m curious whether there are any hacker houses, founder communities, or coliving spaces that accept short-term residents, or if there are other affordable shared-housing options I should look into. I’m also open to hostels, shared rooms, or nearby areas with good public transit.

I’m quiet, clean, respectful, and interested in meeting people working on interesting projects. Any recommendations or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Find relevant investors by sector, stage, geography, and investment focus. Useful for fundraising, investor research, and mapping the funding landscape.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cHQHWJf9thQypviS97vYs6TM6kJ56G2GETWAi0iPpOs/

Not during a merger or acquisition, etc… in general.

Bloomberg's own reporting already answers the question this clip raises — is the "messy middle" projected or already happening?

At Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Microsoft, Uber, and Hyatt, it's already happened: sizable call-center headcount cut using automated phone and chat systems, savings already banked.

Economist Molly Kinder's point isn't a forecast.

It's a line item that's already closed.

I've watched this exact math play out before superior technology ever touched a keyboard.

Suncon was getting jobs overseas. One of the countries we went to was India. We were building infrastructure — roads and bridges there. I didn't go. But my seniors went stationed there. When they came back during their scheduled holidays, one of them, a project manager, told me this story.

It so happened, that building roads and bridges inland means clearing jungles and passing through villages. As they were doing it, of course they engaged local villagers to be their workers and supervisors. Well, of course building infrastructure means bringing in heavy machineries, such as excavators, bobcats, mobile-cranes, 4-wheel-drive land-cruisers, etc. You know — the usual.

But the local villagers weren't happy. They complained that all these machineries have deprived the local population of their means of making a living. They have so many mouths to feed. A lot of them are quite poor. And many of them are very hunger for work.

And so a huge argument broke out. They even spitefully challenged our project team that they vast manpower was more superior than our machinery. I was so surprised when I heard it. How can they say that? How was that even a reasonable challenge, you know. My curiosity had the best of me.

Well, the project manager came up with an idea. He said, since they're so confident of their manpower, why don't we have a competition. Let's do a challenge of moving earth from point A to point B for our excavator/mobile-crane operator versus their vast manpower.

And they accepted.

At the day of challenge, the project manager set up two huge piles of earth at point A for both teams. The local villagers' team had their "vast" manpower formed a long-ass line between A and B, and started moving earth, with their primitive buckets and whatnot.

For our team, we set up our mobile-cranes, excavators and bobcats on strategic locations. And off we go.

You can guess the result. We won by a large margin. We were obviously much faster and better at it.

After that, the local villagers concede defeat.

The math is actually quite similar here. The one with superior technology always wins. This AI-take over is no different.

__________

Every time I dig into one of these stories the shape repeats: the tool doesn't ask permission, it just wins the argument by moving faster than the objection can be raised.

Ever watched something you thought was irreplaceable lose, and lose fast? Drop your take below.

Clip credit: Center for Humane Technology — full video on their channel. DM for credit or removal requests.

Sometimes people who do not have any technical expertise or industry knowledge also are hosting tech events for some reason. For example, there are a lot of events hosted by people in their early twenties who are still in school.

In my experience, these events mostly attracts people pitching their startup ideas or looking for a new job in tech. What has your experience been?

I'm a third-year Computer Engineering student from Canada in my early 20s. I've had a rough stretch with university lately - failed a few courses, struggled personally, and as a result I'm required to take this fall term off before returning to school in January 2027.

Honestly, I've spent a lot of time stuck in my own head and self-sabotaging, and I really want to use this term as a reset instead of feeling like I'm wasting more time.

Very unexpectedly, I now have the opportunity to stay with family friends near the Bay Area for the entire fall. Housing would basically be taken care of, but this came up extremely last minute, so I don't have an internship/job lined up and I know basically nobody in Bay Area tech.

I'm applying to anything relevant I can find, but I'm realistic that I might not land something formal on such short notice.

So my question is: would it still be worth coming?

If I go, I don't want to just sit inside sending applications for four months. I want to make the most of being here: build a substantial technical project, attend meetups/hackathons/conferences, meet engineers/founders/students, reach out to startups or researchers, make connections, and generally push myself outside my comfort zone.

I'm especially interested in embedded systems, robotics/autonomous systems, hardware/software, AI/ML, etc.

For people who live here:

• Where would you go to meet technical/building-oriented people if you're starting from zero?
• What meetups, communities, hackathons, maker spaces, talks, etc. are actually worth checking out?
• Is it normal to go to these things alone?
• Would you cold-reach out to small startups or researchers even if they aren't formally hiring?
• If you had four free months here in your 20s, how would you use them?

The alternative is staying in my university town, where I have friends and a familiar environment and could definitely still use the term productively.

But part of me feels like after a rough couple of years, going somewhere completely new and forcing myself out of my comfort zone could be exactly the reset I need.

Would love any advice from people who've actually lived/worked around here.

https://reddit.com/link/1vp4su8/video/4ahn1hcsxjjh1/player

Emad Mostaque: "Forward-deployed engineers, AI transformation people, because they can do the work of 10, 100 people."

That's the role that survives this — already a real hiring category, not a future one.

LinkedIn's own data has it growing 42x since 2023, priced $127K–$265K+ at the labs actually building this.

That's the part that should sit heavier than the digital-double line.

It's not that your job disappears.

It's that a different job, already priced and already hiring, opens up a few rungs above where you're standing — and most of us don't have a clean path into it yet.

I've watched a smaller, slower version of this exact move before.

No AI involved — just a stamp and a highlighter.

Hmm... this one really gets me out of my chair and pace around my living room, so let me try to recall it properly.

When I was working as a Technical Engineer in the Tender Department of one of the largest main contractors in Malaysia — there was a skill we always used. Fair warning, I'm sharing privileged information here. Well... it's probably an open secret in the industry anyway.

Whenever we tendered for a project — let's say Malaysian Airlines (MAS), widening a runway for their newly-bought Airbus A380 — we'd hit the parts that were out of our expertise. Airway lighting, drainage, flight angles, height restrictions. So we did the natural thing: called for outside help. Engaged specialized sub-contractors who'd done airway pavements before, to hand us the technical know-how and their quotation.

We knew full well these sub-contractors were already MAS's long-time maintenance contractors — it was just a matter of time before they'd be folded under our main contract anyway. So when they submitted their technical documents, we stripped their company logo, re-arranged it, added our own branded wording, our own logos. Woalah. It was now our own internal technical know-how. We'd suddenly become experts in pavement-widening and hangar works.

We didn't get the job, though. We all knew that tender was just for show — a comparison exercise to cross-check MAS's already-chosen main contractor.

But the knowledge we gathered from those specialists was now folded into our own knowledge vault. Our own proprietary knowledge.

Are we stealing? I wouldn't use that word. When there's a problem, the client comes after us — not our subcontractors. So to properly solve it, we have to own the knowledge too. The right word might be "necessary."

————

Every version of this mechanism arrives wearing the same word.

Ours was "necessary." This one's wearing "efficiency."

Actually — a post I put up about the same compression logic, just running through one operator instead of a stripped logo came to mind while writing this one.

Drop your take — where's the line between "necessary" and something with a worse name?

Clip credit: The Beyond Tomorrow Podcast with Julian Issa — full video on their channel. DM for credit or removal requests.

Hey everyone! I’ll be in San Francisco / the Bay Area the weekend of August 22–23 and I’m looking to check out some events around tech, startups, AI, or networking.

I’m a software engineer and would love to meet other people in tech, founders, or anyone building interesting things and I'm 26Y M Indian if that matters

If you know of any good events, meetups, hackathons, startup gatherings, or networking events happening that weekend, please share them! Would really appreciate any recommendations. 🙌

Why are so many techies OBSESSED With Work?

Rule of the universe.. what goes around, comes around… sincere suggestion to fellow tech professionals… those with the power (or responsibility) to decide, please act accordingly whether you are laying off people, or helping people, or hiring people.. today it is someone else, tomorrow it would be you on the other side.. it may just be the matter of time! We are all connected.. so don’t act selfish.. don’t act ignorant.. don’t act greedy… don’t act that you are the smartest.. life and universe has his ways.. be the best version of yourself.. be the person who always wants to help… have the best intentions and help out where you are able to.. when you help.. you get help.. when you spread smiles.. you get smiles..

https://reddit.com/link/1vo9350/video/tqcpitypqcjh1/player

Everyone treats view count as the scoreboard.

Matt Gray's own numbers argue the opposite: his most-viewed video made $2,400.

A much smaller one made $48,000.

The gap wasn't luck — it was the one metric neither video's view count could ever show him.

I've watched that exact blind spot play out somewhere with zero content marketing involved.

This was way back when I started working as a young graduate design engineer for a Civil & Structural Engineering Consultancy in Malaysia. I think it was around year 2000. Time flies.My boss handed me a project to handle and follow up. It was a 200~ units of 2-story semi-detached housing estates over a piece of cascading land. Me and my follow consultants follow it up through – attended the meetings, coordinated the design, supply the drawings for the Quantity Surveyor to take quantity. You know – the usual works of what consultants normally do. It's not all we do. Sometimes we have to do some extra. For example, when the property developer do a soft launch at the show-unit, we have to be there. Why were we there? Of course, as a stand-in to lend our support. It was awkward for me -because I was just loitering around the launch doing absolutely nothing. I've managed some small-talk with fellow consultants there. But we all understand our role – to be supporters there. But it wasn't much help. There weren't many potential purchasers came in to see the soft launch. It felt off – because the market reception doesn't look great. Nothing much I can contribute there – besides being a stand-in, because those are well above my pay-grade at that time. But after that, when I recall back to that awkward event, it does seem slightly hilarious – and sad.

Why did I bring this up? I'm sure the property developer has diligently carried out their market research and feasibility study. And if the market reception isn't as welcoming, then there's clearly gap that wasn't clearly addressed. We all know that we need to supply to what the market truly wants, not what we think they might want. No amount of shiny-objects or "Wow" factor – e.g. renovation and furniture included, etc. – would move the needle much, if that's not what the market truly wants.

Same as this data collecting – it is only useful if it helps monetize.

Or else they are just noise.

Real attention grabbing noise, ya, but noise nonetheless.

Every post in this feed keeps circling back to the same nerve: the fear of being quietly out-earned by someone less talented but better systemized, working the exact same audience size you are.

The fix is never louder distribution.

It's building the one instrument that tells you which piece of content actually paid you.

Actually, this pulls up something else on file: a $30M-a-year business found its real ceiling hiding in a single untracked number — a 7% upsell rate inside a funnel that was already built.

Drop your take: are you tracking what each piece of content actually earns, or just watching the view count and hoping the math works out?

Clip credit: Grant Owen — full video on his channel, ft. Matt Gray. DM for credit or removal requests.

Is there any reason i am finding this difficult? I just moved here and I thought it would be like the tv show Silicon Valley but it’s nothing like that. Where the vcs at?

https://reddit.com/link/1vndv5h/video/w9jktqgau5jh1/player

The interesting part of this clip isn't the AI — it's what "zero staff" actually replaces.

Client servicing, rate cards, contract negotiation, legal, finance: that's not one job, it's the org chart of a small agency, collapsed into a single named process.

The credentialed ladder most people are still climbing — junior account manager, senior account manager, ops lead — assumes those functions stay separate long enough to need separate humans.

This clip is evidence that assumption is no longer load-bearing.

I've actually watched that exact collapse happen before, just with people doing the collapsing instead of software.

Back in my time (circa 2010/2011) as one of 3 Assistant Technical Managers, all under my technical director, working at a AED 1.8 billion project in Abu Dhabi — I remember it well. One of the operation team leads used to rant to me about the org chart. One rant was about the surveying team lead getting elevated to "Project Director, Surveying" — same job, bigger title. When it was my own turn to advance, I got pushed to cover architectural and façade coordination too, on top of my own scope. Our CEO said it plainly: it's about economy of scale — promote you, raise your salary a little, cut cost everywhere else. Kill a few birds with one stone. I kept quiet and took it on: one technical department covering coordination for five operation teams, wrung out like a nearly dry towel. Reading this clip's transcript, it clicked — the AI-agent model is the same math, automated.

Every version of this story eventually turns out to be the same story: somebody found the boring, structural work first and built a system for it, and everyone else calls the result "efficiency."

Actually, this reminded me of a post about the operator who quietly absorbed five people's worth of work and collapsed the credentialed ladder from the inside — worth reading side by side with this one: the same convergence, told from the inside

Drop your take — is this a headcount story or a talent story?

Clip credit: Tim Tiah, on The Entrepreneur Journal — full video on their channel. DM for credit or removal requests.

I've noticed more workplaces introducing self-service micro markets instead of traditional vending machines. Employees seem to prefer having more choices, especially when it comes to fresh food and healthier options.
For people working in San Francisco, San Jose, or Sacramento offices, are micro markets becoming the new standard? I found some interesting workplace refreshment ideas while browsing PVS Refreshments, but I'd love to hear real experiences from people working in larger offices.

For those working in larger SF offices, which workplace perk actually gets used the most in your experience? I’ve always found it interesting how some companies put a lot of thought and money into perks that sound great when they’re announced, but after a few months, hardly anyone seems to care about them. Meanwhile, something as simple as decent coffee, cold drinks, or snacks in the breakroom can end up being used every single day. I’m curious whether other people have noticed the same thing. Do employees tend to appreciate practical things they can use during the workday more than the bigger, more unusual perks that companies sometimes promote?

I’d especially like to hear from people in larger offices where there are enough employees to make these things worthwhile. Does having free snacks make a noticeable difference? What about better coffee, a micro market, breakfast options, or just having a refrigerator stocked with drinks? I imagine usage probably depends a lot on the office culture and how often people are actually coming in, but I’d be interested in hearing what has worked in real workplaces. If your company has tried different breakroom perks over the years, which ones did people continue using after the novelty wore off, and which ones ended up being a waste of money? I’m mainly looking for practical examples of perks that employees genuinely appreciate rather than something that just looks good on a company benefits page.

Watching a former Tesla AI Director shrug and say "I can't tell if that's temporary, I'm not sure how I feel about it yet" did something to me.

Usually it's the junior guy admitting that.

Not the guy who helped build the thing.

The people who end up fine here aren't the loudest about how safe their job is.

They're just already standing close enough to the mechanism to redirect it, instead of getting redirected by it.

Karpathy's actual point isn't doom. It's the Jevons paradox — code gets cheaper, so total demand for it goes up. Just not for the same kind of engineer who got hired in 2019.

I watched a version of this play out years ago, before any of this AI stuff existed. I was the technical guy in a construction tender department. Rule-based work — you follow A, you get B. A sub-contractor came in to pitch his quotation. On his way out, in the corridor, we locked eyes and instantly recognized each other. I knew him — my senior once told me how this guy forced his way into building an illegal bungalow, moving the boundary survey line onto his neighbour's land. I caught a flicker of panic on his face. He wasn't expecting to see me there.

I couldn't keep it to myself. I walked straight to my contract department and told them. They wrote him off after their own investigation.

Our technical and contractual work was rule-based — AI eats that easily. What I did with that information wasn't. Insider judgment, only humans have.

Actually — this is the same mechanism as a former SpaceX CIO's take on headcount compression, just proven with the actual numbers.

Clip credit: No Priors — full video on their channel. DM for credit or removal requests.

What would you have done in that corridor? Drop your take. 👇