Why are so few engineering teams reaping the benefits of AI? On this week’s episode, Paul presents Rich with the findings from a recent report from CircleCI and
AI makes weak engineers less harmful
Like other kinds of puzzle-solving, software engineering ability is strongly heavy-tailed. The strongest engineers produce way more useful output than the average, and the weakest engineers often are actively net-negative: instead of moving projects along, they create problems that their colleagues have to spend time solving. That’s why many tech companies try to build a small, ludicrously well-paid team instead of a large team of more average engineers, and why so far this seems to be a winning strategy.
Pure and impure software engineering
Why do solo game developers tend to get into fights with big tech engineers? Why do high-profile external hires to large companies often fizzle out? Why is AI-assisted development amazing for some engineers and completely useless for others?
Companies Are Being Torn Apart by AI "Workslop," Stanford Research Finds
Not only is AI hampering productivity, but it's also blowing up collaboration and souring employee dynamics.
Does AI Actually Boost Developer Productivity? (100k Devs Study) - Yegor Denisov-Blanch, Stanford
Does AI Make Teams Better at Working Together?
AI helps teams most when trust and critical engagement are present, and when AI is designed to support shared regulation.
Prompt Engineering Is Dead. Context Engineering Is Dying. What Comes Next Changes Everything.
The Trap of Instant Heroism in the Era of AI
AI has expanded what engineering leaders can do.
Nature is Laughing at the AI Build Out -
I was catching up on Acquired episodes this week and listened to the spectacular “Google: The AI Company” episode that Ben and David put together. What the two of them have created with their podcast fascinates me in the inevitability of its success. I think Acquired proves that if you are smart and work your […]
Companies That Replaced Humans With AI Are Realizing Their Mistake
As AI agents have yet to pay for themselves, more and more executives are waking up to the sloppy reality of AI hype.
OpenAI targets workplace professionals as enterprise AI demand surges
‘These leaders recognize AI as the most consequential shift of their lifetime, and they’re asking us how to reinvent their companies around it’
How teams build – Linear
AI usage patterns in software teams: who is adopting AI, how it reshapes where teams spend their time, and how much more they ship.
The Jevons Paradox of AI - Wesley's notes
Why AI can make us more productive but will never save us time
"AI makes it cheaper to contribute to Open Source, but it's not making life easier for maintainers. More contributions are flowing in, but the burden of evaluating them still falls on the same small group of people. That asymmetric pressure risks breaking maintainers." also relevant to slop science
1/7 Proud to share our paper, accepted as an oral at ICML '26! We highlight how Big Tech’s influence on AI R&D drives damaging outcomes, and what we as researchers can do about it. We also discuss underlying economic causes. See link for paper, and below for a brief summary arxiv.org/abs/2512.03077
1/7 Proud to share our paper, accepted as an oral at ICML '26! We highlight how Big Tech’s influence on AI R&D drives damaging outcomes, and what we as researchers can do about it. We also discuss underlying economic causes. See link for paper, and below for a brief summary arxiv.org/abs/2512.03077
