kevc

It feels like we are pretty far away from LLMs running a concession stand (see andon labs) so not surprised it would struggle here. Still the failure modes are super interesting and having benchmarks seems to be the starting point to domain-specific improvements.

She is spending her own money and her rich friend's money to give her team a good salary and a chill work environment. I don't see a problem with that.

There is a difference between "table-stakes" complexity and premature complexity. I'd argue that a simple but sane CI / deployment pipeline takes relatively little work to set up and falls under "table-stakes" in that even a pre-pmf team will have a positive ROI in doing it.

On the flip side I have been the one working long nights and weekends reverse engineering code by engineers who prematurely built complexity into the system because they wanted to add a GraphQL api in addition to a rest API. All while in the pre-pmf days, with no value-add to the features that ultimately DID find pmf.

I do generally believe that cleaning-up after the pmf-hunting phase is itself a privilege that many startups do not get to experience, and should be treated as such. I understood the author as arguing that we shouldn't chase shiny things and should ruthlessly avoid complexity in favor of finding pmf. This philosophy is clearly illustrated in the devtools startup he is running. I thought there were some cool ideas there.

They are using H100s as collateral for a loan to buy... more H100s. Sign of an AI bubble? Nvidia is the real winner here.

The question I ask myself: Is there a large and still-unmet demand for software engineering worldwide. AKA is the market supply-constrained by a large-enough amount?

If so, I imagine engineers will be more productive with AI (and wages will go down, or at least stop growing somewhat), but the demand for software engineers will stay strong.

If not, then engineers being more productive would mean fewer engineers can meet the global demand for software engineering work and I would expect to see the demand for software engineers reduced.

I am sure that’s part of it. Minimum wage jobs are hard. But there are plenty of people who work hard jobs or come from hard situations without turning to crime. Sf does it’s best to make crime and drugs an appealing option when the law isn’t enforced.

I don’t think this is the full explanation (or even the biggest factor). I have lived in foreign cities with FAR more income inequality than sf, and I never saw the blatant crime I see in sf. It’s to the point where seeing live shoplifting or robbery isn’t even a surprising or notable occurrence for most people. There is simply no will to enforce the law.

I can assure you, the people who are robbing electronics stores are not the ones serving lattes or driving ubers. SF has a huge issue with career criminals. And it’s easy to be one. I have never seen such blatant drug dealing and robbery in my life, and I have lived in supposedly “dangerous” cities outside of the US.

The human race is extinct in 30 years? That sounds incredibly alarmist. Could you elaborate on how this realistically happens?

This is a pervasive myth. Young founders get pr because it’s notable and drives clicks, but the average age of a successful founder is older. The average age of a YC founder is 30. According to a Harvard Business Review article I remember reading, the average age is 45.

Unfortunately “protecting ourselves” against these drugs has terrible second-order effects (see war on drugs). Perhaps we should let people buy drugs and bad food but add taxes to cover the collective damage done by them.

I worked in the game industry on the business side and saw all salaries. Game developers are paid well under software engineers at “traditional” software companies. Similar software engineering job requirements, except one pays less and demands far more in terms of hours worked. Of course the depressed wages are consistent as you move to lower paid roles at game companies.

It comes down to supply and demand. There are legions of young, passionate gamers who want to “work with their passion”. Why they stick with it, I’m not sure. I certainly didn’t.