As a tech lead or eng manager, you so frequently get request from above or from other teams to drop what you are doing and work on this thing they need, *now*.
During my 4 years at Uber after asking these questions, 9 out of 10 times it turned out it wasn't really urgent:
1. "What is the impact of this work you're asking for?" If the impact is unclear: sorry, but we can't do the work. Why would we?
Just this question made the requester realize half the time they just think it's urgent, but don't know what the work will actually result in.
2. "Do you have a spec that is agreed with stakeholders?" A writeup answering the "why" and the "what" that is signed off by relevant business folks.
I've seen so much engineering work thrown out as later the business goes "that's not what we wanted, why didn't you tell us?"
3. "We're not committing to any work before we have done a rough estimation."
With #1 and #2 done, many stakeholders will come and say "drop what you're doing, this is a 3-day work we need ASAP."
Hold your horses. You don't make estimates: the team doing the work does...
4. Make the cost of dropping what you're doing very clear.
This cost is always forgotten by the person coming with the request. But it's a relevant one: wrapping up work, onboarding to the new work, then later onboarding to the old work. Plus a hit on morale for a sudden change!
Uber has some very hectic times when there were reasons we needed to do some new work ASAP. Like a regulation change that means the company would be banned from operating in a region if not building something.
Even in such a place, most "urgent" things turned out to be noise.
The way I always approached these requests was to educate the person coming with them, and have them realize their work is actually not as urgent or as important or as impactful of what the team is already doing.
Doing so meant building empathy both ways, and less hard feelings.
A huge upside of this approach: when committing, you *can* commit with a very high certainty that you will not be interrupted with your work.
The alternative: take on this "super urgent" work, then someone else comes along saying " I need you to drop what you are doing *now*..."
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So predictable that we’ll see an explosion of digital products selling “ideas for million dollar businesses” that you can “just vibe code quickly”.
Basically: “buy my digital product for $500, spend $1,500 on Lovable / Claude Code and become a millionaire.”
Another hype train
Ofc these products promoted by influencers will work just as well as crypto sh*tcoins launched by influencers in 2023.
We’ll see doctored evidence (“someone who built one of ideas idea is at $5K MRR after 2 weeks”) and nontechnical people will spend thousands for $0 in return
The predictable winners: AI infra companies! Lovable, Vercel (with v0), Claude Code, Cursor, Replit, Gemini and any and all products that (at least partially) position themselves as “AI tools to build your idea that work even if you’re not a developer”
And it’s stated. A gold rush where - and the surest winners are those selling the shovels!
I generally like Anthropic: but the more they paint a dystopian future where AI “manages” people (“AI middle-managers”) the more I am starting to think they are losing their marbles.
LLMs is a tool humans should use. The tail should not wag the dog; Anthropic should know better
And frankly I’m getting tired of Anthropic being loud about how their AI will lead to mass unemployment, and while claiming to be a responsible lab to develop AI.
If your master plan is to wipe out the labor market for profit: you’re not responsible.
I DO feel recently that Anthropic is the single least responsible lab out there.
Thanks to their CEO parroting how their AI will lead to massive job losses: not being concerned the least, and seemingly *wanting* this outcome (even if it’s not realistic).
I am hearing SO many stories about people realizing coding with AI tools (aka “vibe coding”) is a game changer after “reviving” an old side project or idea on the side and making so much progress
But… while I often hear the excitement on starting: not hearing “finished” often!
Almost like these tools were amazing at making rapid progress at first… but it still takes a ton of effort to finish things and feels like most people go back to leaving side projects unfinished (even if in a more advanced state?)
FWIW guilty as charged
I got a bunch of side projects “revived” and was amazed at how fast it was
Then I just… kind of let them on the side? Turns out the reason I don’t touch them is because… they are just not a focus. Even tho it’s less effort now: still effort!!