At Meta, a diff is a pull request and DAT focuses on the inner development loop – the writing, building, testing, and debugging of code. The tech giant emphasizes diffs should be kept small and reviewable, which, in part, accounts for its average DAT of 50 minutes across 87% of available diffs. I feel like it’s the continuous application of scientific management (Taylorism) here that fall short. Gallup has found time and again that effective workers have a lot more to do with environment than DATs.

In 2023, the National Endowment for the Arts reported that, over the preceding decade, the proportion of adults who read at least one book a year had fallen from fifty-five per cent to forty-eight per cent. That’s a striking change, but modest compared to what’s happened among teen-agers: the National Center for Education Statistics—which has recently been gutted by the Trump Administration—found that, over roughly the same period, the number of thirteen-year-olds who read for fun “almost every day” fell from twenty-seven per cent to fourteen per cent.

Monolith: the backend service is mostly a large monolith, and is deployed as one. This is a reminder that monoliths work pretty well for early-stage startups and can help teams move fast. This is a shameless plug for Martin fowler as well. first get it working, then make it better. Quote Citation: Gergely Orosz, “Real-world engineering challenges: building Cursor”, JUN 10, 2025, https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/cursor

In short, we are in the midst of a Cambrian explosion of developer tools, and a dizzying array of approaches are currently being tested for their evolutionary fitness. Consider even an abbreviated, absolutely non-exhaustive list of related tools: Aboard, Bolt, Cline, Copilot, Cursor, ChatGPT / Codex, Claude / Code, Gemini / CLI, Factory, Lovable, Poolside, Replit, Same.dev, vibes.diy, v0, watsonX and Windsurf. Not all of these will succeed, and indeed some argue that all of these are doomed because the economic footing they’re built on is fatally unsound.

That objective I described - meaningful Experimentation - is the first phase of our journey. We’ll then transition to a second phase centered around a goal of Adoption of AI as standard part of the day-to-day toolkit for engineers. At that point the focus shifts again to measuring Impact - where is this new tool helping, and where is it causing issues. Deep dive in driving adoption of really anything.

America’s youth strive for personal and professional success, but many struggle along broken pathways from high school into the job market because the people and institutions meant to support them are fundamentally out of sync. Quote Citation: Website, “The Broken Marketplace Study”, Present, https://www.brokenmarketplace.org/

Originally pioneered by Sergej Sonic at Alphabet, DoorDash, and Rippling, this shift isn’t just a simple change in numbers; for companies, it’s a philosophical pivot toward a more dynamic, performance-driven compensation strategy. Top performing employees stand to benefit while others will have more uncertainty of compensation in subsequent years. I mean, it wasn’t like spreading it over 4 years was keeping people anchored. Quote Citation: Zaheer,Zuhayeer, “Front-Loaded Vesting: Why Your Tech Offer Looks Different Now”, September 9, 2025, https://www.

I’m talking about personal goals. Not the corporate version where everyone wants to “develop leadership skills” but real, ambitious, life-changing goals that make people light up when they talk about them. Rejecting the “up or out” rat race is phenomenal Quote Citation: Stephane Moreau, “The insane privilege of being a manager”, SEP 09, 2025, https://www.blog4ems.com/p/the-insane-privilege-of-being-a-manager

React is no longer winning by technical merit. Today it is winning by default. That default is now slowing innovation across the frontend ecosystem. Ember? knockout? vue? I dont know what “let’s use React” is the innovation killer. There is power in choosing a standard coding language everyone understands. Quote Citation: Loren Stewart, “React Won by Default – And It’s Killing Frontend Innovation | Loren Stewart”, 2025-09-16, https://www.lorenstew.art/blog/react-won-by-default/

AI is being hyped across every industry, but can it really manage money without guidance? This project is an attempt to find out — with transparency, data, and a real budget. Spoiler. No it cannot. Quote Citation: Nathan Smith, “LuckyOne7777/ChatGPT-Micro-Cap-Experiment: This repo powers my blog experiment where ChatGPT manages a real-money micro-cap stock portfolio.”, Ongoing, https://github.com/LuckyOne7777/ChatGPT-Micro-Cap-Experiment