“Let’s say one person forgot to pick up groceries or didn’t accurately recall a conversation; the other would say, ‘Oh, you’re gaslighting me. This is psychological abuse,’” he said. “But they weren’t. They were just having what I would consider pretty normal miscommunications.”
Use yours secrets to get generative AI ROI
From an article by my colleagues and me:
For generative AI (GenAI) apps to deliver real business value, they need access to your company’s proprietary data. Without it, models default to the public data they were trained on–meaning you get the same generic ideas as your competitors. If everyone is starting with the same new ideas, competitive advantage disappears. This is exactly like hiring an outside consultant and refusing to show them how your business actually operates.
A great platform as a product paper, and a fun platform philosophy thereof
I like this platform as a product paper a lot. You should check it out if you’re into DevOps, SRE, platform engineering, whatever. It’s also available in O’Reilly if you have that subscription and don’t want to lead-in yourself.
Here’s some fun parts:
Adopting a product mindset starts with continually evaluating the business context to manage “build versus buy” decisions. Contextual factors such as scale, compliance requirements, or the diversity of the workforce skill base and technology stacks often require organizations to opt out of an off-the-shelf solution and instead invest in a set of integrated capabilities designed for its specific needs.
Sometimes, you accidentally delete a paragraph of text and it’s not in the undo buffer for some reason. And most of those times, it’s good to think: I probably didn’t need that anyhow.
How shit actually works versus how you wish it worked
A discussion of messy dichotomies from the robot:
Thus spoke 🤖 :
Exploratory vs Normative — Quick Reference A compact reference for thinking about how a framework is operating: discovering reality vs prescribing order.
Exploratory vs Normative (academic, but precise)
Exploratory: investigates what exists in the real world; derives insight from practice Normative: asserts what should exist; defines correct structure and behavior Key question:
Exploratory → “What’s going on?
Even after 3 years of tuning ChatGPT to be my best dumb friend, I keep getting told to cut the shit with my rambling, e.g., recent faint praise from the robot for my attempt at re-stating an answer: “You’ve basically got it; the only thing to do now is sharpen the tool so it’s usable without sounding like a philosophy seminar.”
Scoping questions for business books
What type of organization is this book for? IBM or Facebook or OpenAI? Netflix or Warner Brothers? Mercedes or Tesla? Alaska or Belgium? Delta or SpaceX? HSBC or Square? Does this apply to management, employees, VCs, Wall Street investors, or customers? Feel free to pick multiple, but explain. Is this a playbook for how a PE firm can turn around a failing company, or a playbook for avoiding a PE firm turning around your company?
What you’re putting off now is not going to get any easier or less boring to do in the future. So, try to just do it now and gift yourself future self the lack of that bullshit.
20 years of business travel - you'll get there, or you won't
The first thing is, the travel industry changes very slowly. What changes most frequently is the interior decorating. The seats in planes, the plugs in hotel rooms, the signs in airports. Even these don’t change structurally, just in aesthetically.
The biggest change in 20 years has been Uber. I started traveling in 20051 which meant taxis. This was stressful. As a boy from Austin, taxis were not part of my life.