Software Lead Weekly

How to Speak (Video)
63 minutes read.

Watch the first 49 seconds by Patrick Winston and you'll understand why this is one of the most important talks you should listen to this week.

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Is This Docker?
1 minutes read.

My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile.

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DevAI: Beyond Hype and Denial
6 minutes read.

This post by Ivan Kusalic is one of the best in accurately capturing the leverage of GenAI tools for developers, rather than promoting hype. The section on "What Actually Works" should be where you adopt the tools immediately (Nov 2025), as the quality is already there. The tools will get better and more and more areas will be mature enough to build sustainable software that can both provide value (first) and run at product scale with good enough maintenance cost.

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We Heard You Like Jevons
7 minutes read.

Thinking of LLM from the lens of Jevons Paradox can help shape the path of "assuming it's cheap, now what?". Companies are being built to either leverage it (e.g., Agent-to-Agent communication), secure it (Cyber as a deep pocket), and run it (LLM infrastructure). Tokens won't be the way we measure utilization in the future, but it's easy enough now to track adoption today and extrapolate value.

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The Two Jobs of a CPO
5 minutes read.

"I suspect that the dichotomy between these two roles [strategy and culture/process] is also why Chief Product Officers are one of the harder positions to fill once a company gets to scale. The skills that get you hired as a CPO are all about product culture and process setting. But the skills that keep you from getting fired are all about strategic alignment, and finding that alignment with a high-octane, highly confident CEO is an entirely different skill. A lot of companies hire product culture builders because the skillset is portable, and these hires then fail to lock-in on where the company should go." -- Spot on. It's hard to find a CPO who can do both parts effectively, but when you do, magical things happen as you both know where you want to go while having the confidence in building a map to follow.

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Keith Rabois: “I Tell Founders Not to Worry About Runway. Worry About Lift.”
2 minutes read.

The notion of using funding to lift the company (product-market fit) rather than extending the runway is a healthier framing to consider: "If you think about lift in a plane context, a company is only valuable if you achieve lift. Runway is a tactic for achieving lift, and you may need to extend the runway so that you have more time to get lift. But unless you’re actually achieving lift with that extra time, it doesn’t help you."

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Brian Chesky (CEO of Airbnb) on the Hidden Cost of Success "Loneliness"
3 minutes read.

Having people around you and still feeling lonely is a common symptom that many executives share. Joining a group of peers with whom you can develop trust to share some of the burden can help you carry this weight a bit further and a bit longer.

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@Ar_boian: Evan Spiegel lists himself as “VP of Product at Meta” because of how many Snapchat ideas ended up shaping Meta’s products 😂

@tferriss: You are the author of your own life, and it’s never too late to replace the stories you tell yourself and the world. It’s never too late to begin a new chapter, add a surprise twist, or change genres entirely.