Software Lead Weekly
Issue #683, 26th December 2025
This Week's Favorite
Steam, Steel, and Infinite Minds
5 minutes read.
"What will knowledge work look like soon? What happens when the org chart absorbs minds that never sleep? [...] We want humans to supervise the loops from a leveraged point, not be in them. Once context is consolidated and work is verifiable, billions of workers will go from pedaling to driving, and then from driving to self-driving. [...] We need to stop asking AI to be merely our copilots. We need to imagine what knowledge work could look like when human organizations are reinforced with steel, when busywork is delegated to minds that never sleep. Steel. Steam. Infinite minds. The next skyline is there, waiting for us to build it." -- Ivan Zhao with an inspirational post covering how humans will bridge information required for "infinate minds" (AI Agents) to operate effectively and efficiently at scale, and in turn, building a new way companies will operate.
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5 minutes read.
"What will knowledge work look like soon? What happens when the org chart absorbs minds that never sleep? [...] We want humans to supervise the loops from a leveraged point, not be in them. Once context is consolidated and work is verifiable, billions of workers will go from pedaling to driving, and then from driving to self-driving. [...] We need to stop asking AI to be merely our copilots. We need to imagine what knowledge work could look like when human organizations are reinforced with steel, when busywork is delegated to minds that never sleep. Steel. Steam. Infinite minds. The next skyline is there, waiting for us to build it." -- Ivan Zhao with an inspirational post covering how humans will bridge information required for "infinate minds" (AI Agents) to operate effectively and efficiently at scale, and in turn, building a new way companies will operate.
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Culture
Running 4 Parallel Coding Agents
1 minutes read.
My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile.
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1 minutes read.
My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile.
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AI Agents Are Starting to Eat SaaS
5 minutes read.
Martin Alderson is spot on: "The calculus on build vs buy is starting to change. Software ate the world. Agents are going to eat SaaS." -- It won't affect everyone the same, but companies will need to evolve their value proposition quickly.
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5 minutes read.
Martin Alderson is spot on: "The calculus on build vs buy is starting to change. Software ate the world. Agents are going to eat SaaS." -- It won't affect everyone the same, but companies will need to evolve their value proposition quickly.
Read it later via Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
A Code-Abundant World
6 minutes read.
Evis Drenova wrote an interesting take on the evolution of version control systems, given how humans and coding agents will evolve together to produce value via software. This is true for many systems we're currently using, such as CRMs and Project Management tools (among others). The next phase of such tools will help humans better understand how to research the pain they seek to solve, what the change entails, plan it in enough detail to operate safely (e.g., validating the output to measure an outcome), and then execute, often through multiple iterations rather than a one-shot, e.g. "When it breaks six weeks later, no one—human or agent can reconstruct the path that led there. It's like hiring a new engineer every day and throwing away yesterday’s design notes every night. [...] while iterating, the implicit constraints it learned from failed attempts, that signal gets compressed away. What you're left with is a summary, not the full reasoning chain. [...] Version control can't remain just a storage layer. It needs to become a coordination layer, a system that understands not just what changed, but who changed it (human vs agent), why (the prompt, the context), and how it relates to everything else."
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6 minutes read.
Evis Drenova wrote an interesting take on the evolution of version control systems, given how humans and coding agents will evolve together to produce value via software. This is true for many systems we're currently using, such as CRMs and Project Management tools (among others). The next phase of such tools will help humans better understand how to research the pain they seek to solve, what the change entails, plan it in enough detail to operate safely (e.g., validating the output to measure an outcome), and then execute, often through multiple iterations rather than a one-shot, e.g. "When it breaks six weeks later, no one—human or agent can reconstruct the path that led there. It's like hiring a new engineer every day and throwing away yesterday’s design notes every night. [...] while iterating, the implicit constraints it learned from failed attempts, that signal gets compressed away. What you're left with is a summary, not the full reasoning chain. [...] Version control can't remain just a storage layer. It needs to become a coordination layer, a system that understands not just what changed, but who changed it (human vs agent), why (the prompt, the context), and how it relates to everything else."
Read it later via Instapaper.
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Peopleware
Make Up Your Own Mission Statement (Video)
4 minutes read.
A great video to watch as you think of the next year, but maybe dream of the next decade. What is your personal mission? What will make you proud to know you've put your energy and heart into? If you're unsure, what can you do in the years to come to discover it?
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4 minutes read.
A great video to watch as you think of the next year, but maybe dream of the next decade. What is your personal mission? What will make you proud to know you've put your energy and heart into? If you're unsure, what can you do in the years to come to discover it?
Read it later via Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
How to Be More Agentic (human)
6 minutes read.
Maybe the best way to explain Agency is this example by Cate Hall (also, going to steal Cate's husband's "love the moat of low status" concept): "The idea of finding real edges, as contrasted with “eking out wins by grinding harder than everyone,” first clicked for me when I started playing poker. Poker in the modern era is an extraordinarily competitive game, and even 8 years ago pros were spending nearly as much time studying as they were playing, using solver models to seek out tiny mathematical advantages. At the same time, a massive edge was available in the form of physical reads, but almost entirely ignored. (I know an example would make this more compelling, but I’m sorry, it’s like explaining a magic trick.) Two friends and I maniacally studied reads together, and we all had out-of-distribution results. But when we’d tell other pros what we were doing, the response from most was “nuh-uh, that’s not a thing.” They weren’t willing to consider the possibility that reads were valuable, maybe because they didn’t want to feel obligated to study them. All of my agency hacks are kind of like this, in my opinion -- big, glaring edges that people might rather ignore."
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6 minutes read.
Maybe the best way to explain Agency is this example by Cate Hall (also, going to steal Cate's husband's "love the moat of low status" concept): "The idea of finding real edges, as contrasted with “eking out wins by grinding harder than everyone,” first clicked for me when I started playing poker. Poker in the modern era is an extraordinarily competitive game, and even 8 years ago pros were spending nearly as much time studying as they were playing, using solver models to seek out tiny mathematical advantages. At the same time, a massive edge was available in the form of physical reads, but almost entirely ignored. (I know an example would make this more compelling, but I’m sorry, it’s like explaining a magic trick.) Two friends and I maniacally studied reads together, and we all had out-of-distribution results. But when we’d tell other pros what we were doing, the response from most was “nuh-uh, that’s not a thing.” They weren’t willing to consider the possibility that reads were valuable, maybe because they didn’t want to feel obligated to study them. All of my agency hacks are kind of like this, in my opinion -- big, glaring edges that people might rather ignore."
Read it later via Instapaper.
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Inspiring Tweets
@drmarkhyman: Your BRAIN is downstream from your BODY. I spent years treating depression, anxiety, ADHD, dementia as brain problems. Then I wrote The UltraMind Solution and realized your brain is being hijacked by what's happening in your gut, your blood sugar, your mitochondria. Your mood isn't a Prozac deficiency. Your focus isn't an Adderall deficiency. They're symptoms of a body that's breaking down. Fix the body, and the brain follows. At 26, I prescribed antidepressants. At 66, I prescribe food.
@chrispisarski: One of the best sales advice we got back in YC was the "ikea effect": if you are in the middle of a demo, never just open your laptop and show a generic feature dump. before you show anything, ask this: "if you were in my shoes, what would this platform need to show you to prove it can solve your problem?" the prospect will give you a checklist of 2-3 things. start by showing exactly those 3 things. people love what they build themselves. when they define the criteria for success, they can't argue when you deliver it
- Oren
P.S. Can you share this email? I'd love for more people to experiment and improve their company's culture.
P.S. Can you share this email? I'd love for more people to experiment and improve their company's culture.