OMG yes. The most egregious in movie/tvshow trailer reviews.
Who tf cares about a random quote included in the trailer?
Here's a subtitle for a He-Man movie trailer from the other day: "Skeletor took my family and he destroyed our world."
I mean, anything would have been better than that, and "Another attempt at live action movie based on 80s action figure" or even "in theatres on X.Y." would be Pulitzer material in comparison.
I work at a less innovative place, and I see out product managers coming with prototypes, at least solid mock ups rather than just a jira.
They socialize it with potential users, they iterate, they find missing requirements, it's pretty powerful.
The net result is we're building better features faster.
We need to match the tool to the uncertainty we're facing.
The "just prototype it" thinking addresses "feasibility uncertainty". It surfaces blind spots and helps people tangibly reason about what the product looks like. It's a great exploratory tool for incremental ideas.
But it doesn't address the the larger uncertainty that startups are faced with: "market uncertainty" (or pmf). It doesn't answer "should we be building in this the first place?" That's where writing as a tool of thought is most powerful -- it helps you crystallize what problem we're actually solving.
The "just prototype it" culture (which is being promoted these days because Claude Code makes it easy) risks answering the wrong question, or at least the right question but in the wrong order. You end up with organizations that are incredibly fast at building things that no one should have built.
Ironically sometimes you need to start from a lower resolution (i.e. writing a doc). Prototyping too early is premature optimization.
I really agree with a lot of this but also think it may be hitting a bit too hard. It may be most applicable to engineer founders.
My anecdote is that, after a few stings with non-technical founders, a doc etc will not improve the chances to reach PMF and prototypes that they can understand can improve the chance.
Outside of the startup context, I have also seen prototypes (hand written way back when that was a thing) resonate with FAANG directors much more than brainstorming.
I am very much for not just vibe it, and the biggest risk of prototypes is they lend to just directly launching broken systems to production. But I think this is a different topic than reaching PMF.
I prefer prototyping to slides. The reason is it helps me understand the problem and edge cases better. Getting AI to build means you could potentially understand it even less than if you put the slides together.
Hiring talent that is passionate about delivering a quality product is more important than ever considering there are so many ways to take shortcuts now that might not be obvious until later.
Can confirm this in my portco's and a couple other peers (one of whom previously founded a major threat intel platform).
If you have product-minded Engineers and engineering-minded PMs, you can merge the two into a single function and remove much of the friction surrounding requirements, prototyping, and launching MVPs.
A couple of these products are already being deployed by F100 security teams as we speak. I also know of one F10 that's building it's own entire security platform from scratch with a team of security engineers working directly with one of the foundation model vendors.
Too many people on HN are divorced or too OOTL from some of these initiatives and then get blindsided during layoffs.
What matters now is DOMAIN EXPERIENCE. Do you understand good development principles and the problem your ICP is trying to solve and how pricing, packaging, and procurement is structured? I don't need a code monkey, process sloths, and queens of the calendar. I need domain experts who can actually execute.
If I showed upper management a functional prototype in a first meeting about a future product, they would assume it was already done and ask when it could ship, while not accepting any dates further out than a month in the future. No way I’d set myself up for failure like that.
The organizations I've worked in and funded would recognize it's a prototype and then staff accordingly unless it a vibecoded portion of a cost center part of the product - those are fine to be one-and-done.
I listened to his podcast episode on the Sequoia podcast a few days ago. Interestingly, his argument was "we don't need middle managers" and he plans to have all 6000 employees eventually report to him.
In other words, companies don't need managers anymore. Except for one manager. Him.
I've come to realize a lot of business trends can be reduced to "higher ups are now convinced that x is not actually necessary".
See "we don't need managers" (flat orgs), "we don't need infra" (DevOps philosophy), "we don't need QA" (devs handling testing), "we don't need product" (product engineering), "we don't need frontend devs" (no code generators) and of course all the AI related workforce reduction.
To me, it says something about how detached leadership is from how the sausage is made.
Why does anyone listen to him about product design/buisness running?
Twitter was a success _despite_ him. the original idea was strong enough to blast through all of the odd/wrong decisions he took. The time it took to make hashtags a thing, the terrible scaling, the huge overhiring, and deliberate duplication of teams, and his inability/reluctance to make any product decision. Sure he's got great connections, but he is a terrible leader of a buisness
Most of his product philosophy is negatively correlated with businesses that need to make a profit to survive.
I know what he'll do, he'll have someone make a bunch of agents to manage all these poor people via chat. he'll boast about how AI native the company is, it'll be chaos.
I met my manager when I joined once, then every 6 or 12 months for performance review (which was aggregated feedback from my peers that he took 2 minutes to talk through: "looks like you're doing fine, if you need anything, my EA can schedule more time").
PMs and Engineers made the prioritization decisions.
If someone was severely underperforming, it'd probably take at least 6 months to notice.
Projects would get shut down with very little notice (though I guess that's been a Google constant).
Within two years they had added 3-4 more layers though, after realizing the managers were, after all, needed.
I've never had close to 140 directs (or even friends) but did get close to 40 (direct reports; never had more than a dozen friends or so). Frankly, it sucks. I was (IMO) doing a terrible job, dropping balls everywhere and not serving the people I had a responsibility & emotional commitment to help. It came down to one of: 1. fail at what you truly believe is your job, 2. give up on what you believe, or 3. don't play the game. I picked #3 and quit, but most go with #2 and many are VPs and CEOs today.
That is insane, Block seems to be very poorly run. The headcount still seems bloated, they'll blame AI and layoff more people for their own incompetence.
After reading a book about the history of Twitter ("Hatching Twitter"), I got the impression that Jack Dorsey is a disturbed individual with a poor grasp on reality. So it's not surprising that Block is poorly run.
If every manager initially had 5 reports, a quick geometric series shows that eliminating all managers would save you 20% of headcount. Of course, managers tend to get paid more, so maybe you'd save a larger fraction of wages.
I wonder if that's the main concern or if communication / coordination costs are the larger concern
There's no doubt they see AI (or whatever the emerging tech) as disrupting everyone and everything EXCEPT themselves; the more interesting question is: conscious omission or reality distortion field of one?
> "I hate the way people use slide presentations instead of thinking," Jobs once said, according to a book published last month by David Pogue. "People who know what they're talking about don't need PowerPoint.
"Keynote began as a computer program for Apple CEO Steve Jobs to use in creating the presentations for Macworld Conference and Expo and other Apple keynote events."
Block signed a friend of mine, they quit their other job, then block was like whoops layoffs including people like this person who hadn’t even started. Super unethical.
If Block were experiencing rapid productivity improvements from AI why is their flagship Square product still worse than Toast? Toast is eating their lunch day after day.
Prototypes of what? What new products came out of Block in the past six years since pandemic? This makes it sound like Block is a place of innovations when it’s just a rent seeking enterprise.
And this is better how exactly? If you're running a business, do you not want to catch employees mistakes as early as possible? Most ideas are crap. I'd way rather they get elimated after someone spent an hour making slides than a day vibecoding a prototype.
And then there is the problem that vibecoding is addictive so the more one has done of it on the prototype, the worse one's judgement of whether it's actually something worth building...
Maybe if he had one freaking friend he would realize how effing stupid he has become...
BTW, the easiest way to get fired right now...is to over-use AI in an attempt to fool a domain expert.....or in short do not use it to perform in senior position interviews!
Yes, there is even a compliance post(podcast) about Delve talking about that context aspect of it...
Since the crux of this seems to be about replacing middle managers, what do people think prevents AI from successfully managing 140 direct reports on day to day operations on behalf of a lone CEO? I'm reading "it doesn't work," but that sounds like more of a potential opportunity to me than a truism.
Is the idea that prototypes give the Permission Granter more fidelity into a proposal and therefore can make better decisions? Whereas before, with Slide Decks, the Permission Granter couldn't experience certain things and therefore couldn't make as good decisions to grant permissions?
So in effect this remains a billionaire figure speaking from their own perspective and we're supposed to care?
90 comments
https://karlbode.com/ceo-said-a-thing-journalism/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47577735
Who tf cares about a random quote included in the trailer?
Here's a subtitle for a He-Man movie trailer from the other day: "Skeletor took my family and he destroyed our world."
I mean, anything would have been better than that, and "Another attempt at live action movie based on 80s action figure" or even "in theatres on X.Y." would be Pulitzer material in comparison.
The "just prototype it" thinking addresses "feasibility uncertainty". It surfaces blind spots and helps people tangibly reason about what the product looks like. It's a great exploratory tool for incremental ideas.
But it doesn't address the the larger uncertainty that startups are faced with: "market uncertainty" (or pmf). It doesn't answer "should we be building in this the first place?" That's where writing as a tool of thought is most powerful -- it helps you crystallize what problem we're actually solving.
The "just prototype it" culture (which is being promoted these days because Claude Code makes it easy) risks answering the wrong question, or at least the right question but in the wrong order. You end up with organizations that are incredibly fast at building things that no one should have built.
Ironically sometimes you need to start from a lower resolution (i.e. writing a doc). Prototyping too early is premature optimization.
My anecdote is that, after a few stings with non-technical founders, a doc etc will not improve the chances to reach PMF and prototypes that they can understand can improve the chance.
Outside of the startup context, I have also seen prototypes (hand written way back when that was a thing) resonate with FAANG directors much more than brainstorming.
I am very much for not just vibe it, and the biggest risk of prototypes is they lend to just directly launching broken systems to production. But I think this is a different topic than reaching PMF.
Hiring talent that is passionate about delivering a quality product is more important than ever considering there are so many ways to take shortcuts now that might not be obvious until later.
If you have product-minded Engineers and engineering-minded PMs, you can merge the two into a single function and remove much of the friction surrounding requirements, prototyping, and launching MVPs.
A couple of these products are already being deployed by F100 security teams as we speak. I also know of one F10 that's building it's own entire security platform from scratch with a team of security engineers working directly with one of the foundation model vendors.
Too many people on HN are divorced or too OOTL from some of these initiatives and then get blindsided during layoffs.
What matters now is DOMAIN EXPERIENCE. Do you understand good development principles and the problem your ICP is trying to solve and how pricing, packaging, and procurement is structured? I don't need a code monkey, process sloths, and queens of the calendar. I need domain experts who can actually execute.
What separates a code monkey from a domain expert? Can you use infosec and embedded systems as two examples please?
The organizations I've worked in and funded would recognize it's a prototype and then staff accordingly unless it a vibecoded portion of a cost center part of the product - those are fine to be one-and-done.
In other words, companies don't need managers anymore. Except for one manager. Him.
See "we don't need managers" (flat orgs), "we don't need infra" (DevOps philosophy), "we don't need QA" (devs handling testing), "we don't need product" (product engineering), "we don't need frontend devs" (no code generators) and of course all the AI related workforce reduction.
To me, it says something about how detached leadership is from how the sausage is made.
Twitter was a success _despite_ him. the original idea was strong enough to blast through all of the odd/wrong decisions he took. The time it took to make hashtags a thing, the terrible scaling, the huge overhiring, and deliberate duplication of teams, and his inability/reluctance to make any product decision. Sure he's got great connections, but he is a terrible leader of a buisness
Most of his product philosophy is negatively correlated with businesses that need to make a profit to survive.
I know what he'll do, he'll have someone make a bunch of agents to manage all these poor people via chat. he'll boast about how AI native the company is, it'll be chaos.
It didn’t work, so they went back to having managers.
But this time it will work. Because, AI, of course.
PMs and Engineers made the prioritization decisions.
If someone was severely underperforming, it'd probably take at least 6 months to notice.
Projects would get shut down with very little notice (though I guess that's been a Google constant).
Within two years they had added 3-4 more layers though, after realizing the managers were, after all, needed.
I wonder if that's the main concern or if communication / coordination costs are the larger concern
These people are amusing to say the least.
> "I hate the way people use slide presentations instead of thinking," Jobs once said, according to a book published last month by David Pogue. "People who know what they're talking about don't need PowerPoint.
"Keynote began as a computer program for Apple CEO Steve Jobs to use in creating the presentations for Macworld Conference and Expo and other Apple keynote events."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynote_(presentation_software...
I am sorry for your friend, I hope that he is doing fine, Is there anything that they can legally do for this to block?
> "I hate the way people use slide presentations instead of thinking," Jobs once said, according to a book published last month by David Pogue.
I wonder what he'll think about these vibecoded prototypes and if it's more thinking or less thinking
And then there is the problem that vibecoding is addictive so the more one has done of it on the prototype, the worse one's judgement of whether it's actually something worth building...
Maybe if he had one freaking friend he would realize how effing stupid he has become...
BTW, the easiest way to get fired right now...is to over-use AI in an attempt to fool a domain expert.....or in short do not use it to perform in senior position interviews!
Yes, there is even a compliance post(podcast) about Delve talking about that context aspect of it...
Is the idea that prototypes give the Permission Granter more fidelity into a proposal and therefore can make better decisions? Whereas before, with Slide Decks, the Permission Granter couldn't experience certain things and therefore couldn't make as good decisions to grant permissions?
So in effect this remains a billionaire figure speaking from their own perspective and we're supposed to care?
These clowns live in a dreamworld created by their PAs and cronies