waqas.bsky.social
wisdom is in the nuances space between easy answers. long-form writing @ https://waqas-sheikh.com
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Yes, exactly. Building-to-learn, when done well, offers an efficient path to building confidence in value, viability, feasibility, et al. I qualify "when done well" because the difference between there's a high bar of rigor needed to actually do this well, not just surface-level.
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I'm glad you're putting this out there, since much of the excitement today with AI prototyping is coming from a place of validation & confirmation bias ("look at how cool my idea is") as opposed to a place of curiosity, exploration & disconfirming priors.
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For better or worse, this was looking inevitable. Amazon is in full-on consolidation and harvesting mode these days.
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Agreed, and PMs who tend to anchor and engage on solutions are bound to struggle.
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one of the problems is that we confuse the synthesis use case with the summarization use case, and conflate them.
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Really like this perspective, Amy. There is more overlap between “being strategic” and “daily execution” than we realize.
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The implication of this is that if you're leading the product review, you need to be able to discern when detailed questions are actually getting at the details or not.
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this gets real interesting with memory, long content windows and such!
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my teams are working on a gnarly 'paradox of choice' problem these days and this thinking very much resonates.
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The reactionary motivation you’re talking about is definitely a problem. And yes, when polarization is incentivized by the algo (it takes work for it not to be!) then bad things happen
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And I’d bet this understates revealed preferences quite a bit too!
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If you feel the need to replace talent on your team, consider what parts of your own system need upgrading too. From my experience, there is always something to learn here.
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Why do you think this is the case?
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Worth pointing out then the leadership responsibility to set the right expectations & bar
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On the contrary, I feel this is a gap that is primarily an environmental one, and can be nurtured
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It’s a gap on both creativity and process. And a very costly one, too
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Perhaps a reflection of many companies not leveraging design that way in the first place. Unfortunate, really!
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That's great. I saw your original post as making a general point though.
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"seasoned ICs don’t really need managing. They just need you to get out of their way"
from my experience, this claim is popular but flawed. if you include things like leadership & coaching under management, I've found that even very senior people benefit from that. sometimes even more than juniors!
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So much of GenAI can be the next best version of the bicycle of the mind; it surprises me how many people want it to replace the mind though!
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I’d be careful not to write home with this claim just yet. “Useful” can mean many things at this stage; I still think they have meaningful headwinds to navigate in this journey
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"Nobody wants to give another person feedback, but everyone is willing to share their opinion"
Spot on. Useful reframe for both internal and external interactions.
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I don’t want this to come across as cynical. At least Claude was transparent. We should demand the same from other frontier model builders!
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Nice, Amy. Kudos to you for sharing other writers’ work.
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Is your assumption that this is unique to Claude? Maybe what’s unique is that they chose to share it.
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Makes a lot of sense, honestly. Starts with deep motivation
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Yup, there are degrees to this (en)shitt.
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There are degrees to this. We're entering unchartered territory, to your point. This isn't just run-of-the-mill product entropy. I think we're seeing it the same way
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I think this goes a bit beyond general-purpose enshittification :)
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🔗 open.substack.com/pub/waqaswri...