(3.5 min read)
AI decimating tech
I’m currently working as a software engineering manager for a $43 B fintech company.
When I got the job 6 months ago, I realized “There’s a good chance this will be my last tech job. This field is getting decimated by AI.”
In these past 6 months, there have already been multiple rounds of layoffs just at my company (and countless more elsewhere).
AI is powerful, magical, accelerating.
The recruiting world has always been broken (ineffective at matching talent with opportunity) and now will be completely useless.
I still believe that this is likely my last tech job.
If I get laid off, I’ll need to figure out a different way to earn money.
Years ago, companies hiring lots of people was a sign that the company was thriving.
That’s flipped recently.
Now, if a company is hiring people, investors start to worry “What are they thinking? Don’t they know how to use AI efficiently and effectively?”
Companies are trying to thin out at much as possible.
They do it in at least 3 ways:
terminate people directly
squeeze people so hard they want to quit
change policies (like “no more remote work”) knowing that people will leave
This is a dark way to begin a newsletter issue, but I actually am very curious to see how this story plays out.
I wonder if this means I’m also not afraid of death.
Death, and anything unknown, seems beyond judgment to me.
Our futures (even as near as 12 months away) seem very hard to predict.
But that doesn’t mean they’ll be bad.
We’ll just need to adapt.
Humans are excellent at that.
On a personal note
Who’s the person you’d trust to fix a broken project, clean up a process, or bring order to chaos?
The fixer. The calm in the storm. The one who turns half-baked ideas into working solutions.
I’m lucky enough to know someone like that. Even luckier because she’s my sister.
And she’s looking for her next role.
In the last few years, she’s:
✅ Launched programs that served 5,000+ learners
✅ Built systems used by 100+ coaches nationwide
✅ Created project ops frameworks that saved teams thousands of hours
She’s made a career out of scaling high-impact initiatives in workforce development and mission-driven organizations.
Now she’s exploring opportunities in:
🔸 Product Ops
🔸 Program Management
🔸 Learning Design
Know a team hiring? Or someone she should meet? Comment or email me. I’d love to connect you.
(Pro tip: comments help this post reach more awesome people. Even a simple “Y” or emoji makes a difference.)
She’s written a cover letter here.
By the way: If you’ve made a great career move recently, what helped you land it? I’d love to hear.
Half of the jobs I’ve gotten in my career have been through referrals.
So I’m a big believer that connections matter, and I’d greatly appreciate any ideas for my sister. Thanks!
My first attempt at vibe coding
Over the past 2-3 years, I’ve used plenty of AI autocomplete for huge chunks of code. It has been so impressive and helpful.
But only this past week did I finally try a tool that claimed it would be able to deploy a public website just from plain English prompts.
Here’s what I did:
I already had a free Vercel account.
My sisters and their families were visiting town and said that they wanted to meet up soon but I shouldn’t head over there for another 15 minutes.
I thought, “I don’t know when I’ll have another 15 minutes of free time, so let’s see what I can do.”
(Thanks to
for inspiration.)I visited https://v0.dev.
In fewer than 10 prompts, it had built me this site and deployed it publicly for me:
https://MakerMatchApp.vercel.app
This was my main prompt, which created the site:
YC offers a cool co-founder match tool. It attracts super impressive people.
But they all seem to want to build an enormous company that gets VC funding.
I'm thinking of building an alternative matching tool specifically for people who just want to find a partner so that they can build a 2-person bootstrapped company.
I'd like to first create a landing page (with a signup form) to gather interest to see whether enough people would even want to create a profile on a site like this.
Please create for me an attractive signup page that looks compelling for my desired audience.
You can also repel people that it shouldn't be for.
And mention that it will allow you to ask custom multiple choice questions to tune the matching algorithm.
Holy shit.
In those 15 minutes I had built an actual, working website (with a database) that probably had better copywriting and design than I would have done myself.
How cool is that!
That would have taken me many hours (maybe days) without AI.
Many of the followup prompts were little bits like:
please change the window title to "MakerMatch - Find your perfect bootstrapped business partner"
I.e. if I saw something that I wanted to change, I could just ask for the change.
And this AI acted like the happiest, fastest, cheapest (free) employ in the universe.
I’ll be curious to see if enough people sign up to this landing page.
If they do, I’ll use AI to actually build the full site.
If they don’t, I’ll move on to my next totally separate experiment.
I already have a plan for what I’ll try tomorrow.
Eventually, maybe something I build will be useful to people.
🕙 Recent posts:
🟢 The asteroid hurtling towards Earth
🟢 How Writing Twice a Week Changed My Life (But Not How I Expected)
🟢 The zoom lens trick that makes you happier
🟢 Doing what I hate on my birthday
👀 Caught my eye this week:
I recommend you check out
, who is one of the most prolific writers at https://www.indiehackers.com/authors/james-fleischmann, which is such a cool site!🗨️ Quote of the day
If you were a main character in a movie and other people in your life were watching, what would they be cheering you on for? What would they be bought into right now? How would they be invested?
I miss you
I used to write 2x / week but have been so busy that it’s decreased to maybe 1x / month.
I miss connecting with you on here! If you get this far, reach out and say hi!
What’s the MVP build, but of marketing? Building isn’t enough. Need to do a minimal job of marketing for a test to actually work these days.
Glad I inspired you!