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Believe it's going to work even though it probably won't

2025-04-11 14:48:21

To be a successful founder, you have to believe that what you're working on is going to work — despite knowing it probably won't! That sounds like an oxymoron, but it's really not. Believing that what you're building is going to work is an essential component of coming to work with the energy, fortitude, and determination it's going to require to even have a shot. Knowing it probably won't is accepting the odds of that shot.

It's simply the reality that most things in business don't work out. At least not in the long run. Most businesses fail. If not right away, then eventually. Yet the world economy is full of entrepreneurs who try anyway. Not because they don't know the odds, but because they've chosen to believe they're special.

The best way to balance these opposing points — the conviction that you'll make it work, the knowledge that it probably won't — is to do all your work in a manner that'll make you proud either way. If it doesn't work, you still made something you wouldn't be ashamed to put your name on. And if it does work, you'll beam with pride from making it on the basis of something solid.

The deep regret from trying and failing only truly hits when you look in the mirror and see Dostoevsky staring back at you with this punch to the gut: "Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing." Oof.

Believe it's going to work.

Build it in a way that makes you proud to sign it.

Base your worth as a human on something greater than a business outcome.

Why we won't hire a junior with five years of experience

2025-04-08 18:04:28

We just opened a search for a new junior programmer at 37signals. It's been years since we last hired a junior, but the real reason the listing is turning heads is because we're open about the yearly salary: $145,849*. That's high enough that programmers with lots of experience are asking whether they could apply, even if they aren't technically "junior". The answer is no.

The reason we're willing to pay a junior more than most is because we're looking for a junior who's better than most. Not better in "what do they already know", but in "how far could they go". We're hiring for peak promise — and such promise only remains until it's revealed.

Maybe it sounds a little harsh, but a programmer who's been working professionally for five years has likely already revealed their potential. What you're going to get is roughly what you see. That doesn't mean that people can't get better after that, but it means that the trajectory by which they improve has already been plotted.

Whereas a programmer who's either straight out of school or fresh off their first internship or short-stint job is essentially all potential. So you draw their line on the basis of just a few early dots, but the line can be steep.

It's not that different from something like the NFL scouting combine. Teams fight to find the promise of The Next All-Star. These rookies won't have the experience that someone who's already played in the league for years would have, but they have the potential to be the best. Someone who's already played for several seasons will have shown what they have and be weighed accordingly.

This is not easy to do! Plenty of rookies, in sports and programming, may show some early potential, then fail to elevate their game to where the buyer is betting it could be. But that's the chance you take to land someone extraordinary.

So if you know a junior programmer with less than three years of industry experience who is sparkling with potential, do let them know of our listing. And if you know someone awesome who's already a senior programmer, we also have an opening for them.

*It's a funnily precise number because it's pulled directly from the Radford salary database, which we query for the top 10% of San Francisco salaries for junior programmers.

Universal Basic Dead End

2025-04-07 18:22:00

While the world frets about the future of AI, the universal basic income advocates have an answer ready for the big question of "what are we all going to do when the jobs are gone": Just pay everyone enough to loaf around as they see fit! Problem solved, right?

Wrong. The purpose of work is not just about earning your keep, but also about earning a purpose and a place in the world. This concept is too easily dismissed by intellectuals who imagines a world of liberated artists and community collaborators, if only unshackled by the burdens of capitalism. Because that's the utopia that appeals to them.

But we already know what happens to most people who lose their job. It's typically not a song-and-dance of liberation, but whimper with increasing despair. Even if they're able to draw benefits for a while.

Some of that is probably gendered. I think men have a harder time finding a purpose without a clear and externally validated station of usefulness. As a corollary to the quip that "women want to be heard, men want to be useful" from psychology. Long-term unemployment, even cushioned by state benefits, often leads men to isolation and a rotting well-being.

I've seen this play out time and again with men who've lost their jobs, men who've voluntarily retired from their jobs, and men who've sold their companies. As the days add up after the centering purpose in their life disappeared, so does the discontent with "the problem of being".

Sure, these are just anecdotes. Some men are thrilled to do whatever, whenever, without financial worries. And some women mourn a lost job as deeply as most men do. But I doubt it's evenly split.

Either way, I doubt we'll be delighted to discover what societal pillars wither away when nobody is needed for anything. If all labor market participation rests on intrinsic motivation. That strikes me as an obvious dead end.

We may not have a say in the manner, of course. The AI revolution, should it materialize like its proponents predict, has the potential to be every bit as unstoppable as the agricultural, industrial, and IT revolutions before it. Where the Luddites and the Amish, who reject these revolutions, end up as curiosities on the fringe of modern civilization. The rest of us are transformed, whether we like it or not.

But generally speaking, I think we have liked it! I'm sure it was hard to imagine what we'd all be doing after the hoe and the horse gave way to the tractor and combine back when 97% of the population worked the land. Same when robots and outsourcing claimed the most brutish assembly lines in the West. Yet we found our way through both to a broadly better place.

The IT revolution feels trickier. I've personally worked my life in its service, but I'm less convinced it's been as universal good as those earlier shifts. Is that just nostalgia? Because I remember a time before EVERYTHING IS COMPUTER? Possibly, but I think there's a reason the 80s in particular occupy such a beloved place in the memory of many who weren't even born then.

What's more certain to me is that we all need a why, as Viktor Frankl told us in Man's Search for Meaning. And while some of us are able to produce that artisanal, bespoke why imagined by some intellectuals and academics, I think most people need something prepackaged. And a why from work offers just that. Especially in a world bereft of a why from God.

It's a great irony that the more comfortable and frictionless our existence becomes, the harder we struggle with the "the problem of being". We just aren't built for a life of easy leisure. Not in mass numbers, anyway. But while the masses can easily identify the pathology of that when it comes to the idle rich, and especially their stereotyped trust-fund offspring, they still crave it for themselves.

Orwell's thesis is that heaven is merely that fuzzily-defined place that provides relief from the present hardships we wish to escape. But Dostoevsky remarks that should man ever find this relief, he'd be able to rest there for just a moment, before he'd inevitably sabotage it — just to feel something again.

I think of that often while watching The Elon Show. Musk's craving for the constant chaos of grand gestures is Dostoevsky's prediction underwritten by the wealth of the world's richest man. Heaven is not a fortune of $200 billion to be quietly enjoyed in the shade of a sombrero. It's in the arena.

I’ve also pondered this after writing about why Apple needs a new asshole in charge, and reflecting on our book, It Doesn't Have To Be Crazy At Work. Yes, work doesn’t have to be crazy, but for many, occasional craziness is part of the adventure they crave. They’ll tolerate an asshole if they take them along for one such adventure — accepting struggle and chaos as a small price to feel alive.

It's a bit like that bit from The Babylon Bee: Study Finds 100% Of Men Would Immediately Leave Their Desk Job If Asked To Embark Upon A Trans-Antarctic Expedition On A Big Wooden Ship. A comical incarnation of David Graeber's Bullshit Jobs thesis that derives its punchline from how often work lacks a Big Why. So when a megalomanic like Musk — or even just a run-of-the-mill asshole with a grand vision — offers one, the call of the wild beckons. Like that big wooden ship and the open sea.

But even in the absence of such adventure, a stupid email job offers something. Maybe it isn't much, maybe it doesn't truly nourish the soul, but it's something. In the Universal Basic Income scenario of having to design your own adventure entirely from scratch, there is nothing. Just a completely blank page with no deadline to motivate writing the first line.

If we kill the old 9-5 "why", we better find a new one. That might be tougher than making silicon distill all our human wisdom into vectors and parameters, but we have to pull it off.

Great AI Steals

2025-03-31 18:27:27

Picasso got it right: Great artists steal. Even if he didn’t actually say it, and we all just repeat the quote because Steve Jobs used it. Because it strikes at the heart of creativity: None of it happens in a vacuum. Everything is inspired by something. The best ideas, angles, techniques, and tones are stolen to build everything that comes after the original.

Furthermore, the way to learn originality is to set it aside while you learn to perfect a copy. You learn to draw by imitating the masters. I learned photography by attempting to recreate great compositions. I learned to program by aping the Ruby standard library.

Stealing good ideas isn’t a detour on the way to becoming a master — it’s the straight route. And it’s nothing to be ashamed of.

This, by the way, doesn’t just apply to art but to the economy as well. Japan became an economic superpower in the 80s by first poorly copying Western electronics in the decades prior. China is now following exactly the same playbook to even greater effect. You start with a cheap copy, then you learn how to make a good copy, and then you don’t need to copy at all.

AI has sped through the phase of cheap copies. It’s now firmly established in the realm of good copies. You’re a fool if you don’t believe originality is a likely next step. In all likelihood, it’s a matter of when, not if. (And we already have plenty of early indications that it’s actually already here, on the edges.)

Now, whether that’s good is a different question. Whether we want AI to become truly creative is a fair question — albeit a theoretical or, at best, moral one. Because it’s going to happen if it can happen, and it almost certainly can (or even has).

Ironically, I think the peanut gallery disparaging recent advances — like the Ghibli fever — over minor details in the copying effort will only accelerate the quest toward true creativity. AI builders, like the Japanese and Chinese economies before them, eager to demonstrate an ability to exceed.

All that is to say that AI is in the "Good Copy" phase of its creative evolution. Expect "The Great Artist" to emerge at any moment.

The Year on Linux

2025-03-29 21:40:26

I've been running Linux, Neovim, and Framework for a year now, but it easily feels like a decade or more. That's the funny thing about habits: They can be so hard to break, but once you do, they're also easily forgotten.

That's how it feels having left the Apple realm after two decades inside the walled garden. It was hard for the first couple of weeks, but since then, it’s rarely crossed my mind.

Humans are rigid in the short term, but flexible in the long term. Blessed are the few who can retain the grit to push through that early mental resistance and reach new maxima.

That is something that gets harder with age. I can feel it. It takes more of me now to wipe a mental slate clean and start over. To go back to being a beginner. But the reward for learning something new is as satisfying as ever.

But it's also why I've tried to be modest with the advocacy. I don't know if most developers are better off on Linux. I mean, I believe they are, at some utopian level, especially if they work for the web, using open source tooling. But I don't know if they are as humans with limited will or capacity for change.

Of course, it's fair to say that one doesn't want to. Either because one remain a fan of Apple, in dire need of the remaining edge MacBooks retain on efficiency/battery, or simply content inside the ecosystem. There are plenty of reasons why someone might not want to change. It's not just about rigidity.

Besides, it's a dead end trying to convince anyone of an alternative with the sharp end of a religious argument. That kind of crusading just seeds resentment and stubbornness. I know that all too well.

What I've found to work much better is planting seeds and showing off your plowshare. Let whatever curiosity that blooms find its own way towards your blue sky. The mimetic engine of persuasion runs much cleaner anyway.

And for me, it's primarily about my personal computing workbench regardless of what the world does or doesn't. It was the same with finding Ruby. It's great when others come along for the ride, but I'd also be happy taking the trip solo too.

So consider this a postcard from a year into the Linux, Neovim, and Framework journey. The sun is still shining, the wind is in my hair, and the smile on my lips hasn't been this big since the earliest days of OS X.

Singularity & Serenity

2025-03-28 20:30:59

The singularity is the point where artificial intelligence goes parabolic, surpassing humans writ large, and leads to rapid, unpredictable change. The intellectual seed of this concept was planted back in the '50s by early computer pioneer John von Neumann. So it’s been here since the dawn of the modern computer, but I’ve only just come around to giving the idea consideration as something other than science fiction.

Now, this quickly becomes quasi-religious, with all the terms being as fluid as redemption, absolution, and eternity. What and when exactly is AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) or SAI (Super Artificial Intelligence)? You’ll find a million definitions.

But it really does feel like we’re on the cusp of something. Even the most ardent AI skeptics are probably finding it hard not to be impressed with recent advances. Everything Is Ghibli might seem like a silly gimmick, but to me, it flipped a key bit here: the style persistence, solving text in image generation, and then turning those images into incredible moving pictures.

What makes all this progress so fascinating is that it’s clear nobody knows anything about what the world will look like four years from now. It’s barely been half that time since ChatGPT and Midjourney hit us in 2022, and the leaps since then have been staggering.

I’ve been playing with computers since the Commodore 64 entertained my childhood street with Yie Ar Kung-Fu on its glorious 1 MHz processor. I was there when the web made the internet come alive in the mid-'90s. I lined up for hours for the first iPhone to participate in the grand move to mobile. But I’ve never felt less able to predict what the next token of reality will look like.

When you factor in recent advances in robotics and pair those with the AI brains we’re building, it’s easy to imagine all sorts of futuristic scenarios happening very quickly: from humanoid robots finishing household chores à la The Jetsons (have you seen how good it’s getting at folding?) to every movie we watch being created from a novel prompt on the spot, to, yes, even armies of droids and drones fighting our wars.

This is one of those paradigm shifts with the potential for Total Change. Like the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, the information revolution. The kind that rewrites society, where it was impossible to tell in advance where we’d land.

I understand why people find that uncertainty scary. But I choose to receive it as exhilarating instead. What good is it to fret about a future you don’t control anyway? That’s the marvel and the danger of progress: nobody is actually in charge! This is all being driven by a million independent agents chasing irresistible incentives. There’s no pause button, let alone an off-ramp. We’re going to be all-in whether we like it or not.

So we might as well come to terms with that reality. Choose to marvel at the accelerating milestones we've been hitting rather than tremble over the next.

This is something most religions and grand philosophies have long since figured out. The world didn’t just start changing; we’ve had these lurches of forward progress before. And humans have struggled to cope with the transition since the beginning of time. So, the best intellectual frameworks have worked on ways to deal.

Christianity has the Serenity Prayer, which I’ve always been fond of:

God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.

That’s the part most people know. But it actually continues:

Living one day at a time,
enjoying one moment at a time;
accepting hardship as a pathway to peace;
taking, as Jesus did,
this sinful world as it is,
not as I would have it;
trusting that You will make all things right
if I surrender to Your will;
so that I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with You forever in the next.
Amen.

What a great frame for the mind!

The Stoics were big on the same concept. Here’s Epictetus:

Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions.

Buddhism does this well too. Here’s the Buddha being his wonderfully brief self:

Suffering does not follow one who is free from clinging.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that all these traditions converged on the idea of letting go of what you can’t control, not clinging to any specific preferred outcome. Because you’re bound to be disappointed that way. You don’t get to know the script to life in advance, but what an incredible show, if you just let it unfold.

This is the broader view of amor fati. You should learn to love not just your own fate, but the fate of the world — its turns, its twists, its progress, and even the inevitable regressions.

The singularity may be here soon, or it may not. You’d be a fool to be convinced either way. But you’ll find serenity in accepting whatever happens.

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