Three Ideas for Sunday
When it comes to communication with humans who care about Rands, I have many mediums at my disposal. Twitter used to be the dominate medium, but then that guy screwed it up. BlueSky is the most likely replacement, although I like Mastodon’s vibes. There’s also the Rands Leadership Slack (which celebrates its tenth anniversary in San Francisco next week!) and this mailing list.
The shocking consistency of the growth of this rarely used newsletter is baffling. It grows consistently every month, whether I send mail or not. So hi. I will dial up original content to this channel and see what happens.
Three topics you should care about as a leader:
Thought #1: You’ve probably heard it’s really easy to build products in ChatGPT or Claude.ai. It’s not easy, it’s shockingly easy, and whether you’re an engineering leader or not, you should start building a small something in one of these tools to understand what I mean when I say “easy.” As a leader, this is critical homework you must complete to understand the rapidly evolving tool landscape. (PS. You’ve never coded. That’s fine. Tell the robot that, and it will walk you through the process.)
Thought #2: It’s May, and if you’re like many companies, review season is somewhere during the Fall. Save yourself an inordinate amount of time and spend (5) minutes writing about each of your directs. Just (5) minutes to get your head around what feedback you’ll deliver in the Fall. This short exercise will help you prioritize what coaching they might need, alert you to potential complicated situations, and/or prepare you for promotion conversations. (5) minutes. Typing or writing.
Thought #3: I wrote more thoughts about the state of AI. It was a complex, fun piece to write.
Be well,
Rands.