The most future-proof job: Entrepreneurship shopify.com/news/future-proo… via @Shopify

Introducing: OpenGranola 🔥 I built an open source meeting copilot for macOS. It transcribes both sides of your call on-device, searches your own notes in real time, and hands you talking points right when the conversation needs them. No audio leaves your Mac. Point it at a folder of markdown files, pick any LLM through OpenRouter (Claude, GPT-4o, Gemini, Llama), and it just works. It's invisible to screen share too — nobody knows you have it. The whole thing is open source. Link below

“It is literally cheaper to build the thing and see if it works than to have a 30 minute planning meeting about whether you should build it.”

AI: It's all about ideas and execution is a commodity Market: Capybara simulator

new pricing strategy just dropped “Free for humans” is the new “Free Trial”

Remote work forces a written culture. A written culture means the AI can engage with your culture and act on it.

Mind-blowing chart of the week here. Southern Europe has, for perhaps the first time in modern history, a lower headline unemployment rate than Northern Europe.

The most important division between companies is between those who make things they themselves admire, and those who regard their customers as fools, and cynically give them what they want. Companies sometimes shift from the former to the latter, but never in the other direction.

Last September I announced mandatory return-to-office. Five days a week. I called it a "culture-first initiative." Culture means presence. Presence means badge swipes. Badge swipes mean metrics. Metrics mean I can prove something to the board. I don't know what. But I can prove it. The announcement went out on a Tuesday. I sent it from my home office. In Aspen. I have an exemption. "Strategic leaders require location flexibility to maintain global perspective." I wrote that policy. HR approved it. HR approves everything I write. By Wednesday, 340 employees had updated their LinkedIn status to "Open to Work." I called it "natural attrition." Natural attrition means they quit before I had to pay severance. Very natural. We lost 47 engineers in the first month. I told the board it was "alignment correction." The people who left weren't aligned. With coming to an office. That I also don't come to. But that's different. I'm strategic. The office costs $4.2 million per year. Empty, it was a write-off. Now it's a "collaboration hub." I measured collaboration. Average daily Zoom calls from the office: 7.4 per employee. They commute 45 minutes. To take calls they could take from home. But now they're "present." Presence is culture. I've never been more certain of anything. A senior engineer asked why we couldn't stay remote. She had metrics. Productivity was up 23% during remote work. I said, "Productivity isn't everything." She asked what else mattered. I said, "Serendipitous collisions." She asked how we measure serendipitous collisions. I said, "You can't. That's what makes them serendipitous." She stopped asking questions. Then she stopped showing up. Then LinkedIn said she's at a company that's "remote-first." Good luck with that. They'll learn. We installed badge tracking software. It cost $380,000. It tells me exactly when people arrive. And when they leave. And how long they spend in each zone. I check it every morning. From home. The data is fascinating. Average arrival time: 9:47 AM. Average departure time: 4:12 PM. I sent a Slack message. "Core hours are 9 to 6." Arrival times shifted to 9:02 AM. Departure times shifted to 6:01 PM. Productivity did not change. But the metrics look better. Metrics are culture. We have a "hybrid" option now. Three days in office. Mandatory Monday. Mandatory Wednesday. Mandatory Friday. That's called "hybrid." Because Tuesday and Thursday are optional. But there are "anchor meetings" on Tuesday and Thursday. Attendance is "strongly encouraged." "Strongly encouraged" means mandatory without the liability. I learned that from legal. The head of product asked if he could work from home when his wife had surgery. I said, "Of course. Family comes first." Then I said, "But let's revisit your Q4 performance targets." He came to the office. His wife understood. I assume. I didn't ask. That's personal. The CFO asked about ROI on the RTO policy. I showed him the badge data. "Presence is up 340%." He asked if revenue was up. I said, "Revenue is a lagging indicator." He asked what the leading indicator was. I said, "Badge swipes." He nodded. The lease renews next year. Seven more years. $29 million committed. We needed bodies in the building. Now we have bodies. Fewer than before. But present. Morale is down. Glassdoor says we're "hostile to work-life balance." I told HR to respond. They wrote, "We're a high-performance culture that values in-person collaboration." That's corporate for "the review is accurate." But it sounds like a rebuttal. The CEO asked if RTO was working. I said, "Absolutely." He asked for evidence. I showed him a photo of the office. Full desks. Glowing monitors. Bodies in chairs. He smiled. "This is what culture looks like." It looked like a stock photo. Because I got it from a stock photo website. The real office has 40% occupancy on a good day. But he doesn't know that. He's also remote. We're both strategic. Next quarter I'm proposing a "collaboration bonus." $2,000 for anyone with 95% badge-in compliance. The bonus costs less than the turnover. And it shifts the narrative. We're not forcing people to come in. We're "incentivizing presence." Incentivizing means paying people to do something they don't want to do. It's different from mandating. Legally. The employees who stayed are "loyal." Loyalty means they have mortgages. And kids in school districts. And RSUs that haven't vested. They're not loyal. They're trapped. But on paper, it looks like loyalty. And paper is what the board sees. I've been doing this for 22 years. I know what culture looks like. It looks like butts in seats. Butts in seats mean control. Control means management. Management means me. RTO isn't about productivity. It never was. It's about seeing people. So I know they exist. So I know they're working. So I know I'm in charge. That's culture. As long as the badge swipes go up and to the right.

this is really really an excellent way to think about people. i remember trying to get a job & rejected without even an interview.. ironically the person who rejected me follows me on here. this happens because most companies think of shapes first then look for people to match those shapes. if you don’t fit the pre drawn silhouette, they don’t even bother to see if you’re actually better than the silhouette. the deeper pathology is that the hiring manager’s incentives are often not aligned with the org’s. the company wants extraordinary talent.. the manager often wants safe, legible, & low variance compliance. so the real outliers get filtered out.

“@lovable created 10% of new websites on the internet last month” —@antonosika @RaiseSummit

Marco is one of the most driven founders I have ever met. And he keep going 👏

Seriously no Linkedin split view on iPad?

If you want to know what the next foundation model will look like, just look at the job postings on Mercor They are a professional data labeling service for the labs Medical imaging seems to be a major focus area

So difficult to see for many people - « but this wil improve the thing I work on every day, the other might not work » 🫠

From the moment i met @MaxPrilutskiy and @vrcprl at the @Esade eWorks Incubation program with a rough idea I knew their commitment was unstoppable. Wonderful team, humble and motivated, wish you all the best!

True in general and even more so in the current time: get a clear position, either as a specialist or a great generalist. In-betweens will struggle

Here are some giveaway ChatGPT responses in research papers I collected, because I woke up too early this morning and thought it would be funny.

Agent Engineer Needed. You do not need to have gone to Waterloo. Must be proficient in: Bolt v0 Cursor Replit agent Every day in office in SF. Paying $5k referral bonus is we end up hiring them. Share with your network.

New incredible opportunity for startups and aspiring entrepreneurs in the Republic of #Congo! 🚀 Details here 👉 eni.com/joule/en-IT/our-call…