Ideas on AI, engineering & careers.
Field notes from a team that builds AI products and staffs AI-fluent engineers.
The AI-Fluent Engineer Premium: A Practical Guide to Hiring for What Actually Matters
The salary gap between an AI-fluent engineer and a general software engineer now exceeds $25,000 at the floor — and the job posting data is even more extreme. Here's what the numbers mean and how to screen for the real thing.
AI's First Real Friction: What New York's Data Center Ban and Big-Tech Restructuring Mean for Engineering Hiring
New York's historic data center moratorium, Microsoft's Xbox layoffs, and a lawsuit alleging AI-driven terminations at Meta are converging signals that the AI boom's frictionless growth phase is over — here's what engineering leaders need to understand.
The Two-Tier Engineering Market: What the 2025 Data Actually Shows
Tech job postings are down 36% and programmer employment has fallen 27.5% — yet demand for senior, AI-fluent engineers has never been more intense. Here's what the numbers mean for hiring managers and engineers right now.
Tech's Two-Tier Job Market: What Mid-2025 Data Tells Hiring Managers and Engineers
Tech layoffs are surging and job postings are at multi-year lows — but beneath the headline numbers, a sharp split has emerged between contracting generalist roles and genuinely scarce senior and AI-fluent engineering talent.
Engineering Hiring in 2025: Understanding the Two-Tier Market
Tech layoffs are mounting and job postings are down 36% from pre-pandemic levels — yet 87% of tech leaders say they still can't find skilled workers. Here's what the data actually shows about where engineering demand is contracting and where it's quietly surging.
New Grad? Here's How to Stand Out in an AI-First Job Market
The bar moved, but so did the opportunity. A practical playbook for early-career engineers entering an AI-first industry.
Building Production RAG: Lessons from the Ryzlink Pods
Retrieval-augmented generation looks easy in a demo and hard in production. Here's what our pods learned shipping it for real.