CDOQ

Imagine teaching a lion to speak perfect English. Every word pronounced flawlessly, grammar impeccable. Yet, a conversation with it would still be impossible. Its frames of reference are so alien to ours that true understanding cannot occur—just as Ludwig Wittgenstein noted in Philosophical Investigations : ‘If a lion could speak, we could not understand him.’ Now imagine a counterpart trained on the vast body of human knowledge: GenAI. Here, conversation is not only possible but also delightful, because its frame of reference aligns with ours. GenAI can reason, explain, and answer across countless domains. On the surface, it seems like a mind without limits. Conversations But there’s a catch. Unlike a lion, GenAI can confidently deliver falsehoods. Without deep understanding of the topic in discussion, you may never notice. Knowledge alone isn’t enough. Context, experience, and critical thinking remain irreplaceable—even when conversing with a machine that seems to know everything.

The world works because not everyone wants the same thing at the same time. 

If you’re not consistently making things better, they don’t stay the same—they get worse. 

Driving down Hwy 101 in Silicon Valley yesterday, I spotted this billboard (See image). It reminded me that while the Bay Area overflows with technical brilliance, tech companies often stumble when it comes to marketing and communication. The ad boldly declares: “DEPLOY BRAVELY.” Deploy Bravely? In software, deployment is the last place you want bravery. A good deployment should be boring—built on testing, quality assurance, monitoring, and the ability to roll back instantly if things go sideways. Sonos once deployed bravely and left some of its speakers effectively unusable.  The bravery resulted in the company’s market cap declining by half. I have no idea what Prisma Airs is—and the ad doesn’t make me interested in finding out more. Can you tell what it’s about?

I met a software engineer yesterday at a conference — let’s call him Ted (not his real name). He has worked at well-known Silicon Valley companies like Square, Google, and Yelp. Ted told me that culture varies widely across companies. I asked, “But how does that affect your job? You’re a software engineer — you just have to code to the requirements.” He smiled and said, “Culture defines how good the requirements are, how good my code is, and how happy the customer will be with the application.” Then Ted shared a practical test for culture: measure how much time you spend convincing others. If most of your energy goes into persuasion instead of building, the culture is working against you. In a healthy culture, things just flow — and you spend your day building, not convincing. In other words, in good cultures, it takes less energy to get things done.

Don't be so productive that you lose the joy of work. 

In investment banking, exploiting regulatory loopholes is often called innovation.