I usually tweet about software, philosophy, and everything interesting in between.
An Eiderdown
Joined March 2018
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Youssef (locked in) retweeted
If you read one thing this weekend, make it Rivka Galchen’s “Proof of Concept” in The New Yorker.
She follows Terence Tao and fellow mathematicians as they ask: If AI can get us to the answer without getting stuck, where will we learn what getting stuck used to teach us?
Youssef (locked in) retweeted
TIL that the anecdote about the pottery students who made a million crappy pieces becoming good, is a fucking lie lesswrong.com/posts/LrAqM4bG…
Youssef (locked in) retweeted
It's not 300 AD anymore. Our social technology is not based on swords, sandals, and public crucifixions. There is a 0% chance we regress for 1000 years, a near 100% chance we rapidly regress in a few decades and then rapidly re-ascend in a few decades or a century and try again.
Youssef (locked in) retweeted
it's like the reverse of the Max Levchin story about almost losing the master key for PayPal's payment credentials (not gonna spoil further than that)
max.levch.in/post/7242894571…
Youssef (locked in) retweeted
Recent essay on this by @SCP_Hughes worksinprogress.co/issue/did…
Youssef (locked in) retweeted
I noticed the same pattern after rereading The Inner Game of Tennis.
The book is about tennis, but the core idea is that most of the noise comes from the “Self 1” that keeps judging and instructing instead of letting the body just play.
In management conversations I keep seeing the fixed-mindset version of that: people defending their current level instead of treating the conversation as practice.
Once you start listening for it, the feedback shifts. You stop trying to convince someone they’re capable and start asking what the next small experiment looks like.
That single change has saved more meetings than any framework I’ve tried. – at Puruliya, India
Youssef (locked in) retweeted
A fascinating essay by Owen Matthews questions the belief that a society of readers will necessarily become freer or more humane.
He contrasts anxiety about declining reading in the West with Russia’s substantial reading culture.
Youssef (locked in) retweeted
For most of the last decade, being a software engineer has been a lot of fun. Every company offered lots of perks, layoffs and firings were almost unheard of, and in general we were treated as special little geniuses who needed to be pampered so we could work our magic.
ALT For most of the last decade, being a software engineer has been a lot of fun. Every company offered lots of perks, layoffs and firings were almost unheard of, and in general we were treated as special little geniuses who needed to be pampered so we could work our magic. That’s changed in the last two years. The first round of tech layoffs in 2023 came as a shock, but at least companies were falling over themselves to offer generous severance and teary CEO letters regretting the necessity. Two years later, Meta is explicitly branding its layoffs as “these were our lowest performers, good riddance”. What the hell happened? What does it mean for us? Why did the vibe shift?
ALT In the 2010s, interest rates were zero or close to zero. Investors could thus borrow a lot of money. Much of that money was spent on tech companies in the hope of outsized returns. Tech companies were thus incentivized to (a) hire like crazy, and (b) do a lot of low-risk high-reward things, even if that ends up wasting money. Tech companies definitely did not have to be profitable. In fact, they didn’t even need to make money — they just had to acquire users, or at least hype, to drive up the valuation of the company itself. In that environment, throwing money at their software engineers (in the form of paid trips, in-house chefs, and huge comp packages) was a sensible business decision.
Youssef (locked in) retweeted
Remember Picasso remarked to Jünger that a painting would have the same effect if wrapped in paper and abandoned in a corner as it would admired by ten thousand people. Let’s hope this can console the unrecognised genius, whose work needn’t await posterity to possess its worth.
Youssef (locked in) retweeted
For fun, overly long (slightly bearish?) thoughts on Stripe —
Yeesh, I found out about a couple more personnel churns yesterday. Out of all the best people I worked with at Stripe, roughly half are at Anthropic and the other half are at OAI, with a misc few that fell through the cracks and went to startups. In absolute numbers, the extent to which this is true is actually funny, and a bit unnerving lol.
They're facing a perfect storm:
• Ant/OAI's engineering comp bands are so much higher than Stripe's that they more or less don't even overlap. i.e. The min comp at Ant/OAI is above (or about the same) as Stripe's max.
• Ant/OAI have both announced intent to IPO, providing a clear signal of future liquidity. The Collisons remain adamant in their intent not to IPO, and remind employees and potential hires of this on a regular basis (most recently, Aug 2026 investor letter). With every tender offer they've always been careful to insist that "no future tenders are guaranteed" and they made good on that this year, skipping what'd become a fairly reliable H2 tender.
• Stripe operates in the usual ultra-HCOL cities (SF, NYC), exactly where Ant/OAI also do all their hiring. But Ant/OAI are paying enough for the 52% tax and $7k/mo rent. Stripe isn't.
Stripe's processing payments for both Ant/OAI and as seen by their latest $159B valuation, gotten a major tailwind from that. But as we've seen recently from Ant/OAI who both literally reinvented Git (!!), it cannot underestimated the extent to which they'll rebuild in house. They've got the resources, the technology, and the grit to reinvent anything. I wouldn't be surprised if one or both companies have skunkworks microchip projects for god's sake.
Stripe's always prided itself on A-tier talent, but it's safe to say that their pipeline for that is closed. Is the plan to drop to B-tier/C-tier, or fall back on Europe or Asia? These are the types of conversations exec is having behind closed doors.
Talk about missed opportunity though! If they had IPOed during their fairly clear window (2025, early 2026), the market would have been extremely kind. These guys were the darlings of Silicon Valley and the stock would've been a rocket ship. Now I think I agree with the Collisons — it'd still go well, but they'd be upstaged by more impressive companies. Maybe private is better.
Stripe will be fine — it's still led by two of the best founders in SV, but it's a case study in how an A-tier company that can do no wrong and walks on water can slip to a B-tier company. You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become Paypal.
Youssef (locked in) retweeted
Vintage seed raising gold.. 🤠🥇💰
swooshing.wordpress.com/2009…
@travisk I'm a founder raising our first pre-seed round, and your @davidsenra episode changed how im thinking about raising. Ive watched it over 10 times. im obsessing over the "I never get attached to a price. I get attached to a process." line. Your DMs are closed, and i dont trust anyone else to answer this question so long shot…would you answer two quick questions on what that process would look like in your opinion for a pre seed round?
political speeches talk about achievements from the past (repealing jim crow, civil rights movement etc..) but was that always the case in say more idealistic times (50s/60s) and is that a sign in history of other civilizations that the peak has already passed?
Youssef (locked in) retweeted
Both Dana Perino and Brit Hume denounce all of the personal attacks on Jame Talarico, specifically the "Talafreako" nickname and Republicans suggesting he was in a mental institution.
It was their own Fox News colleagues peddling this stuff! Perino is a co-host of The Five with Jesse Watters and Greg Gutfeld, who said earlier today that Talarico is a "creepy guy" while implying he is a pedophile!
Youssef (locked in) retweeted
And was very pleasant about it. Made a lot of the frustration I felt towards her disappear and I genuinely started wishing her well in the future now instead of just saying it verbally.
Every failed mini relationship is another death. Death by a thousand cuts.
Youssef (locked in) retweeted
german poet heinrich von kleist went insane after learning about immanuel kant’s philosophy. he cancelled all his life plans, lost faith in God, shot a woman, and then killed himself in 1811. “my sole & highest goal has vanished, now i have none,” he wrote after discovering kant.
Youssef (locked in) retweeted
In a lecture in Nashville last month, billionaire Peter Thiel answered a question about UFOs predicated on the notion that Ezekiel's vision involved flying saucers. The questioner wanted to know if UFOs are connected to the Antichrist and Armageddon. His answer was ... weird.
