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Tech and startups: 8th July 2025

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Published 8th July 2025

🔧 Company Engineering Blogs

An inside look at Meta’s transition from C to Rust on mobile (engineering​.fb​.com). Meta engineers transition core messaging library from legacy C to Rust, enhancing developer happiness and modernizing systems for Messenger, Facebook, and Instagram

Tactical Coding Assistants (medium​.com/booking-com-development). Explores tactical and strategic programming with LLMs, emphasizing responsibilities of human developers when using AI coding assistants like Gemini 2.5 Pro and Claude 3.7

đŸ‘„ Engineering Teams & Hiring

Why Organizations Need Expert Generalists (martinfowler​.com). Organizations benefit from Expert Generalists: curious, collaborative individuals who blend core programming skills with deep expertise in multiple domains, enhancing adaptability

Naming Software Teams (staysaasy​.com). Guidelines for naming software teams to avoid mission overlap and enhance organizational efficiency with strong, clear team names

Designing a Hiring Loop in the Age of AI (kellysutton​.com). Reflections on hiring practices in 2025, AI tools' impact, overemployment trend, and Scholarly's designed hiring loop for software engineers

How to hire force multipliers (not 10x engineers) (leaddev​.com). Focus on hiring force multipliers instead of 10x engineers, emphasizing collaboration, team culture, and critical soft skills for effective software development

10x Engineers as Double-Edged Swords (avivbenyosef​.com). Explores the pitfalls of having too many 10x engineers in startups, emphasizing due diligence, opportunity costs, and the impact of AI on decision-making

Back to Working Together (craigjamieson​.com). Emphasizing collaboration, Craig Jamieson discusses remote work, flexible meeting spaces, and creative engagements to enhance team interactions and reduce reliance on formal setups

📈 Engineering Career Growth

26 Year Old Meta Staff Eng (IC6) On Promotions, Redefining Expectations, Secret Equity Bonuses (developing​.dev). Simon Kindström's rapid promotion at Meta showcases impactful work, effective writing, learning from failures, and navigating a challenging transition back from management

Diversity, specific feedback, and performance axes 💡 (refactoring​.fm). Explore diversity in engineering teams, specific feedback practices, and axes of performance management tools like Gusto and Unblocked for enhanced organizational effectiveness

From Staff to Principal: The Playbook for 10x Influence (newsletter​.techworld-with-milan​.com). Thiago Ghisi shares insights on scaling engineering influence, shifting from code output to strategic system design, and leveraging high-impact work at Nubank

How Snowflake’s DevProd team operates (newsletter​.getdx​.com). Snowflake's DevProd team emphasizes trust, operational excellence, and tailored communication to enhance developer productivity, using standardized help channels and customer advisory roles

🚀 Startup Stories & Funding

Why Investors Don't Care About Your Business (steveblank​.substack​.com). Investors prioritize extraordinary returns; founders mistakenly believe good businesses attract funding, while VCs chase high-potential sectors like AI and tech

Ethiopian Self-Taught Developer Raises $5M For His Authentication Tool, Backed By YC (peopleofcolorintech​.com). Ethiopian self-taught developer Bereket Engida raises $5M for Better Auth, an open-source authentication tool favored by AI startups

🎧🍌 $50M ARR with 30 Employees: Inside Gamma's Journey to 50 Million Users | Co-founder and CEO Grant Lee (thespl​.it). $50M ARR with 30 employees, Gamma prioritizes design, AI-native product, and efficiency while fostering a culture of trust and zero attrition

Simon Hamp & Shane Rosenthal — Building & Monetizing NativePHP (thebootstrappedfounder​.com). Shane Rosenthal and Simon Hamp successfully adapted PHP and Laravel for mobile, creating NativePHP and a profitable venture in innovative technology

Starting Pezeta (decoding​.io). Zsolt Benke from Hungary initiates Pezeta, a minimalist budgeting app that shows users their real-time spending limit without complicated features

This $20M AI Founder Is Challenging Elon and Sam Altman | Roy Lee, Cluely (news​.aakashg​.com). Roy Lee, a viral AI founder, discusses Cluely's $6M ARR, real-time assistance tech, and fundraising successes challenging OpenAI and xAI

Startups to Watch & Tech Talents (juliadeluca​.substack​.com). LatAm fintech startups Core AI and Mani enter active phase, showcasing founders' impressive backgrounds while four others shift to stealth mode in tech entrepreneurship

đŸ’Œ AI Business & Market Dynamics

Anthropic and OpenAI Have Begun The Subprime AI Crisis (wheresyoured​.at). Anthropic and OpenAI face significant financial losses, while Cursor emerges as a profitable AI tool for coding amidst the growing subprime AI crisis

Are AI Coding Tools Devaluing Software Products? (jasonstcyr​.com). AI coding tools democratize software building but risk devaluing engineering effort, leading to perceptions of lower value in software products

The Manufacturing Approach to Software Development (lord​.technology). Explores a manufacturing-inspired approach to software development, emphasizing AI agent orchestration and code generation over traditional coding and manual debugging practices

Experimentation over capabilities (efekarakus​.com). Organizations adopt 'capability' in generative AI, emphasizing experimentation over rigid feature delivery to enhance evaluation and performance of LLM systems

đŸ€– AI Coding Tools & Development

I Shipped a macOS App Built Entirely by Claude Code (simonwillison​.net). Indragie Karunaratne utilizes Claude Code to develop Context, a macOS app for debugging MCP servers with minimal manual coding

Building a Mac app with Claude code (indragie​.com). Indragie Karunaratne shares insights on building the macOS app Context using Claude Code, exploring AI coding tools and their effectiveness in software development

Software engineering with LLMs in 2025: temperature check (blog​.pragmaticengineer​.com). Insights on AI tools' impact and usage in software engineering from the LDX3 2025 conference, with focus on experimentation and critical adoption

How AI is changing software engineering at Shopify with Farhan Thawar (newsletter​.pragmaticengineer​.com). Farhan Thawar on Shopify's use of AI tools like GitHub Copilot, unlimited tokens, and the integration of AI in engineering workflows

Software engineering with LLMs in 2025: reality check (newsletter​.pragmaticengineer​.com). Insights on AI tools usage in software engineering from Anthropic, Google, Amazon, and startup developers, highlighting successes and challenges

Karpathy: AI is changing Software Engineering (bytepawn​.com). Karpathy discusses the transition from Software 1.0 to LLM-powered 3.0, emphasizing AI's role in software development and human verification processes

July challenge: Using Claude Code to build a Micro-SaaS start to finish in a month (stonesoup​.vision). Challenge to build a Micro-SaaS using Claude Code, exploring tools like Cursor AI and TypeBot, while documenting the journey of non-technical entrepreneurship

What I learned building an AI coding agent for a year (jamesgrugett​.com). Insights from building Codebuff, an AI coding agent, detailing successes, challenges, future predictions, and technical considerations over a year-long journey

🎯 Product Development & Strategy

The early validation lesson: designing Quotient’s prompt sandbox (evilmartians​.com). Quotient's AI prompt sandbox: balancing vision and early user feedback revealed market readiness challenges in the evolving AI development landscape

Perfect Match: Your Preferences and Career Opportunities (leadinginproduct​.com). Evaluate career moves in product management using structured questions on company scale, working style, growth opportunities, and work-life integration

Agency vs Ambition (svpg​.com). Exploration of ambition and agency in product teams, emphasizing their role in creating empowered environments and continuous improvement within top companies

Building smarter, not just faster: Product Discovery in the GenAI Era (medium​.com/gumgum-tech). GenAI transforms product discovery, emphasizing the need for strategic thinking, cross-functional teams, and continuous collaboration to build valuable products efficiently

The $4.6T Service-as-Software opportunity: Lessons from year one (foundationcapital​.com). AI-native startups utilize intelligent agents in Services-as-Software, transforming enterprise workflows, pricing models, and customer engagement strategies across diverse sectors

When a PM takes over engineering (newsletter​.manager​.dev). João Ramos shares insights on bridging gaps between engineering and product management, emphasizing empathy, user engagement, and continuous improvement in tech projects

⚙ Technical Architecture & Philosophy

Inverse Triangle Inequality (matklad​.github​.io). Exploring the Inverse Triangle Inequality's role in mathematics and software engineering, emphasizing smaller commits, refactors, releases, and the benefits of thorough problem exploration

Local First Software Is Easier to Scale (elijahpotter​.dev). Local-first software minimizes scaling needs, optimizing performance by processing tasks on-device, exemplified by Harper's ability to handle increased user traffic effortlessly

Slow and Steady Wins the Race (bramadams​.dev). Exploring the frenetic pace of software development, diverse incentives for stakeholders, and the importance of meaningful conversations with users during product onboarding

AppSec/ProdSec's reality gap: why theory doesn't match practice (ventureinsecurity​.net). Exploring the gap between theoretical and practical aspects of AppSec and ProdSec, emphasizing real-world challenges, contextual intelligence, and integrating security into development workflows

Technical Independence (joshtronic​.com). Exploration of technical independence, self-hosting, control over scaling, and reliance on platforms versus managing personal tech stacks

The Messy Middle (friendgineers​.rosenshein​.org). Exploration of the messy middle between products and platforms, addressing communication, internal structures, and the challenges within organizations like Microsoft and Uber

Voxicle Build Log 16 (haseebmajid​.dev). Enhancements to observability in Voxicle using LGTM stack and Grafana; updates to the settings page for organizational details

What happens when engineers work more than one job (seangoedecke​.com). Examining the phenomenon of engineers holding multiple remote jobs, its feasibility, employer reactions, and implications on productivity and ambient processing

🏱 Company Stories & Analysis

Year two of freelancing (stgraber​.org). StĂ©phane Graber shares updates on Zabbly, Incus, and FuturFusion, highlighting consulting work, YouTube growth, new features, and contributions to open-source projects

IPO Alert: Breaking Down Figma's S1 Filing (mostlymetrics​.com). Figma's S1 filing analysis reveals revenue, margins, retention, and potential valuation, alongside insights on Campfire, an AI-first ERP solution for finance

Podcasts on The Startup Community Movement (feld​.com). Exploration of Seattle's startup community evolution with notable podcasts and insights from Ian Hathaway and lessons from the Boulder Thesis

How Zoom Took Over The World (news​.aakashg​.com). John Beckmann discusses Zoom's rapid growth, product development during the pandemic, interview tips, advanced features, and future innovations like AI integration and event broadcasting

👋 Before you go

I've got a big favor to ask - keeping Blaze running isn't expensive, but it does all add up, so I'm asking readers like you to help, if you can.
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Thanks for reading and being part of this nerdy corner of the internet. All the best - Alastair.

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