I generally write about product and technology from a practitioner's point of view. A thread with of some of my most load-bearing perspectives:
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Nan Yu✓
@thenanyu
product, codex @openai. prev head of product @linear
221 Following24.8K Followers9.7K Posts
- Nan YuRT @kylebrussell: William Shockley wanted to live close to his mom in Palo Alto in the mid 1950saugust (foss/acc) @augustdeployingcan someone tell me why we settled tech in SF?05090
- Posts @nikitabier@nikitabier died for thisMatt Slotnick @matt_slotnickwhat the hell is this? jesus christ please never do this again twitter30214.7K
what the hell is this? jesus christ please never do this again twitter
10117.5K- Posts @thenanyu“Delightful” they said in the design critMatt Slotnick @matt_slotnick@thenanyu @nikitabier This is amongst the most upsetting things a computer has ever done to me002442
- Posts @thenanyu@thenanyu @nikitabier This is amongst the most upsetting things a computer has ever done to me114587
- By the time it shows up in the data or UXR interviews it’s too late. The damage has been done and the reputation tarnishedCharlie Marsh @charliermarshCaring is the moat, you should feel visceral pain when things are bad or broken and stop at nothing to fix them7816214.9K
Caring is the moat, you should feel visceral pain when things are bad or broken and stop at nothing to fix them602542.3K109K- Instrumentation problem.gabriel @gabriel1"company brain" startups that construct information from internal messages and documents when they realize 90% of information only exist in peoples heads: 😭😭😵💫😵💫30225.4K
"company brain" startups that construct information from internal messages and documents when they realize 90% of information only exist in peoples heads: 😭😭😵💫😵💫581568639K- Nan YuRT @theo: "for logged in users across Codex & Work we keep cache forever" wtf. Biggest ship of the 28 days by far.Tibo @thsottiauxDay 16/ You can now cache for 12h in the API and for logged in users across Codex & Work we keep cache forever and you don’t have any penalty for coming back to an old conversation or resuming after a few hours and are now guaranteed to hit the cache.086086
Day 16/ You can now cache for 12h in the API and for logged in users across Codex & Work we keep cache forever and you don’t have any penalty for coming back to an old conversation or resuming after a few hours and are now guaranteed to hit the cache.2.6K68215.5K3.1M- I had the same conversation reminiscing at a team offsite the other day. “What did we pay attention to before AI?” “😅 Front end JavaScript frameworks”Gergely Orosz @GergelyOroszA frontend dev was telling me he's used to technology changing every year (or more often), so the pace of change with AI is not new, but he wouldn't mind retiring b/c it's getting tiring Then again I know (early) retired ppl who came back, because it finally looks v exciting! Grass greener on the other side?5212416.1K
A frontend dev was telling me he's used to technology changing every year (or more often), so the pace of change with AI is not new, but he wouldn't mind retiring b/c it's getting tiring Then again I know (early) retired ppl who came back, because it finally looks v exciting! Grass greener on the other side?1001164967.5K- Nan YuRT @danshipper: Codex is one of the most important untold stories in the history of technology. A year ago, it was a scrappy effort in a quiet corner of @OpenAI. Its cloud product hadn’t found PMF, and the team was starting over from scratch. Less than 12 months later: - Codex swallowed the flagship ChatGPT desktop app from the inside (it literally runs as com.openai.codex on your Mac) - Codex and ChatGPT for Work hit 40M+ weekly users across engineering and knowledge work - Its leader @thsottiaux was elevated to run all of OpenAI’s core products, including ChatGPT, Codex, and the API How did they pull it off? They trained their own dedicated model line, separate from ChatGPT, with researchers and product builders sitting on the same team They built four different products in a single year (cloud → terminal → IDE sidebar → a desktop app with no code editor at all) as every model leap made a new form factor possible They used Codex to build Codex—so a handful of people could prove a new product in weeks instead of arguing for it in meetings I had a front-row seat to the whole arc—from their failed Cloud launch, to OpenAI’s offices the night before GPT-5 dropped, to the day Codex took over ChatGPT. And I spent months interviewing @gdb, @thsottiaux, @embirico, @mia_glaese, @aambrosino, and @edbayes to get inside how it all went down. Here is the full, behind-closed-doors story of the team that remade OpenAI: We’re pushing the boundaries of how stories like this are told. This piece is completely agent-native—designed to be read alongside your agent inside ChatGPT’s in-app browser: - Every interview transcript is included in full: Click any quote and you (or your agent) can see the exact conversation it came from. - Built for your agent to explore: Ask your agent to pull out product lessons for your team, cross-examine the transcripts, or find insights I missed when writing the piece. It’s a story about the future of software—built to be read with an agent:062088
- Adding this one to my arsenalRhein Amacher @RheinAmacher00162.6K
Posts @jcg527911831.7K907K- Taste does not mean taste in aesthetics. That is the shallowest definition of taste, and uninteresting because it’s so common.MAILER-DAEMON @hassanrahimok genuine question and i’m not being obtuse — what is the whole discourse around “taste” right now? i’ve only ever worked in the creative industry so taste is literally a prerequisite, never really discussed bc you would otherwise not be in the room so is this “taste” conversation happening bc the world is now run by engineers who are trying to “solve” creativity? also what the fuck is a moat? i’m sorry72385.5K
ok genuine question and i’m not being obtuse — what is the whole discourse around “taste” right now? i’ve only ever worked in the creative industry so taste is literally a prerequisite, never really discussed bc you would otherwise not be in the room so is this “taste” conversation happening bc the world is now run by engineers who are trying to “solve” creativity? also what the fuck is a moat? i’m sorry79572.3K202K- I hate to break this to everyone, but you probably don't have better taste than the AI. If you ask any leading model about a product decision with guidance: "don't tell me to ask users; just reason through it yourself." It will give you a better answer than 90% of PMs. A lot of people are afraid to do this because they suspect that the answers will actually be very good. There are plenty of other distinctly human things that we can contribute, but "having better taste" isn't one of them.21939829532K
- Posts @thenanyuGo find out for yourselfNan Yu @thenanyuI think a lot more designers and engineers should consider becoming a PM. Here's a litmus test. I stopped using this interview question. Any LLMs since gpt-4 give a better answer than 90% of PM candidates: "Customers often request a 'send later' button in Linear issue comments, mostly because they're worried that they will bother their colleagues on weekends. Should we add this feature?" Think through it and write your answer down. Then ask Claude or ChatGPT. If you think your answer is better or as good, you're in the top 10% of PMs101930
- I think a lot more designers and engineers should consider becoming a PM. Here's a litmus test. I stopped using this interview question. Any LLMs since gpt-4 give a better answer than 90% of PM candidates: "Customers often request a 'send later' button in Linear issue comments, mostly because they're worried that they will bother their colleagues on weekends. Should we add this feature?" Think through it and write your answer down. Then ask Claude or ChatGPT. If you think your answer is better or as good, you're in the top 10% of PMs6015411183K
- Told y’allBenji Taylor @benjitaylorI no longer see any compelling reason to believe that taste is some permanent boundary LLMs won’t cross. It’s already happening.9110911.8K
I no longer see any compelling reason to believe that taste is some permanent boundary LLMs won’t cross. It’s already happening.6073897.9K713K- One. Of. Us.Yonan @yonannBen Affleck says he spent 3 years at home playing StarCraft after becoming famous “There was a game called StarCraft that probably took the most life out of me for a period of time. I had just got famous and all I did was stay home for three years and play StarCraft” “I love Valorant. It's a great game. The problem with that game is that with kids that have been raised playing, I just get f**king rocked. I'm like, ‘Are you f**king cheating?’ And I get mad. It's very humiliating” “I love 2K. I love Madden. And the early Doom, when I first played that game, which then gave rise to Quake. We played that endlessly for hours when we were doing Good Will Hunting. I remember writing and taking these long breaks to play Doom”72749.1K
Ben Affleck says he spent 3 years at home playing StarCraft after becoming famous “There was a game called StarCraft that probably took the most life out of me for a period of time. I had just got famous and all I did was stay home for three years and play StarCraft” “I love Valorant. It's a great game. The problem with that game is that with kids that have been raised playing, I just get f**king rocked. I'm like, ‘Are you f**king cheating?’ And I get mad. It's very humiliating” “I love 2K. I love Madden. And the early Doom, when I first played that game, which then gave rise to Quake. We played that endlessly for hours when we were doing Good Will Hunting. I remember writing and taking these long breaks to play Doom”4931.3K28.2K2.3M- Who’s gonna tell himBryan Caplan @bryan_caplanWill a major religion of AI worship emerge? Seriously, if a human being could do what AI does, we would worship him as a god.21194.4K
Will a major religion of AI worship emerge? Seriously, if a human being could do what AI does, we would worship him as a god.45415217.9K- Nan YuRT @nikitabier: Technical moats are mostly over at this point. If you’re building something that is meant to be durable, the only moats now are: • Proprietary data • Network effects • A physical component02.1K083
all you guys giving your credit cards to agents so they can buy random shit for you are clearly either homosexual or single get yourself a wife or girlfriend, they do this out of the box19622.5K76.6K- Yeah, I’ve been feeling this too. Agents make engineers extremely powerful, but PMs are generally still bottlenecked on their bandwidth they have to talk to customers. So the ideal ratio is 1:1Lenny Rachitsky @lennysanTired: Two-pizza teams Wired: Two-slice teams @danshipper on the best team structure in the AI-era18420626.3K
Tired: Two-pizza teams Wired: Two-slice teams @danshipper on the best team structure in the AI-era1771992.2K565K
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