Tavares Ford

The Andrej Karpathy interview is really, really great, I listened in its entirety and plan to listen again. Worth bearing in mind that our industry in general is incredibly optimistic, and the downside of this optimism is that we often can see where things are going long before the tech will be ready, see: self-driving cars in the 2010s, we all thought it was Right Around The Corner, it wasn't. Currently, people are talking about how LLMs are going to obviate entire classes of jobs, but in practice we all see them fail at very basic tasks, while we also underestimate the complexities of most jobs we claim AI will obviate. My own experiences using LLMs for coding assistance, chess coaching, and musical analysis is that they are currently good for small, focused tasks, but often fail at very basic sorts of analysis in completely unintuitive ways. Just this morning, ChatGPT advised a move that would have immediately lost me a queen in a practice game. We've all probably spun our wheels for hours coding when an LLM is going in circles. The whole interview is fantastic and well worth a detailed listen!

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We have all heard the saying "Never interfere with your enemy when they are making a mistake," which is good advice. But what more people should heed, since it is far more common: "Don't interfere with your teammate when they are saving your ass."

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Have you been a victim of workslop 🪣? A recent HBR report on bad AI content at work really hit home for me. I've seen it everywhere and I know you have too. Workslop is that super polished-sounding content that looks impressive but says so little and lacks specifics in your work context that it offers no real value and even wastes time (HBR says AI slop is wasting $186 per employee per month). LLMs are incredibly impressive and are starting to make a dent on actual work (see OpenAI's latest research). But if companies rush to deploy any AI solution and don't think about training, metrics, or grounding it in their own work context, it's going to lead to wasted time and workslop. Why the rush? I've heard it firsthand in customer meetings: "We need AI or competitors will eat us alive." One report found 77% of CEOs feel competitive pressure to adopt it. So here are some my tips to get more out of AI deployments and reduce that workslop. 1. 📊 Your work context matters! Don't rely on a vanilla LLM or generic "enterprise chatbot."  It must be tuned to your work content, metrics, and data. Many chatbots only connect superficially to 3rd party content, or pull in personal files but not shared ones. So they aren't very effective. (Check out Dropbox Dash, we do this really, really well). 2. 🎯 Define your success criteria Know what you're solving. If you want fewer errors or faster delivery, measure that. Don’t just declare success because "AI is deployed." For software development, many companies see success when all devs are using an AI coding copilot. Or "generating code with AI". But for what purpose? Faster deployments, fewer bugs, improved feature velocity? That's what you need to measure. 3. 🛠️ Training and culture That blinking chatbot cursor is intimidating. In one survey, 49% of workers felt pressure to adopt AI, but 55% didn’t know how. The best deployments invest in training, shared playbooks, demos, and mentors. And don’t just do it once and think you are done. Ongoing measurement, monitoring, and training is needed. Also, look for AI tools that aren't just a chatbot. Products that blend seamlessly in the background. Not everything needs to be solved with a language model. 4. 🚀 High performers are going to highly perform and vice versa Ignore AI for a second. Top performers always seem to "figure it out" in the workplace. They learn the new tool and incorporate it into their workday. And so AI deployments are just new tools. It’s critical to watch and observe their output and use them as mentors (above). But others may simply take AI output and present it as their own. Workslop! And unless you guard against that (via reviews, performance management, feedback, and coaching), you're going to get more workslop. And that annoys and slows down everyone else. AI is nothing new here. Don't assume AI is some magic bullet and everyone's performance will rise. Don't just deploy it and forget it!

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I am an able-bodied son of a general category middle-class family. So when people talk about the challenges some face due to reservations and gender diversity hiring, I lie on the sweet spot of that most disadvantaged intersection in the Venn diagram. But through the years studying and working, I understood why we need affirmative actions for education and the workplace. To the people who feel that movements like reservations and feminism are sham, I'd like to present two anecdotes to you: 1. A person whom I know closely was forced out of her job, citing poor performance, when the rest of the team was all male. The other female employee who joined the team after the former left was also treated badly and left the team soon after. There was no harassment or explicit mistreatment, but there were signs of subtle sexism when working with colleagues who often tended to ignore requests for help or the doubt on quality of work provided by female members. 2. In my college, a junior approached me for help as he was struggling in his studies. The situation was worsened by the fact that, as he was coming from a reserved category, his batchmates maintained a distance in interactions. They weren't discriminatory, but just uncomfortable interacting with the person and therefore avoided close ties. From these incidents, I learnt how it's necessary to promote people in places where the stereotype doesn't want them to be. It is important to push for breaking norms even if the general public is non-discriminatory. You might not care about the rights of minorities today, you're neither for nor against them, but your lack of empathy will be taken as tacit support for discrimination and persecution today and in the future. When I see people arguing over how the draconian laws ruin men's lives over divorce settlements, I agree with them, but just for a particular case. To think that all men are suffering is a laughable rhetoric, and we have enough statistical evidence to prove otherwise. And so is the case for every discussion on how some minorities are being given benefits in society. There are some cases of exploitation, but there are also cases where rules promoting the rights of minorities are needed to protect them from exploitation. This is my serving of "food for thought" for you. #education #workplace #justice #equality 

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𝐃𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐛𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐟𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐧 𝐌𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐢𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞 𝐢𝐬𝐧’𝐭 𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐨𝐝𝐚𝐲. That’s what a VP told me once while I was on PTO. Here’s what happened. I was on planned leave. The migration was done. The team was in a change freeze. And yet, I was being threatened with my job. The day before, I had explained the process clearly to the PM under the VP: • Raise the change request. • Share the business impact. • Get CTO approval if urgent. • The team will test and share ETA. But instead of following the process, I was called directly, while I was on leave, playing FIFA on my Xbox 🎮😁. I could have panicked. I could have given in. Instead, I stayed calm and said: “Sir, I’m doing my job. If you want to fire me for that, so be it. I’ll speak with my manager and CTO when I return from PTO.” And then I went back to playing FIFA 🎮 (with my head screaming, “What have you just done?!”). But a few hours later, my manager and CTO called me. They said: “Don’t worry. Enjoy your PTO no one is fired. The team tested the change, and it caused page load spikes. It wouldn’t have been approved anyway.” That evening, reflecting with my dad and my wife, I realised: 1️⃣ 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐟𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐲 𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐟𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐭, but losing your cool under pressure creates chaos. If you believe you’re doing the right thing, stand firm, even when it feels uncomfortable. 2️⃣ 𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐲 ≠ 𝐰𝐢𝐬𝐝𝐨𝐦. Ego often makes leaders bypass the process. True leadership is respecting the system that protects the business, not pushing rank to override it. 3️⃣ 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐦 𝐢𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐩𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫. The moment you react emotionally, you lose control. The moment you stay composed, you hold the room. 👉 Confidence, integrity, and calm won’t always make you popular in the short term. But over time, they become the very reasons people trust you.

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