📣 Headlines

• Several investors and leaders are sounding the alarm on frothy AI valuations, warning the market may be overheating and posing systemic risks to tech companies and investors: investor calls AI 'dangerously overheated', DeepMind's Hassabis warns of a bubble and Google CEO Pichai cautions no company is immune.

• Some analysts push back that AI-related debt and hyperscaler buildouts are not a classic bubble, arguing bond markets reflect infrastructure growth rather than pure speculation (analysis).

• Mega-rounds and infrastructure bets continue: Databricks is reportedly in talks to raise at a $130B+ valuation, underscoring the broader theme that AI's next phase belongs to infrastructure.

• Large private-market activity persists with consumer-fintech strength as Revolut completes a share sale valuing it at $75bn, signalling continued appetite for late-stage rounds.

• Product teams should watch search behavior shifts—[consumers are moving from Google to ChatGPT], and startups like Peec AI raised $21M to help brands adapt to AI-powered search and GEO insights.

• Startups are productizing AI agents in verticals: security firms are shipping agent-native tooling with Secure.com debuting Digital Security Teammates while digital-health players scale AI therapy via M&A as Spectrum.Life buys Dr Jay to integrate an AI therapist.

• Talent and leadership are in flux as VCs prioritize hiring seasoned operators and execs to lead AI companies (VCs buying A-player C-suite talent), while top researchers exit big tech—Yann LeCun leaves Meta to start an independent AI entity and related coverage (BBC).

• Transportation and autonomy face a tougher funding environment: Crunchbase reports transportation dealmaking decelerating in 2025, and hardware-heavy startups show strain—Monarch Tractor warns of layoffs and a potential shutdown.

🔧 Company Engineering Blogs

Background Coding Agents: Context Engineering (Part 2) (engineering​.atspotify​.com). Context engineering for autonomous coding agents using Claude Code, prompts, and limited tools to migrate large codebases at Spotify

Evolving GitHub Copilot’s next edit suggestions through custom model training (github​.blog). NES next-edit suggestions in GitHub Copilot trained with custom data, RL, and in-editor UX for VS Code

Generative UI: A rich, custom, visual interactive user experience for any prompt (research​.google). Generative UI enables AI models to dynamically create immersive, customizable interfaces and tools for any prompt using Gemini 3 Pro in AI Mode

Making fairness in LLMs observable, quantifiable, and governable (amazon​.science). FiSCo: a three-stage fairness evaluation for LLMs using controlled generation, semantic comparison, and statistical validation

👥 Team & Leadership

Ego, empathy, and humility at work (matthogg​.fyi). Practical approach to ego, empathy, and humility for developers and technical leaders, emphasizing information pursuit and collaboration

Coding at work (after a decade away). (lethain​.com). CTO Will Larson blogs on coding at work after a decade, AI tooling, small commits, and balancing management with hands-on software

The Making of a Decision - Part 2 (roundcrisis​.com). Explores knowledge sharing, DIKW model, knowledge workers, and power dynamics in software teams

Adding People to a Late Project Will Make It Later (jjude​.com). Explores Brooks’ Mythical Man-Month idea, arguing adding developers often delays projects; emphasizes architectural ownership and coherent system design

Invert, always invert (theengineeringmanager​.substack​.com). Invert pessimistically to plan, estimate, and roll out software projects with Charlie Munger’s inversion model

LGTM 🚀 Culture: A Short Story (alt​.management). A speculative story criticizing LGTM culture, AI agents, and enterprise software hype through a personal, tech-history narrative

EOR vs Traditional Hiring Models: Strategic Guide for Global Tech Expansion (beontech​.wpengine​.com). Compare EOR and direct hiring for global tech expansion, focusing on speed, cost, and compliance across markets

Technical Advisor Playbook for 2026: What’s Changing and How to Adapt (diamantinoalmeida​.com). Growth playbook for 2026: balance AI, automation, culture, and customer empathy with insights from a technical advisor

🚀 Startups & Growth

How Startups Get Viral (molodtsov​.me). Viral startup success hinges on users, fanatic fan bases, exceptional product taste, and being unreasonably focused on a cornerstones idea

Context Engineering is the Secret: How Kuse Hit $10M ARR in 60 Days Without VC Funding (aakashg​.com). Context engineering, visual context, Threads growth, Kuse 2.0, Xiankun Wu, Aakash interview, RAG, MVO vs MVP, 10M ARR in 60 days

🎧🍌 Inside the New Superhuman: $700M ARR, 40M Daily Users with Rahul Vohra (thespl​.it). Rahul Vohra discusses Superhuman’s acquisition by Grammarly, Grammarly’s 40M DAU and $700M ARR, and building an AI-native productivity suite

Will VCs Lose Their Jobs to AI? (thisisgoingtobebig​.com). AI reduces noise in sourcing; humans chase rare outliers in venture decisions with mentors like Lauren Reeves and Collin Wallace

So... I applied to Iterative. (geek​.sg). Singapore-based founder shares applying to Iterative accelerator for Synscribe, covering AI-driven SEO, programmatic content, and revenue attribution insights

The Basecamp Blueprint: How to Bootstrap a Billion-Dollar Business (wearefounders​.uk). Bootstrap a profitable tech empire by solving your own problems; Basecamp story of profitability, autonomy, and founder-led growth

I’m Open to Raising 200k for SaveOnTrading (kylevallans​.com). Raising 200k–300k for SaveOnTrading to hire a full stack developer and scale revenue with media, trading, and tech expertise

📈 Product & Discovery

Solving Problems Worth Solving (candost​.blog). Solving problems across software, psychology, and economics; leadership, design thinking, and managing complexity in teams

Cultivating the human capabilities that matter most (uxdesign​.cc). Developing discovery judgment through psychological safety, cross-functional collaboration, and systematic practices for AI-enabled product discovery

Master Cross-Functional Collaboration Skills: The PM’s Guide to Career Acceleration (aakashg​.com). Cross-functional collaboration for Product Managers: leading engineering, design, and GTM with frameworks, narratives, and an operating system

What are you optimizing for? (geek​.sg). A startup-focused take on balancing value delivery and technical debt, emphasizing growth over perfection and stability in early stages

How to Avoid Solo Product Leadership Failure with a Product Value Team, Part 1 (jrothman​.com). Explores product value teams as a remedy for solo product leadership, emphasizing collaboration, strategy, and experimentation

End-To-End with Shape Up: A Real-World Case Study (ryansinger​.co). End-to-end Shape Up case study using framing, shaping, and build with a fractional CPO, senior engineer, SME, and a Notion kanban

How to work with product: To what port do you sail? (blog​.nilenso​.com). Explores aligning product and engineering toward clear goals, with examples from Simple.org and Gojek, and practical leadership tips

🤖 AI & Software Eng

Only you can stop AI database drops (stackoverflow​.blog). How AI transforms software roles, guardrails for AI coding, and the rise of internal tools with Retool and Stack Overflow

How AI will change software engineering – with Martin Fowler (newsletter​.pragmaticengineer​.com). Martin Fowler discusses AI’s impact on software architecture, refactoring, non-determinism, vibe coding, and how tools like LLMs intersect with deterministic practices

I Never Really Loved Coding (And Only AI Made Me Realize It) (thebootstrappedfounder​.com). AI-assisted coding shifts focus from writing to orchestrating code and business outcomes

Vibe Coding Myths vs. Reality: Why AI Isn’t a Bubble. Insights from llm-eval-simple (grigio​.org). AI isn’t a tech bubble: local and frontier LLMs, prompt engineering, Rust vs Python, and Network Monitor demo

The Next Million Rails Apps (kodykendall​.com). Rails boosts non-engineers with LLMs for browser-based AI coding, leveraging Ruby on Rails and Leonardo for maintainable, scalable apps

Hyperproductivity: The Next Stage of AI? (secondthoughts​.ai). AI-powered teams build bespoke productivity tools, using Claude Code and Amplifier to automate product lifecycles and push recursive tool improvement

How I Built a Company AI Assistant in 4 Days (Without Being an AI Expert) (mindthenerd​.com). Engineer builds on-premise company AI assistant in 60 hours using Ollama, vLLM, Docker, Ubuntu, C#, React; multilingual ERP integration

Good Enough and Really Fast: A Haiku 4.5 Case Study (barazany​.dev). Fast, affordable AI coding with Haiku 4.5; Sensos teams cut costs and maintain flow using Cline and Claude Sonnet

📊 Product Metrics & Platforms

When To Kill A Project (blog​.jacobstechtavern​.com). Lessons from Dave Verwer on killing failing projects, market research, timing, and building open-source tools in iOS with Swift and Swift Package Index

The metrics product we built worked — But we killed it and started over anyway (blog​.sentry​.io). Sentry kills its first metrics product, shifts to trace-connected, event-based metrics with EAP and raw data storage for better debugging context

A RedMonk Conversation: David Mytton on Arcjet’s Vision for Developer Security (redmonk​.com). Arcjet’s David Mytton discusses developer-focused security as a feature, WASM-based local-first security, and integrating bot detection, rate limiting, and email validation for modern JS/TypeScript stacks

[Link] An Interview with Cal Henderson (buildingslack​.com). Cal Henderson discusses Slack's origin, Glitch shutdown, Flickr roots, engineering leadership, culture, and product philosophy with founder insights

Back to simplicity (eddiedale​.com). Reflective pivot from Linux tinkering to simplicity, embracing focused web apps, 'good enough' products, and noteable creators

Linear vs. Jira (2025): Is Linear Finally Ready for Non-Technical Teams? (wearefounders​.uk). Linear’s Form Templates and automation push position it as a potential Jira alternative for non-technical teams in 2025

🔭 Tech Trends & Essays

A startup in Mongolia translated my book (blog​.pragmaticengineer​.com). Mongolian startup Nasha Tech translates The Software Engineer's Guidebook, explores TokTok, Copilot, Claude Code, and Mongolian tech ecosystem

Fragments Nov 19 (martinfowler​.com). Thoughtworks Technology Radar 33 focuses on AI wave, agents, infrastructure orchestration, coding workflows, and antipatterns with insights from Gergely Orosz and Siemens experts

Build to Last (oreilly​.com). Software craftsmanship and AI; LLVM, Clang, Swift; insights from Chris Lattner and fast.ai founder Jeremy Howard

AI Emergence at ViteConf 2025: UX, DX, now AX (babbel​.com). How AX emerges from UX and DX at ViteConf 2025, featuring Netlify’s CLI tweaks for AI agents, with Saheed Oladele and Evan You

“Productivity”. You Keep Using That Word. (notes​.jim-nielsen​.com). Quips on productivity, AI, web platform design, and career ethics from Jim Nielsen’s notes featuring Deming, Petros, Rupert, Carr, Russell, and Gaw

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