Week Links [1st June 2026]
A software engineer’s account of LLMs eroding their career.
The only way out for keeping my employability in the long-term now seems to be shifting my domain expertise to something LLMs will not get good at so easily. But what's left?
- These blogposts will become more and more common as developers who are indexed on domain expertise are slowly commoditised by LLMs.
- I suspect the long-term skills which are valuable in software will shift towards “meta skills” — flexibility, product-first thinking, "being agentic", emotional intelligence, and the ability to identify opportunities. Soon the days of specializing in one area really well and having an software job for life will be over.
An essay on how liminalism became the defining aesthetic of our time.
- Bizarrely related to the above, spaces which were once occupied by humans will become liminal spaces occupied by no one (except LLMs).
- Liminalism will continue to be an important movement for this reason.
How a marketing agency manufactures fake fans for emerging musicians.
- A marketing agency which manufactures fake fans for upcoming musicians.
- Once you notice this, you see it everywhere online: music montage fan accounts, huge numbers of vernacular TikToks with music by unknown musicians, etc.
A LessWrong post summarizing of what we know about productivity.
- A blogpost synthesising nearly all substantive productivity advice into a single post.
- LessWrong is considered controversial by some, but I personally find browsing its WikiTags to be a source of extremely high-value, distilled information. LessWrong’s WikiTags
Paul Graham’s essay on how to do great work.
- I occasionally read a Paul Graham essay as a motivational exercise; he always gets me excited about what’s possible.
- I also trust his advice, since he had the wisdom to move to the beautiful English countryside after peacing out in SF.
- My favourite quote: “If you don't try to be the best, you won't even be good.”
How the tactics of influencers are creeping into everything.
- The methods influencers use to become viral on platforms are spreading to other jobs.
- I can’t help but notice that being an “influencer” is already becoming quite archaic, and instead “influencing” is used to bolster your existing job.
- Interestingly, I wonder if engineers will need to adopt some influencer traits in order to stay relevant. In fact, we may all need to do this with the emergence of the relational sector.
How genuine listening and good questions break through people’s scripted answers.
- By really listening to people and asking insightful questions, we can overcome the scripts people use to answer questions — “the social cache” — and actually have interesting, alive conversations.
Fine-tuning an LLM on old PDF manuals using QLoRA.
- Fine-tuning an LLM using QLoRA and a bunch of old PDF manuals.