Aug 21, 2026
On changing priorities (this is for scaling orgs; early startups are different):
- plans are from an era when messages were transmitted by telegraph. In a world of Slack and Codex they're just priors
- terms _really_ matter. You can update priors stress-free twenty times a day, but keeping a plan together as you're hit by an avalanche of changes is impossible (and thus extremely stressful)
- in the new world, plans -> priors, planning process -> prior recalibration, etc.
- eventually firms will adapt. Terms will change, processes will reconfigure around them. (As an aside, my prediction is this will enable unprecedented flexibility)
- when you think in new terms you're no longer Atlas holding up the world. Stress disappears in a puff of smoke
- until everyone adapts, autocomplete to new terms in your own mind
Managing the interface:
- everyone else still thinks in old terms and runs old processes. For now you must accommodate that
- mostly standard advice applies here
- develop really good relationships with your team, your boss, your peers. The more people trust you, the easier it is to update priors in realtime
- people interpret unacknowledged changes as broken commitments. So overcommunicate. Do it in realtime, weekly, monthly. No one should ever be surprised
- communicate all of the above ^^ to your team. Do it over and over until people's individual mindsets and collective culture adapt. This will take time
- with the pace and breadth of changes enabled by Codex, engineers are less personally invested in any single stream. Still it sucks to work on something that doesn't ship. Reassure ppl and thank them for their work
- btw, expect the volume of prior updates to dramatically increase. All this will be an incredible and bumpy ride