Glenn Gillen
@glenngillen.bsky.social
Product & GTM stuff @ Ockam.io. Ex-HashiCorp, AWS, Heroku. Also early stage startup investor.
So I just can't imagine anywhere I've worked in the past suddenly getting a (let's say just say for simplicity) 10X boost in productivity and thinking "awesome! We've been satisfied with our output to date. Let's maintain the status quo and reduce headcount by 90%"... ?!
May 13, 2025 at 1:01 PM
So I just can't imagine anywhere I've worked in the past suddenly getting a (let's say just say for simplicity) 10X boost in productivity and thinking "awesome! We've been satisfied with our output to date. Let's maintain the status quo and reduce headcount by 90%"... ?!
If you've got lots of it your hire, and you've still got more work to be done. If you're laying people off it's always because you've got cashflow issues and not because you've run out of work to do (usually the smaller team is somehow expected to support/produce the same amount).
May 13, 2025 at 1:00 PM
If you've got lots of it your hire, and you've still got more work to be done. If you're laying people off it's always because you've got cashflow issues and not because you've run out of work to do (usually the smaller team is somehow expected to support/produce the same amount).
related to this: I've recently been trying to correlate the apparently looming AI apocalypse for engineers with workload and hiring at literally every company I've ever worked. I have *never* seen an empty backlog. There's *always* more work to do. Cash has always been the constraining factor...
May 13, 2025 at 12:58 PM
related to this: I've recently been trying to correlate the apparently looming AI apocalypse for engineers with workload and hiring at literally every company I've ever worked. I have *never* seen an empty backlog. There's *always* more work to do. Cash has always been the constraining factor...
Hah, what a delightful flashback to be surprised by when I opened Bluesky. I lived on Lower Richmond Rd almost 20 years ago.
May 9, 2025 at 5:27 AM
Hah, what a delightful flashback to be surprised by when I opened Bluesky. I lived on Lower Richmond Rd almost 20 years ago.
Do it instantly and they think nothing has happened.
Anyways, the opposite direction of what you're trying to achieve. Just always found it an interesting anecdote around perception and performance.
Anyways, the opposite direction of what you're trying to achieve. Just always found it an interesting anecdote around perception and performance.
May 1, 2025 at 7:04 AM
Do it instantly and they think nothing has happened.
Anyways, the opposite direction of what you're trying to achieve. Just always found it an interesting anecdote around perception and performance.
Anyways, the opposite direction of what you're trying to achieve. Just always found it an interesting anecdote around perception and performance.
Technically is was essentially instantaneous. At the time though, that was massively disconnected from the complexity expectations. Having it spin then fade in over a second or two and people went "wow, did it only take a second to provision a database?!".
May 1, 2025 at 7:03 AM
Technically is was essentially instantaneous. At the time though, that was massively disconnected from the complexity expectations. Having it spin then fade in over a second or two and people went "wow, did it only take a second to provision a database?!".
"Moreover, our timeliness expectation is tightly tied to how complex the interaction is supposed to be." This reminded me of one of the design decisions the Heroku founders would talk about in the early days - how much they tweaked the delay in the UI for adding an add-on.
May 1, 2025 at 7:01 AM
"Moreover, our timeliness expectation is tightly tied to how complex the interaction is supposed to be." This reminded me of one of the design decisions the Heroku founders would talk about in the early days - how much they tweaked the delay in the UI for adding an add-on.
Oh, it’s not just me?! I ran into other problems with other models and couldn’t get it to work either. Though it was user error. Qwen explicitly said it wouldn’t allow filesystem access though.
April 30, 2025 at 3:41 AM
Oh, it’s not just me?! I ran into other problems with other models and couldn’t get it to work either. Though it was user error. Qwen explicitly said it wouldn’t allow filesystem access though.
Tried to use qwen with the filesystem MCP server. Seems Alibaba have trained it or given some kind of system prompt to explicitly prevent it from responding to filesystem things 🤦♂️
April 29, 2025 at 10:20 PM
Tried to use qwen with the filesystem MCP server. Seems Alibaba have trained it or given some kind of system prompt to explicitly prevent it from responding to filesystem things 🤦♂️
So I remembered seeing this post in my feed, and then I kept wishing for the same thing. So now it exists: mcpmcp.io
MCP MCP Server - Your Gateway to AI Superpowers
MCP MCP Server - Your gateway to AI capabilities. Discover, setup, and integrate MCP servers with your favorite clients.
mcpmcp.io
April 24, 2025 at 4:26 AM
So I remembered seeing this post in my feed, and then I kept wishing for the same thing. So now it exists: mcpmcp.io
Any chance you’ll be sharing your hot takes on enterprise AI on here? Sadly I can’t make it to Germany in time.
April 23, 2025 at 7:32 AM
Any chance you’ll be sharing your hot takes on enterprise AI on here? Sadly I can’t make it to Germany in time.
Curious to know what your tech stack is (the bits that aren’t secret sauce at least). I saw you’re using lambda in your earlier posts. Bedrock for the model bits? Or are you running things yourself on large instances?
April 23, 2025 at 7:30 AM
Curious to know what your tech stack is (the bits that aren’t secret sauce at least). I saw you’re using lambda in your earlier posts. Bedrock for the model bits? Or are you running things yourself on large instances?
What’s the # of tools limitations? I’ve not hit anything yet.
April 23, 2025 at 7:19 AM
What’s the # of tools limitations? I’ve not hit anything yet.
I had a similar experience! It’s actually a bit confronting the disconnect between “yeah, I can understand what this is and who cares” and using to 1st hand and experiencing “wait, what… it enables this?!?”
April 23, 2025 at 7:18 AM
I had a similar experience! It’s actually a bit confronting the disconnect between “yeah, I can understand what this is and who cares” and using to 1st hand and experiencing “wait, what… it enables this?!?”
Interesting. I'm generally quite excited about this space, but also find it gross how much people are trying to force it into everything everywhere.
April 19, 2025 at 2:09 PM
Interesting. I'm generally quite excited about this space, but also find it gross how much people are trying to force it into everything everywhere.
Looking forward to seeing the updates! I'm hoping to do a bunch of MCP + Bluesky playing this week (assuming work/schedule allows). Would love to try with whatever you're building.
April 19, 2025 at 4:35 AM
Looking forward to seeing the updates! I'm hoping to do a bunch of MCP + Bluesky playing this week (assuming work/schedule allows). Would love to try with whatever you're building.
The most confusing thing to me is calling these "servers" at all. Once I realised they're more like an SDK/interface that wraps existing things (could be the file system, could be an existing HTTP/REST API) things made much more sense. YMMV
April 19, 2025 at 4:33 AM
The most confusing thing to me is calling these "servers" at all. Once I realised they're more like an SDK/interface that wraps existing things (could be the file system, could be an existing HTTP/REST API) things made much more sense. YMMV
what exactly is the pitch they're pushing on you? Is there some tourism specific AI trend happening? I'm not very well connected to that space (beyond occassionally being a consumer/tourist)
April 19, 2025 at 4:29 AM
what exactly is the pitch they're pushing on you? Is there some tourism specific AI trend happening? I'm not very well connected to that space (beyond occassionally being a consumer/tourist)
Not video calls I assume? Care to name the companies? Or the products/services they were selling at least? I'm very curious about this.
April 19, 2025 at 4:27 AM
Not video calls I assume? Care to name the companies? Or the products/services they were selling at least? I'm very curious about this.
Which seems to give me just enough of the dopamine hit to convince me I've done enough on this task for now and can get back to what I'm meant to be focussing on. If/when I come back to this distraction I've also got the beginning of a plan for what to do next.
April 19, 2025 at 4:17 AM
Which seems to give me just enough of the dopamine hit to convince me I've done enough on this task for now and can get back to what I'm meant to be focussing on. If/when I come back to this distraction I've also got the beginning of a plan for what to do next.