Meta Meta - I Am an Engineer

Today I absolutely spontaneously listened to a podcast that played the correct chord on a proper string of my soul. That was the Boris Cherny podcast about his adventures at Meta.

Listening to it caused a certain itch in certain areas of my mind. Trying to understand where this itch was coming from, I booted a well-calibrated system of mine running on Claude Code and low thousands of personal documents ??? anything from my future visions to plans, projects and notes.

So I started digging down, trying to locate why it was itching and where exactly. Prompting myself (and Claude) with different phrases from the podcast that had sparked my attention.

The Itch

“Engineering network.” This sparked a vague chain of brain activations. Let me check the BM25 index over my ChatGPT chats.

“Hey Claude, /recall the thing I’ve been discussing with Chat some time ago ??? something on networks of engineers, maybe blogs, maybe networking, any leads?”

Claude fetched a proper drilling session where I had been torturing o3 in order to gather N good personal blogs of like-minded people.

Hmm, not exactly what I intended to find, but the itch was definitely itching more. So why not try this direction ??? I murmured.

“Ok, Claude, /bob-research this for me; there is old intel by Chat; this needs a proper reframing; previous research problem was that it ended up being quantity > quality; Now I want a well-curated list tailored at my values, interests and operating principles.”

Several research strategies and some brief clarifications on which one to choose.

“Fire up agents and let us cook” ??? quickly blasted on my keyboard. Almost reflexively, after seeing good enough planning.

Actually, an interesting meta-thought comes here ??? the reason why we want to view the plans by Claude is to rather understand that it has put enough effort into it. Similar to how non-technical managers approach this; they love 3 items on the menu!

Detach, Reattach

The itch was seemingly calmed down by the work of the Claude Code window dedicated to its resolving. So as it usually happens:

Ctrl+B then D ??? detached from claude-os-4 tmux attach -t claude-os-7

Several hours later it resurfaced. I opened my slightly fancy PWA, in between sets at the gym, checked the recently created research reports and found something like:

Boris Cherny Archetype: 18 Engineers Who Build, Think, and Write The archetype: generalist depth + top-tier company experience + side quests (OSS, books, tools) + meta-layer thinking (how engineering works, not just code) + active artifact trail + currently producing.

“That was kinda unexpected.” Puzzled, clicking through ??? starting to read. After several proper paragraphs I realized it was the engineering network type of thing.

Commentary by Claude in the “Executive Summary” section: “You have planned launching your blog 14 times over the last 2 years. Delivered? Only one deep dive that is buried on Substack” ??? “Planning is the procrastination mechanism disguised as productivity.”

My boy, sometimes good harshness is exactly what I need. Exactly as prompted, per se.

Reading on, I noticed the motivational notes - cherry-picked and curated to spark my interest. Polished with quotes by tycoons ??? “mind athletes”:

Simon Willison: “Aim to hit publish while you are still actively unhappy with what you have written.” And: “A single hiring manager finding your blog can provide outsized returns.”

Then some fear diagnosis ??? an influence of the engineering years spent in quantitative trading (still flash-backing, believe me).

The Epiphany, Between Chest Press Sets

In between chest press sets (next activity on the gym list) the realization hit me. All of the dots got connected. The network of engineers thing had sparked me ??? because I have never truly felt like I belong there. It has been anything from early AI research to backend and sales, ops management & product (Good Gracious!) and quant trading trenches.

Though I have always enjoyed hanging out with engineers. I have always spoken the same language and shared the same patterns that bring joy ??? well-built systems, beautiful tech, pipelines scoped from first principles and delivered on time!

The itch finally converged to a realization ??? I am actually an engineer, but rather a generalist with a heck of an amount of quests going on! If I heard the podcast with Boris correctly ??? an exact fella he would hire!

Typing Between Dumbbell Sets

So on the next set of some dumbbell routine I just took my phone and started typing the first post for my minimal blog, that I hope no one will ever see.

Though not exactly. I first double-checked in succinct writing that the strategy for a personal blog I had drafted in my head resonated enough to pursue the actual writing.

Launch my own blog on my own domain ??? seems minimal enough to start.

Immediately questions like “where to bring them after my own site” arise.

Maybe just YOLO it and post to the website and hope no one will read it?

Then once the momentum is achieved ??? bring something to HN, bring something to Medium, etc.

Might be exactly the thing that is tailored for me ??? curated low-friction sharing; into the “darkness” first; curated later.

The check passed. Spat out the rest of the words through the last sets of dumbbells (oh man, my biceps hurt now) and through my way home.

It’s not ideal. It’s probably pointless. The meta story gluing it all together will probably be perceived by me as “cringe” some time down the line. But you know what? I am actually happy now to just write things without any planning, scoping and second-guessing.

That’s it. This is my first post.

P.S. A somewhat more elegant “bridge” had been planned towards the “I am an engineer” insight. Something like “cool engineers have an itch to share their experience through writing” - hence blogs ??? and linking this back to the initial “engineering network” spark and the itch that caused this all. But you know what, the raw version stays. That’s core me.

P.P.S I write with a lot of ” - ”