Andrew Hao
@andrewhao.com
Engineering at YouTube. Previously Lyft, Carbon Five.
Any-surface runner 🏃🏻♂️ and your favorite pair partner 🍐. Also: https://mastodon.online/@andrewhao. Account here is no longer me: twitter.com/@andrewhao
Any-surface runner 🏃🏻♂️ and your favorite pair partner 🍐. Also: https://mastodon.online/@andrewhao. Account here is no longer me: twitter.com/@andrewhao
Absolutely experiencing the AI ick when reading any article or blog post that was generated with AI. If this was your newsletter, I'm sorry but that's an auto unsubscribe from me. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/03/m...
Why Does A.I. Write Like … That?
www.nytimes.com
December 29, 2025 at 5:24 PM
Absolutely experiencing the AI ick when reading any article or blog post that was generated with AI. If this was your newsletter, I'm sorry but that's an auto unsubscribe from me. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/03/m...
Last week was Week 1 of setting Claude Code loose on some Wejoinin errands: having some aha moments about agentic cognitive offloading. Definitely feels like I can accomplish more, but it feels a loose cannon. Bulky, unwieldy, verbose, and sometimes surprisingly effective.
Tons of babysitting.
Tons of babysitting.
October 4, 2025 at 5:53 AM
Last week was Week 1 of setting Claude Code loose on some Wejoinin errands: having some aha moments about agentic cognitive offloading. Definitely feels like I can accomplish more, but it feels a loose cannon. Bulky, unwieldy, verbose, and sometimes surprisingly effective.
Tons of babysitting.
Tons of babysitting.
Writing is thinking. I don't think I'm going to pass that off to an AI. I need to work this out by putting words to paper.
July 10, 2025 at 1:03 AM
Writing is thinking. I don't think I'm going to pass that off to an AI. I need to work this out by putting words to paper.
Oops, forgot to say! This week I imported all my tweets from Twitter over here (thanks @en.blueark.app). Then nuked the Twitter account. I'll be primarily on Bluesky from now on!
February 9, 2025 at 5:19 AM
Oops, forgot to say! This week I imported all my tweets from Twitter over here (thanks @en.blueark.app). Then nuked the Twitter account. I'll be primarily on Bluesky from now on!
Scariest night I've had in a very long time, trying to figure out when or where we will have to evacuate. Grateful to firefighters and other first responders for being out there. #eatonfire
January 9, 2025 at 4:34 AM
Scariest night I've had in a very long time, trying to figure out when or where we will have to evacuate. Grateful to firefighters and other first responders for being out there. #eatonfire
Taking a solid 2 week break over the holidays was so refreshing. It's been a while since I truly got work off the brain. I felt creative for the first time in a long time!
January 8, 2025 at 1:17 AM
Taking a solid 2 week break over the holidays was so refreshing. It's been a while since I truly got work off the brain. I felt creative for the first time in a long time!
Reposted by Andrew Hao
Non-sequitur "an exploratory project that can't fail" with me the other day. But managing projects in a rapidly expanding product is a whole different deal than managing exploration. Here's how I think about handling the risks of runaway growth: tidyfirst.substack.com/p/managing-e...
Managing Expand Projects
So if “the exploration that cannot fail is not an exploration”, then how are you supposed to manage high-risk, high-consequence projects?
tidyfirst.substack.com
January 2, 2025 at 6:21 PM
Non-sequitur "an exploratory project that can't fail" with me the other day. But managing projects in a rapidly expanding product is a whole different deal than managing exploration. Here's how I think about handling the risks of runaway growth: tidyfirst.substack.com/p/managing-e...
Reposted by Andrew Hao
This is (in my opinion) one of the most important pieces of empirical research to come out about generative AI’s actual/likely effects on politics.
@shelbygrossman.bsky.social and team are right to warn that AI built to parrot back our beliefs to us can be an effective vehicle for propaganda.
@shelbygrossman.bsky.social and team are right to warn that AI built to parrot back our beliefs to us can be an effective vehicle for propaganda.
A new study out of Georgetown and Stanford found that propaganda generated by GPT-3 (not 4!) was persuasive to almost half of the people who read it. I spoke to one of the authors and wrote about the implications www.platformer.news/ai-generated...
February 21, 2024 at 2:39 AM
This is (in my opinion) one of the most important pieces of empirical research to come out about generative AI’s actual/likely effects on politics.
@shelbygrossman.bsky.social and team are right to warn that AI built to parrot back our beliefs to us can be an effective vehicle for propaganda.
@shelbygrossman.bsky.social and team are right to warn that AI built to parrot back our beliefs to us can be an effective vehicle for propaganda.
Reposted by Andrew Hao
my mom named her kid (me) “蓝天” which means bluesky in chinese, so i called myself “jay” to become a bird instead, and then some birdapp company named their project “bluesky” and i ended up running it.
Tell us a true story from your life that sounds made up.
May 1, 2023 at 7:39 AM
my mom named her kid (me) “蓝天” which means bluesky in chinese, so i called myself “jay” to become a bird instead, and then some birdapp company named their project “bluesky” and i ended up running it.
Working at Google has taught me a couple of important things, both true:
- The power of written, debated, principled thinking to make guiding product decisions 🏛️
- The demotivating power of a large bureacracy 😭
- The power of written, debated, principled thinking to make guiding product decisions 🏛️
- The demotivating power of a large bureacracy 😭
November 19, 2024 at 7:06 PM
Working at Google has taught me a couple of important things, both true:
- The power of written, debated, principled thinking to make guiding product decisions 🏛️
- The demotivating power of a large bureacracy 😭
- The power of written, debated, principled thinking to make guiding product decisions 🏛️
- The demotivating power of a large bureacracy 😭
I love data scientists. They are amazing. That is all.
November 19, 2024 at 7:06 PM
I love data scientists. They are amazing. That is all.
Reposted by Andrew Hao
git discussion bingo card
November 23, 2023 at 6:11 PM
git discussion bingo card
Tried Threads and Mastodon. Tryna be active on Bluesky too. Will probably spread some engagement across all three in the next few months - we'll see how this goes!
November 19, 2024 at 7:06 PM
Tried Threads and Mastodon. Tryna be active on Bluesky too. Will probably spread some engagement across all three in the next few months - we'll see how this goes!
Much love to friends and former coworkers affected by layoffs @lyft. I know some really, really great people and would be happy to help. DMs are open!
February 5, 2025 at 10:07 AM
Much love to friends and former coworkers affected by layoffs @lyft. I know some really, really great people and would be happy to help. DMs are open!
@mybluewristband shares how she took initiative to shape process where she was at to take control of her own career growth as she grew into eng management. “If I can do it, you can too!” #leaddevsanfrancisco
February 5, 2025 at 10:07 AM
@mybluewristband shares how she took initiative to shape process where she was at to take control of her own career growth as she grew into eng management. “If I can do it, you can too!” #leaddevsanfrancisco
🎨 Slides for my talk are up! It was so fun talking about effective writing with the Pyramid Principle with y'all at #LeadDevSanFrancisco! I'll post some more thoughts later this...
February 5, 2025 at 10:07 AM
🎨 Slides for my talk are up! It was so fun talking about effective writing with the Pyramid Principle with y'all at #LeadDevSanFrancisco! I'll post some more thoughts later this...
Loved @plumertzi’s talk on the UX of incident management at #leaddevsanfrancisco. Moving from a fixed set of heroes to a truly distributed on-call model takes work!
February 5, 2025 at 10:07 AM
Loved @plumertzi’s talk on the UX of incident management at #leaddevsanfrancisco. Moving from a fixed set of heroes to a truly distributed on-call model takes work!
Will you be at @TheLeadDev San Francisco next week? I'm excited to be sharing about the One Cool Trick you can use to write Devastatingly Effective Docs™️. It's not too late to sign up - hope to see you there! https://leaddev.com/leaddev-san-francisco
Upcoming events
Join us throughout 2024 for inspiring conferences, worksh...
leaddev.com
February 5, 2025 at 10:08 AM
Will you be at @TheLeadDev San Francisco next week? I'm excited to be sharing about the One Cool Trick you can use to write Devastatingly Effective Docs™️. It's not too late to sign up - hope to see you there! https://leaddev.com/leaddev-san-francisco
Never play Battleship against a kid who can’t count
February 5, 2025 at 10:08 AM
Never play Battleship against a kid who can’t count
One thing I'll never forgive Google engineers for is their habit of choosing clever, cutesy, horribly opaque names for EVERYTHING
February 5, 2025 at 10:08 AM
One thing I'll never forgive Google engineers for is their habit of choosing clever, cutesy, horribly opaque names for EVERYTHING
Early-career engineers - one superpower that can set you apart is honing a systematic approach to hairy problems. The scientific method! 1/
February 5, 2025 at 10:08 AM
Early-career engineers - one superpower that can set you apart is honing a systematic approach to hairy problems. The scientific method! 1/
Why, yes, that _is_ Mt. Laundry in my Zoom background with a crying baby on its summit. #nonannynoproblem
February 5, 2025 at 10:08 AM
Why, yes, that _is_ Mt. Laundry in my Zoom background with a crying baby on its summit. #nonannynoproblem
Been pairing with Copilot. My hot take: I much prefer pairing with humans 🕺
February 5, 2025 at 10:08 AM
Been pairing with Copilot. My hot take: I much prefer pairing with humans 🕺
Second in a 3-part series: in which we model a financial transaction system with TLA+ to track down a sneaky concurrency bug.
https://www.g9labs.com/2022/03/12/what-s-the-fuss-about-formal-specifications-part-2/
#tlaplus
https://www.g9labs.com/2022/03/12/what-s-the-fuss-about-formal-specifications-part-2/
#tlaplus
What's the fuss about formal specifications? (Part 2)
In which we debug a production bug (loosely based on a re...
www.g9labs.com
February 5, 2025 at 10:13 AM
Second in a 3-part series: in which we model a financial transaction system with TLA+ to track down a sneaky concurrency bug.
https://www.g9labs.com/2022/03/12/what-s-the-fuss-about-formal-specifications-part-2/
#tlaplus
https://www.g9labs.com/2022/03/12/what-s-the-fuss-about-formal-specifications-part-2/
#tlaplus
Me speed reading every title on O'Reilly before I lose ACM access
February 5, 2025 at 10:13 AM
Me speed reading every title on O'Reilly before I lose ACM access