Natik Gadzhi
natikgadzhi.bsky.social
Natik Gadzhi
@natikgadzhi.bsky.social
Engineering leadership, open source, dev tools. Computers were a mistake.

Doing things at Lambda.ai. I don’t speak for my employer.

Blog: https://respawn.io
"We have generally been finding out in the last few days"
August 12, 2025 at 3:17 PM
"You can't lead a horse to look at its teeth"
August 11, 2025 at 7:42 PM
I'll be in #Minneapolis for the next 10 days! What's good? Recommend me #record stores, #books stores, #coffee shops, and quiet parks. I'll need space to recover from humans. There will be a lot of humans.
August 4, 2025 at 12:41 AM
Where's my anxious #ADHD brethren at? How's hydroxyzine long-term for you? Not feeling like breaking stuff for a change is very nice. Does that last?
August 3, 2025 at 5:00 PM
Engineering leadership: sometimes its performance management, and sometimes its _performance_ management 🤡🫡
July 1, 2025 at 3:23 PM
@kepanoI've [email protected] for years on Catalyst license, but finally subscribed to sync. First, because I needed to sync up vaults between personal and work laptop, but even more so because I wanted to finally support @stephango.com and the team's work.

file over app
function over form

🖤
June 16, 2025 at 4:59 PM
https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/builder-ai-collapse-microsoft-backed-fake-ai-services

Arguably that perhaps was cheaper than inference at openai, I wouldn't be surprised if the board was happy with the strategy.
This Microsoft-backed AI startup just collapsed after faking its AI services with 700 real engineers
In a story that sounds like it's out of a sitcom, "AI" startup Builder.ai, once valued at $1.5 billion and publicly backed by Microsoft, has just collapsed after it was discovered its AI was actually just 700 Indian engineers manually working on tickets.
www.windowscentral.com
June 7, 2025 at 2:58 AM
My team at Lambda is hiring! We're building LLM-based app toolkits and model-agnostic tool calling and other goodies so folks can use them on top of open source models.

SF only. Hybrid, 4 days in office. If we worked together before, reach out!

https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/Lambda/e325f09b-992e-4c2d-96
Senior Software Engineer - Inference Apps
In 2012, Lambda started with a crew of AI engineers publishing research at top machine-learning conferences. We began as an AI company built by AI engineers. That hasn't changed. Today, we're on a mission to be the world's top AI computing platform. We equip engineers with the tools to deploy AI that is fast, secure, affordable, and built to scale. Whether they need powerhouse GPU hardware on-site or the flexibility of cloud-based solutions, we've got the horsepower to make it happen. Lambda’s AI Cloud has been adopted by the world’s leading companies and research institutions including Anyscale, Rakuten, The AI Institute, and multiple enterprises with over a trillion dollars of market capitalization. Our goal is to make computation as effortless and ubiquitous as electricity. If you'd like to build the world's best deep learning cloud, join us.  Note: This position requires presence in our San Francisco office location 4 days per week; Lambda’s designated work from home day is currently Tuesday. What You’ll Do - Work on Lambda’s Inference-based apps, from their core components (scalable distributed backend systems, tool calling, multi-tenant data integrations, semantic layer, etc) to user-facing web and platform native applications. - Build systems that make bleeding edge LLM application features available and consistent across the newest open source models, and help define standards around them. Including accessing user’s data, MCP integrations, tool calling, etc. - Own the full feature lifecycle from a hypothesis to fast prototyping, shipping, evaluating feature performance, and iterating on it. - Work closely with Lambda Inference, Core Apps, Platform, and Special Projects teams, other large players in the industry, and the open source community. - Make the newest, highest leverage and most impactful and useful features of language models available to more folks, in a privacy-first, open source-first environment. Our work will help independent researchers get their models into the market. - Help build the newest, ambitious line of business at Lambda. Own the outcomes for the features you will work on, and work directly with stakeholders across the company, as well as our partners outside of the company. You - 10+ years of experience building software products. You’re already a senior, experienced software engineer. - 1 year or more of experience working on LLM-based applications, including hybrid search systems, user data integrations, evals, and tracing. - 5+ years of experience with Python and/or Typescript. This role will focus mainly on the backend first, however, we’re a small team, and you will be expected to write Typescript in our (modern) React and Svelte codebases, as well as prototype frontends for your experimental apps. - You’re resourceful and you take ownership. You’re driven by outcomes, not just output of your work. - You have an insatiable desire to ship. - You take a user-centric approach to building products and developer tools. - A passion for continuous learning and improvement (both at a personal and team level). - You enjoy building leverage through abstractions and tooling that multiply output. - Ability to influence without authority and work with engineers junior and senior, experience working with operations, platforms, and infrastructure teams. - Excellent written and verbal communication skills. You communicate proactively, you worked with hybrid and remote-first async teams before. Nice to Have - Experience building OAuth integrations. - Experience implementing data pipelines. - Extensive experience building with language models. - Experience leading a team in a tech lead role previously is a strong plus. - Experience starting a company is a strong plus. Salary Range Information Based on market data and other factors, the annual salary range for this position is $255,000 - $405,000. However, a salary higher or lower than this range may be appropriate for a candidate whose qualifications differ meaningfully from those listed in the job description. About Lambda - Founded in 2012, ~350 employees (2024) and growing fast - We offer generous cash & equity compensation - Our investors include Andra Capital, SGW, Andrej Karpathy, ARK Invest, Fincadia Advisors, G Squared, In-Q-Tel (IQT), KHK & Partners, NVIDIA, Pegatron, Supermicro, Wistron, Wiwynn, US Innovative Technology, Gradient Ventures, Mercato Partners, SVB, 1517, Crescent Cove. - We are experiencing extremely high demand for our systems, with quarter over quarter, year over year profitability - Our research papers https://lambdalabs.com/research have been accepted into top machine learning and graphics conferences, including NeurIPS, ICCV, SIGGRAPH, and TOG - Health, dental, and vision coverage for you and your dependents - Commuter/Work from home stipends for select roles - 401k Plan with 2% company match (USA employees) - Flexible Paid Time Off Plan that we all actually use A Final Note: You do not need to match all of the listed expectations to apply for this position. We are committed to building a team with a variety of backgrounds, experiences, and skills. Equal Opportunity Employer Lambda is an Equal Opportunity employer. Applicants are considered without regard to race, color, religion, creed, national origin, age, sex, gender, marital status, sexual orientation and identity, genetic information, veteran status, citizenship, or any other factors prohibited by local, state, or federal law.
jobs.ashbyhq.com
June 7, 2025 at 2:32 AM
The one-click MCP setup with oauth is the story here. https://www.cursor.com/en/changelog?utm_source=alphasignal

This is really a big deal, and I think it'll significantly increase MCP adoption.
Changelog | Cursor - The AI Code Editor
New updates and improvements.
www.cursor.com
June 5, 2025 at 4:16 PM
PSA: Say thank you to folks in your service and ops teams. Someone helped you onboard and is responsive in your it-support tickets? Someone who helped you get your apps up and running in the k8s cluster?

Say thank you. Show folks you're grateful and appreciate their work. Goes a long way.
June 2, 2025 at 4:58 PM
This was really really good. CW: suicide, grief.
June 1, 2025 at 9:07 PM
Reposted by Natik Gadzhi
On the off chance that you did not think that Andrew Huberman was a complete dipshit as well as as a hopelessly self-indulgent blatherer, boy do I have a podcast for you.
Get ready guys
June 1, 2025 at 3:01 AM
Open models are _really_ catching up. The R1 update from Wednesday is close to o3 proper (not mini!?) and gemini 2.5 pro (!?).

https://huggingface.co/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1-0528?utm_source=alphasignal
May 31, 2025 at 5:22 PM
Subtweeting is cool, but have you tried subwebsiting? 🙃
May 25, 2025 at 5:13 PM
All cloud work and no cloud play makes Natik a dull boy
May 25, 2025 at 5:02 PM
Horizons into battlegrounds
May 24, 2025 at 4:31 PM
And one of the experiences that helps folks bond most is facing adversity together, and supporting each other through it. Sometimes it's outside competition. I have a feeling it's not uncommon to have healthy discontent with some things internal. Like a circus-grade product process.
May 24, 2025 at 3:26 PM
It's not a _company_ that made that best job you've ever had. It's the _people_ and the shared _experiences_.
May 24, 2025 at 3:14 PM
Which is to say, I'm moving back to the bay 💙
May 13, 2025 at 4:11 PM
If you're out of ideas for Mother's Day gifts, you can always switch to @kagi.com Family plan and gift your partner the bliss of damn good web search.
May 11, 2025 at 6:28 PM
Have you considered the ferality of the vibes today?
May 11, 2025 at 5:41 PM
What makes a genuinely good and useful #llm-based app, and a shitty one? What makes one chat better than another? What features and characteristics are important?
May 11, 2025 at 12:54 AM
Alright I wrote a thing on how to get career matters into your own hands and hopefully not fuck things up. Beta testing here. What have I missed that worked for you well?

https://respawn.io/posts/how-to-get-promoted
May 8, 2025 at 2:15 AM
I have 5 one month subscriptions to The Engineering Manager https://theengineeringmanager.substack.com/ by James Stainer to give away. If you're early in your eng leadership journey, his writing is a great resource to learn from.

Hit me up if you want one!
May 7, 2025 at 5:15 PM
For-profit venture-backed companies making their source available under GPL is a spit in the face, don't @

SMH Zed.
May 7, 2025 at 4:31 PM