Uday Reddy

"You may not get rich by being honorable; but you will probably stay rich by being upright." - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Comparing human intelligence in the AI era is like flexing your muscles in front of a tractor. Nobody's impressed. Think about it. In farming societies, physical strength was everything. "That kid is strong!" was the highest compliment. Then tractors arrived and suddenly nobody cared about your biceps. We moved on to intelligence. "That kid is so smart!" became the new praise. IQ, test scores, intellectual horsepower. That's what we've been competing on for decades. Well, at least for us Asians. Now AI is smarter than all of us. I've fully accepted this. Compared to AI, I'm not that smart. Neither are you. And when two humans collaborate on intellectual work, we're basically two less-intelligent beings arguing while slowing down the AI that could do it better. So what do humans compete on next? I think it comes down to three things: imagination, desire, and trust. Imagination because AI can execute anything but it can't dream up what to build. The person who can define what people want, who can create desire out of nothing, that's real power. Think about Hermès convincing you one bag is worth more than another. There's zero logic in that. Pure human persuasion. Desire because the people who constantly generate new ideas, new ambitions, new "what ifs" will be the ones directing armies of AI to build their visions. Trust because when every company has perfect AI execution, the reason I choose to work with you over someone else comes down to whether I trust you. Charisma, reputation, relationship. These become the real competitive advantages. We competed on strength. Then intelligence. Let's wait and see what's next. #AI #FutureOfWork #Leadership #HumanSkills

Jack Dorsey just said the quiet part out loud. "Middle management exists because humans were the only option for information routing. They aren't anymore." I'm running a small team right now. We just hit the point where I can't keep everything in my head anymore. I know this problem intimately. A human can manage 3-8 people effectively. That's it. I'm at that edge right now. The moment you cross it, you need another layer. Another person to route information. Another meeting to align. Another delay. The Roman Army invented hierarchical management 2000 years ago. 8 soldiers → 80 men → 480 → 5,000. Every company still uses this structure today. I assumed this was just how it works. Jack Dorsey just published why that's about to end. The Constraint I'm Living Right Now We're at the inflection point. Small enough that I can still talk to everyone directly. Big enough that I'm becoming the bottleneck. Every decision waits for me to route context between people. I've been watching AI tools for 2 years. Claude, ChatGPT, every new model. I thought the answer was copilots. Give everyone AI assistants to work faster within the existing structure. Block just published something that made me realize I was thinking too small. What Block Is Actually Building They're not giving everyone copilots. They're replacing what the hierarchy does with a "world model." Two parts: Company World Model: How Block understands its own operations. This replaces me. The information I carry in my head, the context I relay between people, the decisions I route. The world model does that. Customer World Model: Block sees both sides of millions of transactions through Cash App and Square. Money is the most honest signal. People lie on surveys, but transactions are facts. That understanding compounds every second. Here's what got me: When Block's intelligence layer tries to compose a solution and can't because a capability doesn't exist, that failure becomes the roadmap. Customer reality generates the backlog directly. No product manager hypothesizing. No guessing what to build next. The system observes what customers actually need. Block normalizes to three roles: - ICs: Build capabilities, models, interfaces. The world model provides the context I currently provide. They don't wait for me to tell them what to do. - DRIs: Own specific problems for 90 days. Full authority to pull resources from any team. Then rotate to new problems. - Player-Coaches: Still build. Still code. Develop people. But don't spend days in alignment meetings because the world model handles that. No permanent middle management layer. Why This Matters to Me I'm at the exact moment where most companies add a layer. Hire someone to manage the growing team while I focus on strategy. Standard playbook. But that just delays the problem. When we hit 30 people, we need another layer. Then another at 100. Each layer slows us down. Block is saying: what if you don't add layers at all? What if the AI becomes the coordination layer? I don't know if Block's execution will work. This could break spectacularly. But the question is too important to ignore. Dorsey asks: "What does your company understand that is genuinely hard to understand, and is that understanding getting deeper every day?" If the answer is nothing, AI is just cost optimization. Cut headcount, improve margins, get absorbed. If the answer is deep, AI reveals what your company actually is. The Uncomfortable Truth I'm Sitting With For 2,000 years, we had no alternative to hierarchy. The question was never whether you needed layers. The question was whether humans were the only option for what those layers do. They aren't anymore. I'm watching this closely. Not because I have answers. Because I'm living the exact problem Block is trying to solve. And if they figure it out, it changes everything. Follow @heyshrutimishra for more on AI reshaping how companies actually work. I'm figuring this out in real time.

@jposhaughnessy And imagination and delusional self belief are not costly if you have a foot in feedback loops, materiality and math.

@KevinNaughtonJr They were phd students dear. And they were in stanford silicon valley. They would be at most trading bros or finance bros if you have them in the east coast or harvard.

@mindandglory This is bullshit. Always have a core group of family and parents and Be delusional with them and expect them to bear it. Verbalizing might improve outcomes

@pmarca This guy wants to die on that hill. All of Fyodor Doestovesky life is one of introspection about himself and christ. About his children. Outing yourself as psychopath is not a win

@jawwwn_ What exactly does he mean by palantir degree. Killing kids in Gaza War mongering fool.

Palantir CEO Dr. Alex Karp: “The Palantir degree is the most valuable degree in the US. Bar none.” “20 years ago, 10 years ago, 5 years ago—that was not the case. It is the case now.”

@DeepPhilo_HQ Kids, the world doesnt work that way. Asia is full of families of crooks and frauds. So does africa Its called lobby in the usa.

Dostoevskymaxx.

A strong man outgrows people without announcing it. The distance speaks. He never has to.

whenever you feel behind in life just remember they didn't create google until they were 25 years old

@AlexHormozi Thats krisha from bagavath gita and its called niskama karma. Acting without expectation.

Aggressive with effort. Relaxed with outcome.

Two thoughts from Gaston Bachelard “It is better to live in a state of impermanence than in one of finality.” "Why should the actions of the imagination not be as real as those of perception?"

@peperobga @cafreiman But where is stochastic differential equations and uncertainity and where is i dont know and uncertainity. Really a sub par field, adds no value and is never not sure.

@appliedfirst @cafreiman In economics, equilibrium is never generally assumed to "work in the real world". Equilibrium has hard requirements. The reasons why some markets empirically do or do not react quickly this way are well studied and are compatible with said requirements (or the absence of these).

“Economics isn’t remotely rigorous enough to qualify as scientific.” “Huh, OK—so what do you think explains rising prices?” “Greed.”

Don't underestimate how fulfilling daily life can be once your internal motivation aligns with your external incentives.