Justin Williams

Composer 2 is now available in Cursor.

im just copy pasting now with codex 5.4 high (NOT xhigh, NOT medium) before every pr. it's beautiful

In our conversation Marc Andreessen makes the case that the beating heart of our civilization’s progress is the founder: “You’re much more likely to build something important in the 21st century if you start with a founder and train them in management than if you start with a manager and try to train them to be a founder.”

I feel like I need to start fighting this shit with more linters. They are just not listening.

Saying not knowing how to code gives you an advantage in building software (thanks to AI) is like saying not knowing anything about filmmaking gives you an advantage in making films (thanks to having a smartphone + apps to edit stuff) Ignore this stuff and keep learning+building

Most managers already know how to run great 1:1s. They choose not to because their org punishes them for it. Every experienced manager has heard the advice. Let your reports own the agenda. Focus on their growth. Coach instead of direct. They learned it in their first leadership training. They’ve read the books. They’ve nodded along in the workshops. They still run status update 1:1s. And the reason is structural. A manager who develops their reports well creates people who get promoted out, get poached, or start asking for the manager’s job. A manager who runs low-energy status updates keeps the team stable, dependent, and unlikely to leave. HR tracks attrition as a negative on the manager’s scorecard. Nobody tracks “I developed three people so well they all got promoted in 18 months” as a win. The incentive math is brutal. Develop your people → they leave → you backfill → you spend 6 months ramping a new hire → your team’s output craters during the transition → your performance review suffers. Run status updates → team stays put → output is predictable → you look like a stable operator. This is why advice like this resonates massively and changes almost nobody’s behavior. The managers reading and bookmarking it will open their next 1:1 on Monday and ask “so what’s your status on the Q2 deliverables?” Because their org rewards exactly that. The managers who actually run great 1:1s tend to work at companies where developing people out of your team is celebrated. Those orgs are rare. And until that changes, most 1:1s stay exactly where they are: status updates with a calendar invite.