Do this now! It's unclear how long the AI jobs and TC spike will last with the perceived demand/supply imbalance. If you want to get in and cash out, be ready to build something useful with AI and sprint-job cycle for months. It can make your career, though. Agree on the IC moves. Company > Title right now. @nikhyl, valuable as always.
Every hundred days or so I do an episode with executives I know who have just taken new AI roles. This round so many of the usual truths got flipped upside down. For the latest Skip episode I sat down with Anthony Maggio @maggioant (CPO, Runway), Gadi Ben-Zvi @GadiBenZvi (AI platform and products, Eli Lilly), and Chandra Raghavan @craynium (principal PM, Google Search AI). A ton of great insights:
◆ Join a lab to learn AI? Anthony considered one and found it too similar to a big company. "Both of the labs are now very large companies and in many ways operate like very large companies"
◆ Avoid big tech? Chandra is finding an IC role on Google Search AI is closer to his startup days than the stereotype. "It turns out it is a false dichotomy"
◆ Steer clear of non-tech? Gadi took an AI leadership role at Eli Lilly because he thinks it's the safest and most interesting way to work on AI. "When they make a bet, they are willing to spend years on it"
◆ Builders over managers? The companies that hired builders are now scaling, and executive skills matter again, but only paired with building
◆ Bring a prototype? Everyone has one now. The interviews go past it to what you built yourself and what broke along the way. "The credential doesn't just come from the vocabulary, it comes from doing the work"
Full conversation, if you're thinking about a role in 2027:
Write-up on Skip: open.substack.com/pub/theski…
youtu.be/gyueIHxs3G4
Colin Lernell retweeted
Every hundred days or so I do an episode with executives I know who have just taken new AI roles. This round so many of the usual truths got flipped upside down. For the latest Skip episode I sat down with Anthony Maggio @maggioant (CPO, Runway), Gadi Ben-Zvi @GadiBenZvi (AI platform and products, Eli Lilly), and Chandra Raghavan @craynium (principal PM, Google Search AI). A ton of great insights:
◆ Join a lab to learn AI? Anthony considered one and found it too similar to a big company. "Both of the labs are now very large companies and in many ways operate like very large companies"
◆ Avoid big tech? Chandra is finding an IC role on Google Search AI is closer to his startup days than the stereotype. "It turns out it is a false dichotomy"
◆ Steer clear of non-tech? Gadi took an AI leadership role at Eli Lilly because he thinks it's the safest and most interesting way to work on AI. "When they make a bet, they are willing to spend years on it"
◆ Builders over managers? The companies that hired builders are now scaling, and executive skills matter again, but only paired with building
◆ Bring a prototype? Everyone has one now. The interviews go past it to what you built yourself and what broke along the way. "The credential doesn't just come from the vocabulary, it comes from doing the work"
Full conversation, if you're thinking about a role in 2027:
Write-up on Skip: open.substack.com/pub/theski…
youtu.be/gyueIHxs3G4
@AnthropicAI just turned its biggest crisis of the year into a positioning win.
18 days ago the US government forced its flagship model offline. Today it's coming back, on Anthropic's terms.
The negotiation lesson here is worth more than the news. 🧵
Claude Fable 5 will be available again globally tomorrow.
After a series of productive conversations with the US government, we're redeploying the model with a new set of classifiers to target and block more cybersecurity tasks. In the near term, some routine tasks like coding and debugging will fall back to Opus 4.8. We’ll continue to refine these classifiers over the coming weeks to reduce false positives and better distinguish genuine misuse from legitimate requests.
We’ve also begun drafting a consensus framework—with Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and other Glasswing partners—for assessing the severity of AI jailbreaks and how AI developers should respond to them. We invite other industry partners and model providers to join us in this effort.
Finally, we’re scaling up our collaboration with the US government on model testing and safeguards. This will include pre-release access to models and safeguards for evaluation, information sharing on jailbreaks and misuse, and dedicated resources for joint research.
Thank you to our users for your patience, and to our partners across the government, industry, and the research community who worked alongside us to make Fable 5 available again.
Read our full blog: anthropic.com/news/redeployi…
4/ Then it went further.
Anthropic proposed the standard itself: a 4-part framework for scoring jailbreak severity, co-signed with Amazon, Microsoft, and Google.
The party under pressure wrote the rules everyone now debates. That's leverage, not compliance.
4/ Calculate your exit number now.
At your comp level, severance is negotiable. I've helped people add $100K-$200K by knowing what to ask and when. Don't sign the first thing HR slides across the table.
Colin Lernell retweeted
Google has a new interview. Everyone's about to copy it.
But there are 3 variants already out there:
Why SF, NY, Seattle, and Zurich tech jobs are worth the higher cost of living in one image...This Reddit user did an analysis of after-tax net tech incomes in major cities (25th, 75th, 95th percentile) vs. the cost of housing 🏠 which is how you should look at the real differences.
Many candidates mistakenly look at the COL on a % difference basis, but the reality is that in the big tech hubs, the increase in income dwarfs your increase in housing costs - and honestly many of your other costs.
If housing goes from $390 in Bangalore to $2,800 in SF, you are increasing your monthly housing costs by +617% to $2,410, but your earning potential increases by +$13,500, with a net improvement of +$11,090/month after taxes and housing.
If you have a family and start to succumb to lifestyle inflation related to high-income style childcare and private schooling, that's a different issue, but if you are simply looking at housing and food costs vs. your potential income, it's a no-brainer to go to a big tech hub. Maybe you can move remote later in your career for similar income, too.
Original Reddit post in comments.
