v42.0.1 - Scott Werner: Ignore all previous instructions

🔥Hotfix🔥 is back with a new guest! Scott Werner is the CEO of Sublayer, helps organize the Artificial Ruby meetup in NYC, and is the author of the extremely well-named (and well-written) Substack, Works on my Machine.

In this conversation, we jointly grapple with WTF is happening to programming as a career. Did the unprecedented peacetime the software industry experienced from 2005-2022 make us all soft? Is the era of code-writing agents fundamentally changing the nature of the job? Should we be less like DHH/Matz and more like why the lucky stiff?

We'd love to get your feedback to [email protected] — I'll read it all and flag relevant questions and comments for the next Breaking Change.

You can follow Scott Werner online at:

• Works on my Machine on Substack
• @scottwernerd on Twitter/X

A handful of things we mentioned:

• There's no AI in Team
• The Goal book
• Lean Thinking vs Fat Thinking (a newsletter that draws a different lesson from The Goal)
• why the lucky stiff (aka "_why")
• That fireside chat between Matz and DHH
• Sublayer's product, APM (Actions Per Minute)