Best of workingtheorys.com on Kiwi News
Most upvoted by Kiwi News readers
7 stories from workingtheorys.com have been shared on Kiwi News since 5 June 2024, with 14 upvotes and 6 comments in total. The latest was shared on 13 September 2025. They are listed below, most upvoted first.
Text under a title is an AI summary of the linked article.
- Notes on 'Founder Mode'
Paul Graham's essay "Founder Mode" contrasts two ways of running a scaling company: founder mode, where founders stay directly involved and keep a tight grip, and management mode, which classically advises hiring good people and letting them do their jobs. Graham argues that founders pushed into management mode as they scale get bad outcomes, a lesson Airbnb's Brian Chesky learned the hard way. The commenter agrees founders should act like founders but considers Graham's objections to management mode, such as to delegation, overfitted, and says founder mode is more feasible given that companies now accomplish more with fewer resources.
- The Rise of the Software Creator
The essay argues that software is entering a new era in which a non-professional class of "software creators" emerges, mirroring the rise of content creators in media. It describes these creators as self-taught, low-code builders who focus on concept, creativity and distribution more than technical skill, making simple software quickly, often with small teams or none, and engaging directly with users. The author also says that software will increasingly be built for consumption, such as art, games and short-lived experiences, and that niche, personal and local software will be economically rational. The text notes that distribution remains centralized and hard, so more open platforms and new infrastructure will likely be needed.
- Doomprompting Is the New Doomscrolling.
The essay argues that AI chat interfaces encourage a compulsive pattern it calls "doomprompting," which parallels doomscrolling and erodes thinking and creative skill. It says AI's open-ended, always-continuing replies turn users into passive conversationalists, and that writing is thinking, so outsourcing it outsources thinking itself. Quoting Paul Graham, it warns of "a world divided into writes and write-nots," and it proposes friction-based design and "collaboration over automation" as remedies. The article cites ChatGPT's "Study Mode" as one example of an interface moving in that direction.
- Taste is Eating Silicon Valley.
Taste now matters more than technical skill in Silicon Valley, according to the essay's central argument, because software has become commoditized and AI has accelerated that shift. The essay says the barriers to entry are low and competition is fierce, so products are increasingly differentiated by design, brand, user experience and storytelling. It cites Arc and Linear as examples of companies whose design and brand are core selling points alongside functionality. It also argues that AI chatbots such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini are likely to converge on similar functionality, so they will compete on how they look and make users feel.
- Encore Anxiety
Encore anxiety is the distress of knowing people expect you to be brilliant again after your work has been appreciated, often without being sure how you achieved it the first time. Because the concept requires admitting past success, which polite society tends to discourage, the idea is that people would be better off being honest about their wins, losses and goals. Unlike outright failure, it is described as the exquisite agony of being expected to repeat a success.
- Make something heavy
The essay argues that online creation produces only weightless, short-lived output, and that creators should aim to make one substantial, lasting work, which it calls "something heavy." It contrasts "light mode," described as fast, iterative and prolific posting, with "heavy mode," described as slower, deliberate deep work that builds over time. The author says platforms are built to amplify rather than anchor, so no platform currently offers that weight on its own. The essay also says that Substack sits in a "midweight" zone and that many successful writers there are considering their endgame, and it closes by offering "Make something heavy" as its answer to what one is working on.
- MEDIA AND MACHINES.
The essay argues that media and machines have fused into a single system, the "media-machine singularity," that now governs what gets built, what gains attention, and how people understand reality. It claims that social networks were the first such superorganisms and that AI is their next, faster evolution, with LLMs having ingested the user-generated internet. It further argues that every organization will need to operate as both half-media and half-machine, which it calls "the hybrid imperative," and that builders must now engineer making and wanting at the same time.