🤖 AI Tactic

AI Smells

In programming, there are “code smells” — a code smell is any characteristic of source code that hints at a deeper problem. Jeff Atwood, founder of coding Q&A site Stack Overflow, keeps a long list of code smells.

These days, I’m seeing more and more AI smells, the telltale signs that someone has used poorly prompted AI to generate slop.

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⚡️ Execution Insight

Completed Staff Work

“Completed Staff Work” was a memo distributed to staff officers during WWII and reprinted by Thomas Watson for staff at IBM. It describes the optimal way to present a problem and solution to your commanding officer (or manager in a corporate setting).

In simple terms, the memo asserts that you should work out all the details of a single “completed action” to take in response to a problem, not to present things piecemeal. The goal is to advise your manager what to do for their approval or disapproval, not to ask them what to do.

The memo concludes with a great test of work quality — one that we should all apply to our work:

🧠 Curiosity Corner

Perceptions of Probability 🔢

I am generally interested in how people communicate and interpret each other’s meaning. (I do write a newsletter, after all).

So one chart I keep coming back to is this one that maps “perceptions of probability”:

The raw data came from /r/samplesize responses to the following question: What [probability/number] would you assign to the phrase "[phrase]"?

Probability words feel precise, but they aren’t. Each curve shows what people really mean when they say things like “likely” or “highly unlikely.” The spread is huge!

Take “about even.” Most people understandably call that 50%. But look at “we believe.” One person says it’s a 60% chance, another claims 80%. “Highly likely”? You’ll see guesses from 70% all the way to 95%.

It’s interesting to me that we all use the same words, but everyone’s mental number is different.

💼 Job Board

Cash Out ($250k+) in Customer-Facing Roles 📢 

Here are the 3 most interesting remote job openings I’ve seen this week:

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That’s it for this week.

-Rahul from The DesAI Digest

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