AI makes drafts cheap — taste and judgment become the expensive differentiators¶
Insight: Osmani's lesson #13 from 14 years at Google states that AI commoditizes code production, making the differentiators curation, editing, and selection judgment — choosing what not to ship. This extends beyond code to engineering leadership: trust is a "latency optimization" that removes bureaucratic friction, slow decisions are worse than slow code, and adding teams adds edges (coordination costs) not just nodes.
Detail: Among 14 lessons: (1) Best engineers pick the right problems — "every yes is an implicit no"; (4) Slow decisions are worse than slow code — examine missing context, unclear ownership, or fear of accountability; (6) More meetings don't fix bad team interfaces — define clear boundaries and contracts; (8) Avoid hero culture — build systems where "normal humans on a normal day" succeed; (11) Doubling team size often doesn't double output due to communication overhead; (12) Migrations are never just migrations — "if you're not willing to fund the finish, don't start"; (14) Trust compounds — "every time you deliver on a promise, you're depositing into an account that will pay dividends."