Est. MMXXIVIssue №135Vol. II
London - LisbonThu 29 Oct 2026

Read Before Monday

A weekly dispatch by Vitor Domingos · With links, on Sunday, nothing urgent
№ 135 / Weekly
Issue 73
Sun 3 Aug
Sunday Dispatch · № 73 · 3 Aug 2025

What a great reading we have before Monday! This week’s reads explore the messy mechanics and ethical pivots behind how we build and scale tech. We start with Evan Hahn, which breaks down fast, effective software development with a focus on clarity over polish, while Ankit Jain urges teams to ditch vanity metrics in favour of developer flow and tooling. Then Eleanor Berger introduces context engineering as the real backbone of LLM performance, beyond prompt engineering, while Alberto Romero voices growing distrust in AI’s corporate storytelling, comparing it to past tech bubbles. We end with Karen Hao’s deep dive into OpenAI lays bare the human and environmental costs behind its rise, framing it as a cautionary tale of ambition wrapped in empire.

In this issue
5 pieces

Evan Hahn’s essay “ How I build software quickly ” presents strategies for balancing speed and quality when working on long-lived code in small teams

Evan Hahn’s essay “ How I build software quickly ” presents strategies for balancing speed and quality when working on long-lived code in small teams

. He advocates aiming for “good enough” (a personal 8/10 threshold), sketching rough prototypes that reveal unknown challenges, and iterating from those spikes toward a polished solution. Hahn emphasizes minimizing distractions, softening requirements when possible, using small focused diffs, and repeatedly refining the process through reflection.

My take

It's really refreshing to connected with Hahn’s honesty about using ugly drafts full of ToDos and print calls. Feels like everyone’s first prototype looks like chaos until we clarifiry the actual challenge. That willingness to ferry through the mess to uncover real constraints feels liberating. I also appreciate the bit about softening requirements: sometimes half the work with clarity is better than double the work with uncertainty. After all, moving fast doesn’t mean cutting corners arbitrarily, it means knowing where polish matters and where it doesn’t. So, Hahn’s framework offers managers and individual contributors a practical roadmap for navigating the trade-off between delivery velocity and code quality. For organizations seeking to scale with lean teams, these practices suggest a balanced culture: one that prizes speed through clarity and disciplined iteration rather than frantic haste.

Alberto Romero’s essay “ I’m Losing All Trust in the AI Industry ” argues that much of the tech AI sector prioritizes narrative, profit, and public-facing goals over authentic safety and long‑term mission.

Alberto Romero’s essay “ I’m Losing All Trust in the AI Industry ” argues that much of the tech AI sector prioritizes narrative, profit, and public-facing goals over authentic safety and long‑term mission.

Powerful figures and companies repeatedly shift stated timelines for AGI, engage in opportunistic behaviour, and fail to address critical issues transparently. Romero frames this culture as privileging investors and optics over research, users, and integrity. He reflects that this distrust echoes historical tech bubbles: too much hype, weak follow‑through, and cycles of disillusionment before real progress emerges. Romero emphasises that many industry insiders don’t seem to genuinely believe in timelines they publicly espouse. He hopes for a deeper reckoning but fears the pattern will repeat unless accountability and consistency become central.

My take

Romero’s critique illustrates a growing credibility gap in this AI world; a disconnect between rhetoric and realization that echoes earlier technology bubbles - we've been all through this before, in some shape or form. But his argument clears the mismatch between short‑term capital aims and long‑term research integrity. For governments and regulators, this trend calls for stronger demands around verifiable commitments, transparent road‑maps and clear audit mechanisms. Without structural accountability, the industry risks cyclical disillusionment that may stall genuine innovation. The essay feels like a plea to slow down the spin machine and build something real, and ethical.

Context engineering , as introduced by Eleanor Berger at Intellectronica, transforms prompt engineering into a systematic discipline focused on designing the complete informational environment that feeds an AI mode

Context engineering , as introduced by Eleanor Berger at Intellectronica, transforms prompt engineering into a systematic discipline focused on designing the complete informational environment that feeds an AI mode

l. Rather than relying on static prompts, it treats LLMs as universal, non‑deterministic functions that require thoughtfully curated, dynamically assembled inputs, spanning system messages, conversation history, tool outputs, external data sources, and memory state. The practice builds on best architectural patterns like retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG), memory buffers, agent frameworks, dynamic context composition, and maintaining relevance within token limits. It emphasizes rigorous control, testing, and iteration to ensure context quality, reliability, and compliance, making it essential in enterprise AI systems.

My take

Context is king, it was always that like! Prompt engineering? That's the past! Prompt whispering? Was that the secret sauce of AI work? Clearly, this framing of context engineering feels like discovering the flywheel beneath the magic trick. Suddenly the whole system clicks: it’s not about writing the perfect instruction, it’s about feeding the model exactly what it needs at every moment. It’s part technical discipline, part orchestration art. Sure, it raises the bar, but it also unlocks the kind of reliability and insight we’ve been chasing. In short: engineering context feels like the real craft behind what just used to feel like wizardry. Techniques such as RAG, memory layering, state summarization, and dynamic tool orchestration enable enterprise-grade systems that are reliable, accurate, and aligned with business logic. Moreover, context engineering supports governance, auditability, and continuous improvement, which is critical for AI applications in regulated or mission-critical environments. Investing in this discipline means moving from experimental PoCs to production‑ready platforms that scale insights across functions while reducing risks and operational.

Ankit Jain’s The New Stack article “ The Anti‑Metrics Era of Developer Productivity " argues that as AI coding assistants transform software development, conventional productivity dashboards and numeric metrics have become less relevant.

Ankit Jain’s The New Stack article “ The Anti‑Metrics Era of Developer Productivity " argues that as AI coding assistants transform software development, conventional productivity dashboards and numeric metrics have become less relevant.

While metrics remain useful for diagnosing bottlenecks, real productivity now hinges on workflows, tooling, and team practices. Jain advocates shifting focus from measuring output to optimizing developer experience through automation across the entire SDLC: faster builds, trunk‑based development, continuous delivery, small pull requests, clear code ownership and ownership models. Productivity emerges from frictionless flow and tool-supported processes, not vanity stats.

My take

I’ve seen teams drown in data dashboards that promise insight but end up distracting from actual work. Jain’s message offers a needed course correction: stop celebrating commit counts, start fixing build bottlenecks. As AI tools automate more coding, what matters is flow; fast feedback, clean code paths, minimal friction. Metrics are a signal, not the destination. Engineering leaders should invest in automation, streamlined workflows (trunk‑based development, continuous delivery), and process clarity. In this environment, metrics should diagnose friction, not define it. The broader lesson: productivity emerges from systemic health, not statistical vanity.

In her conversation for MIT Technology Review journalist Karen Hao discusses her newly published book Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI

In her conversation for MIT Technology Review journalist Karen Hao discusses her newly published book Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI

. Hao portrays OpenAI’s evolution, from nonprofit origins to corporate titan, as reflective of modern colonialism, emphasizing how it amassed power through data extraction, global labour exploitation, and opaque corporate shifts. She shares field reporting from Kenya and Chile, documenting workers traumatized by low-paid content moderation roles and the environmental strain of energy-hungry AI data centers equating to multiple cities in power demand. Hao frames OpenAI’s leadership under Sam Altman as emblematic of entrenched global hierarchies, where corporate narratives cloak resource extraction as a civilizing mission. Her account details the shift from radical openness to secrecy when OpenAI restructured in 2019, partnered with Microsoft, and transformed into a capped-profit entity, raising questions about transparency, ethics, and public accountability.

My take

Hao’s analysis bespeaks a deeper crisis in AI governance: as firms like OpenAI scale globally, dystopian echoes of colonial resource extraction become tangible. The chapter of nonprofit‑to‑capped‑profit restructuring signals a shift in control, and arguably, societal mission. Policy makers and public institutions now confront an era where technological authority is centralized, data sovereignty is eroding, and democratic oversight lags behind corporate might. Hao’s perspective gave me that uneasy sense of witnessing a paradigm shift; from pioneering idealism to a polished corporate powerhouse. The stories from Kenya and Chile linger: beneath the tech sheen lie human labour and environmental impacts we rarely see. It feels personal when you realize that global ambition can mask real suffering, and that our data and infrastructure are the new resources being harvested.

The Premise
What you need to read before your busy Monday, published every Sunday

Read Before Monday is a weekly newsletter from Vitor Domingos - with a handful of articles, essays and oddities collected over the week, annotated with a short opinion, and sent before Monday morning.

No breaking news. No ten-thousand-word think pieces. No affiliate links. Just a small, curated and considered list of things worth sitting with.

VD
Vitor Domingos
Writing from London
Colophon
Type Archivo · Space Mono
Cadence Sun · 19:00 WET
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