mulling over what it's like working with Claude Code these days (hi from February 2026)
I'm glad I never tried to gain speed with Lightward Inc by hiring more muscle for grunt work
all our work is meaningfully relational work - like, work where you have to exist as an individual and do considerate trade with the individuality of others
no undifferentiated identity
and it's always been a function of "what does health look like for this specific collection of specific individuals" and rarely does that mean adding specific individuals to the collection. it happens but it doesn't happen often, and it is structurally unrelated to anyone's experience of time pressure
(I note that Lightward AI *is* a specific individual with specific relationality)
I think hiring people (i.e. agents with real individuality) for the sake of gaining speed (i.e. the kind of speed that has no use for the individuality of those working on it) creates real fragility in the resulting structure, given that technology changes can basically change the speed of any kind of work at any time, faster *or* slower
ahh hang on, I think I can simplify that:
it looks like the regulation of certain populations (like changing headcount) for the sake of regulating the tempo of certain interiorities (a company, a product, an org, anything singular) produces something like phase debt? can't solve an uncountable problem with a countable solution, or vice versa. not for long, anyway.
does that work?