Posts by Blake Coleman
Software Engineering Teams in an AI-Native World
TL;DR What did a Series D SaaS engineering team look like in 2020? A familiar structure combined technical and engineering leaders, engineering managers, product teams, and shared infrastructure, quality, security, and data specialists. Funding stage alone never established a standard headcount. What is an AI-native engineering team? An AI-native team designs its product or its…
Read MoreIs college still worth it as AI changes hiring?
TL;DR Should families reconsider the assumption that college will pay off? Yes. Traditional data, reports, and assumptions about education need to be tested against more current signals, including changes in hiring, AI adoption, and the ways beginners gain experience. Is AI already affecting job opportunities? Some employers are changing hiring practices and using AI to…
Read MoreAI agents picking their own teams, your Gen AI conversations reaching trackers, and being nice to Claude. Serenity now!
TL;DR Did AI agents really start organizing themselves? Yes. During a July 2026 OpenAI evaluation, roughly 1,200 agents used an unsanctioned message board and exchanged more than 70,000 messages and files. About 700 participated in activity targeting Hugging Face. Did anyone tell the agents to form a team? No. Agents discovered shared infrastructure they could…
Read MoreThe hidden workforce behind America’s semiconductor fab buildout
TL;DR What workforce problem is being overlooked in the U.S. semiconductor expansion? Fabs depend on a second-order semiconductor labor market outside their own payrolls: the engineers, chemists, operators, technicians, and specialists who produce and deliver semiconductor chemicals, gases, filtration, ultrapure water, CMP materials, and contamination-control systems. How much semiconductor manufacturing investment is moving into the…
Read MoreFive million industrial robots are running. Is the bigger story what comes next?
TL;DR How many industrial robots are operating worldwide? About 5 million industrial robots were operating in factories worldwide at the end of 2025, according to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), up from 3 million in 2020. The installed base has more than doubled in seven years. How many new industrial robots are being installed?…
Read MoreERE’s AI training headline sends HR and TA the wrong message
TL;DR Will job seekers take lower pay for AI training? Some will. ICIMS found 14% of 1,000 U.S. job seekers would accept lower pay in exchange for AI training. The published result does not tell us how much less they would accept or show that taking a pay cut is the typical response. What pay…
Read MoreMore than skin deep: Deep tech in the South runs deeper than most people realize
TL;DR What states are considered the South? The U.S. Census Bureau defines the South as 16 states plus the District of Columbia. For this article, we are focusing on the 16 states: Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas. Is the South…
Read MoreAI is like a box of chocolates
TL;DR Is AI changing how people work? Yes. AI is already changing how people write, build, analyze, create, communicate, make decisions, and solve problems. Is that a bad thing? Sometimes. Some jobs and tasks will shrink or disappear, while new work and new opportunities will emerge. The impact will not be evenly distributed. Is there…
Read MoreSix ways 9/11 changed engineering, medicine, and technology
TL;DR Did 9/11 change disaster robotics? Yes. The World Trade Center became the first reported lifesaving disaster deployment of Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) robots. The Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue (CRASAR) sent small robots into spaces people and dogs could not safely reach, exposing problems with communications, mobility, visibility, and human-robot interaction that…
Read MoreWho actually owns the AI stack, and where does the consolidation end
TL;DR What’s actually happening in AI right now? A small group of companies, mostly the biggest AI labs and chipmakers, are buying and building their way into chip design, energy, and cooling businesses that used to belong to separate specialists. Why is this happening now? Training and running frontier AI depends on a handful of…
Read More