korrents

← People and their mental models

Thuan Pham's mental models

4 claims Thuan Pham made fit 4 mental models. Most often: Bottlenecks, Conway's law, Play long games. Everything they said here.

Models we see in what they say

Our reading: their claim applies the idea without naming it. The claim is theirs; filing it here is ours.

Bottlenecks

A system moves only as fast as its narrowest point; speed up anything else and nothing changes.

Used by 91 others

AI has already made sweeping mechanical changes cheap; the unsolved problem is getting the same productivity when adding features to an old, entangled codebase.

  1. Thuan Pham Uber's first Chief Technology Officer, from 2013 to 2020 we're trying to crack the next frontier which is how we get that level of productivity increase and output building new features on top of a code base that are older, Scaling Uber with Thuan Pham (Uber's first CTO)youtube.com · 1 Apr 2026 · 1:27:41 into the videoAll korrents from this video
    Their wordswe're trying to crack the next frontier which is how we get that level of productivity increase and output building new features on top of a code base that are older,

    Where this was said

    Watch from 1:27:41 plays here

    ↗Scaling Uber with Thuan Pham (Uber's first CTO)youtube.com

    1 Apr 2026 · video · 1h 39m · spoken · machine transcript

Conway's law

What an organisation builds ends up shaped like the organisation that built it.

Used by 4 others

A functionally organised engineering team seizes up at around a hundred people, because every feature then has to be negotiated against every other team's bandwidth.

  1. Thuan Pham Uber's first Chief Technology Officer, from 2013 to 2020 every feature that we want to put out has to be queued up on mobile development bandwidth dispatch bandwidth and it become impossible to navigate tradeoff because every feature you want to do you have to go negotiate with so many team Scaling Uber with Thuan Pham (Uber's first CTO)youtube.com · 1 Apr 2026 · 0:48:14 into the videoAll korrents from this video
    Their wordsevery feature that we want to put out has to be queued up on mobile development bandwidth dispatch bandwidth and it become impossible to navigate tradeoff because every feature you want to do you have to go negotiate with so many team

    Where this was said

    Watch from 0:48:14 plays here

    ↗Scaling Uber with Thuan Pham (Uber's first CTO)youtube.com

    1 Apr 2026 · video · 1h 39m · spoken · machine transcript

Play long games

A longer horizon makes some problems solvable and some short-term wins look like what they are.

Used by 44 others

A career is not built by searching for jobs but by accumulating a reputation slowly, so that when you become available the opportunities come to you.

  1. Thuan Pham Uber's first Chief Technology Officer, from 2013 to 2020 if you try to do a really good job at every company you've been working well with all the people that you work with, including your own team, your peer, whatever it is. Over time, very slowly, you accumulate a decent reputation in people's mind. Scaling Uber with Thuan Pham (Uber's first CTO)youtube.com · 1 Apr 2026 · 0:26:48 into the videoAll korrents from this video
    Their wordsif you try to do a really good job at every company you've been working well with all the people that you work with, including your own team, your peer, whatever it is. Over time, very slowly, you accumulate a decent reputation in people's mind.

    Where this was said

    Watch from 0:26:48 plays here

    ↗Scaling Uber with Thuan Pham (Uber's first CTO)youtube.com

    1 Apr 2026 · video · 1h 39m · spoken · machine transcript

Second-order thinking

Ask "and then what?": follow a decision past its first effect to the ones that come after.

Used by 92 others

A company that stops hiring new graduates because AI makes juniors look unnecessary will have no senior engineers in a few years' time.

  1. Thuan Pham Uber's first Chief Technology Officer, from 2013 to 2020 the best of the best still get offer from us because if we don't hire those folks today, what senior engineer will we have for yeah years from now, right? You have to feed the talent pipeline Scaling Uber with Thuan Pham (Uber's first CTO)youtube.com · 1 Apr 2026 · 1:35:59 into the videoAll korrents from this video
    Their wordsthe best of the best still get offer from us because if we don't hire those folks today, what senior engineer will we have for yeah years from now, right? You have to feed the talent pipeline

    Where this was said

    Watch from 1:35:59 plays here

    ↗Scaling Uber with Thuan Pham (Uber's first CTO)youtube.com

    1 Apr 2026 · video · 1h 39m · spoken · machine transcript