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What Addy Osmani thinks about design

@addy-osmani · 22 positions · 0 changes of mind

Engineering leader and author who spent 14 years at Google, most of it on Chrome and Chrome DevTools, rising from software engineer to director of engineering, and who created TodoMVC and helped push Core Web Vitals.

Addy Osmani did not write this page.

We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.

9 dated positions, 2026, in their own words. Our reading of what Addy Osmani has said — not written or endorsed by them.

9 positions so far — this page is not yet offered to search engines.

  1. Our readingComputing is an onion, and the more layers of it you can peel back and understand, the better you can build for the constrained machines real people are using.

    Their wordsif you treat computing as this onion where you just keep peeling back the layers, there's always something interesting behind the scenes. And the more of those layers that you can peel back and understand, I think in some ways the better you can optimize for that world.

    ↗From Chrome DevTools to AI Engineering, with Addy Osmaniyoutube.com 1st of 22 in this recording

    Interesting

  3. Our readingPerformance work used to mean half a day reading traces before writing a single fix, and language models have collapsed that step to minutes.

    Their wordsI remember anytime I would work with a big site on their performance problems, uh you could easily spend half a day, um you know, just looking at traces before you've even written any fixes at all. And now that we have LLMs, it's very quick to like reason through massive stack traces and actually be able to get down to fixes you can make.

    ↗From Chrome DevTools to AI Engineering, with Addy Osmaniyoutube.com 3rd of 22 in this recording

    LLMs

    Interesting

  5. Our readingPeople treat an unresponsive interface exactly the way they treat a slow pedestrian crossing: they keep hitting the button.

    Their wordsHumans are humans are are shockingly simple, you know, uh, if you think about the experience you have with somebody that's just trying to cross the street, if, uh, you know, if the light doesn't turn, you know, doesn't say they can walk fast enough, they'll just keep hitting that button. That's the same experience they have on the internet.

    ↗From Chrome DevTools to AI Engineering, with Addy Osmaniyoutube.com 5th of 22 in this recording

    Interesting

  7. Our readingA site's need to monetise is not a defence of an experience that shifts the page under the reader; those are separate questions.

    Their wordseven if you set aside, you know, maybe there's some validity around a business needs to monetize, those things shouldn't cause a really bad experience.

    ↗From Chrome DevTools to AI Engineering, with Addy Osmaniyoutube.com 6th of 22 in this recording

    Interesting

  9. Our readingThe point of building a self-sufficient organisation is not to step back from it, but to free yourself to work on the problem the organisation has not reached yet.

    Their wordsyou want to get to a point where you know, your your machine, your org is self-sufficient enough that you know, you just need to occasionally tap the blimp, make sure that things are working. You can course correct if it's not, but that frees you up to then focus on the next important sets of problems that the org needs to, you know, tackle heads on.

    ↗From Chrome DevTools to AI Engineering, with Addy Osmaniyoutube.com 8th of 22 in this recording

    Interesting

  11. Our readingAI tooling has done something no earlier technology managed: pulled directors, VPs and SVPs back into building things with their own hands at the weekend.

    Their wordsOne of the things I found most exciting in the last couple of years was seeing as model qualities gotten better and and harnesses and tools have gotten better, how many people um that were directors or VPs or SVPs or any of these levels were actually rolling up their sleeves and trying things out.

    ↗From Chrome DevTools to AI Engineering, with Addy Osmaniyoutube.com 9th of 22 in this recording

    Interesting

  13. Our readingBuilding a system that does the prompting for you is not a break with software history but the next rung on the same ladder of rising abstraction.

    Their wordsAnd it's effectively the next step of, you know, every phase of of software evolution is just like a rising tide of abstractions. This is the next abstraction.

    ↗From Chrome DevTools to AI Engineering, with Addy Osmaniyoutube.com 14th of 22 in this recording

    Interesting

  15. Our readingLetting automated loops build everything without guardrails on blast radius and on quality is a recipe for disaster.

    Their wordsBut, simply just having your loops build everything without having some guardrails around the blast radius without having guardrails around how you think about quality, I think is a recipe for disaster.

    ↗From Chrome DevTools to AI Engineering, with Addy Osmaniyoutube.com 15th of 22 in this recording

    Interesting

  17. Our readingEngineering, product and UX roles are converging, so the career advice that matters now is: do not just be an engineer.

    Their wordsAnd if you can show employers that you are not just a builder, but you are someone that can help them as these roles start to become a little bit fuzzier. I think that you can be successful in these times. Don't just be an engineer.

    ↗From Chrome DevTools to AI Engineering, with Addy Osmaniyoutube.com 22nd of 22 in this recording

    Interesting