What Ben Kuhn thinks about optimism

@ben-kuhn · 23 positions · On ppll ↗

Software engineer and writer; former CTO of Wave, now at Anthropic. Blogs at benkuhn.net on attention, engineering management and doing hard things well.

Ben Kuhn 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.

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Only Ben Kuhn on optimism. See everyone on optimism

1 dated position, 2025, in their own words. Our reading of what Ben Kuhn has said — not written or endorsed by them.

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19 Apr 2025

Our readingMost software rewrites fail and take longer than people expect them to.

Their wordsmost rewrites fail and most people are over-optimistic about how long they will take

↗Impact, agency, and tastebenkuhn.net 1st of 3 in this piece