David Singleton
Engineering leader; Stripe's chief technology officer in 2023, earlier 11 years at Google, where he was a VP of Engineering; later co-founded /dev/agents, renamed Dreamer.
David Singleton 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.
Filter All topics · Newest first
-
Their wordsThe vast majority are way too long and a total snooze. If we’re going to make someone read something on day one, let’s make it genuinely readable and useful.
-
Our reading
A startup should build the smallest possible team, hire diligently and pay above market on equity.
Their wordsComp & offer principles — our underlying thesis: build the smallest possible team, hire incredibly diligently, pay above-market on equity to reflect that.
- 5 days earlier
-
Their wordsI’ve learned over the years that shipping fast compounds exponentially only if you’re also learning fast. Otherwise, you’re just pushing volume (and many mistakes) into production, celebrating the wrong kind of momentum.
↗Community is a product decisionblog.singleton.io 1st of 4 in this piece
-
Our reading
Learning about users comes from direct contact with them, not from dashboards or support tickets.
Their wordsThis learning doesn’t come from dashboards, support tickets, or any of the other mechanisms we’ve developed as proxies for proximity to the people we’re building for. It comes from contact: watching someone use the thing you built, seeing how they react, and ensuring that directly informs what you do next.
↗Community is a product decisionblog.singleton.io 2nd of 4 in this piece
-
Their wordsOur entire team takes the time to sit down and document our own experience using our product, feeling where things feel slow, confusing, or broken. It forces the entire team to feel what users feel in a way that no amount of analytics can replicate.
↗Community is a product decisionblog.singleton.io 3rd of 4 in this piece
-
Their wordsThe temptation early on is to reach for the engagement dashboard, but data at this stage is sometimes a way of feeling busy while avoiding the harder question of whether what you’ve built actually works for people. The only way to know is to go find out directly, repeatedly, and on their terms rather than yours.
↗Community is a product decisionblog.singleton.io 4th of 4 in this piece
- 9 months earlier
-
Their wordsIf I imagine a ladder of our evolving relationship with coding agents, we’ve climbed to a new rung. We’ve moved from “smarter autocomplete” and “over the shoulder helper” to genuine “delegate-to” relationships - they’re like eager and determined interns.
↗Coding agents have crossed a chasmblog.singleton.io 1st of 2 in this piece
-
Their wordsBut here’s the thing: while these human-in-the-loop tools were transformative, the fully autonomous experiences just weren’t close to good enough until recently.
↗Coding agents have crossed a chasmblog.singleton.io 2nd of 2 in this piece