That was me. I said that. Time zones played a huge role, though. Hereβs the full story π
Just met a founder who fired his entire team because he was able to individually beat their productivity with Claude Code
Samuel Stroschein
1,406 posts
Samuel Stroschein
@samuelstroschei
building
- openai's codex cli with gpt 5 became better than claude code π€― it crawls the codebase to a degree i have never seen seen from claude code. Instantly one-shotted a bug i couldn't solve with claude code for 3 days new $200 per month subscription **check**
- Replying to @samuelstroscheiI offered everyone to come to the US, but nobody was able to commit - family, kids, personal stuff, all reasonable arguments Thus, we mutually separated last month :( What can be learned from this situation? 1. Distributed teams are disadvantaged in the age of AI. Async is
- Replying to @samuelstroscheiI started outshipping my remote team with the emergence of AI. ChatGPT o3 for architecture. Cursor/Claude code to execute. I was shipping faster than ever.
- Replying to @sanjeevn72absolute advantage of a cracked team in the age of ai! just not 6-9 hours apart, which leads to 24-hour long iteration cycles. ai made iterations even faster, making timezone difference even worse
- Replying to @samuelstroscheiThat's why I said "I was able to fire my team because of Claude Code". Claude Code + o3 were my sparring partners. I didn't need a team for architecture stuff. Was this ideal? Hell no. I had great talent in Europe, but I couldn't leverage it anymore
- Replying to @samuelstroscheiWas it bad hiring? No. This team executed. Our GTM product (inlang.com) was loved by users, adopted among enterprises, and had a clear path to success.
- Replying to @samuelstroscheiWe decided to rebuild lix, which put me into an interim eng lead position AI meant that I was able to iterate faster with claude code + o3 on architecture stuff than relying on my team, which was 6-9 hours away. AI answers instantly without a multi-hour delay.
- Replying to @samuelstroscheiSo what went wrong? In late 2023, I had to move to NYC to leverage US investors and customers. The team stayed in the EU. Which made sense. Most of our users for the GTM product were in the EU. Plus, we reached a point where the team operated independently of me.Hi everyone, I got an O1 visa and moved to NYC π All very exciting!!! But excuse me, I need to get a check now to rent an apartment. Wondering what a check is? Yeah me too. Those things have been phased out in 2002 in the EU. PS thanks @brexHQ for the time square billboard
- Replying to @samuelstroscheiEverything went perfectly until mid-2024. We suddenly faced an innovator's dilemma situation. We built inlang.com as a proof point for @lixCCS, a universal version control system: - any file format (not just text!) - SDK for apps - running in the browser
00:00 - Replying to @jacquesBroquardBeing in the us is a must to grow. personal connections, in-person meetings, and timezone overlap. flying back and forth is unsustainable and inefficient (a flight from SF to Berlin takes >20 hours for example). you don't take a spontanoues 1 day flight which completely
- Replying to @samuelstroscheiBut we progressed too slowly. Git compatibility was identified as the root cause. We had two options: 1. Break up with git and rebuild lix from scratch, killing momentum for inlang. 2. Keep the focus on inlang at the risk of missing the opportunity for lix.
- I use TDD. I never let AI write code without the goal of making a unit/e2e test pass. And I almost never let an agent do changes without my permissions except if i know its a small change and making the test pass is easy
- Hi everyone, I got an O1 visa and moved to NYC π All very exciting!!! But excuse me, I need to get a check now to rent an apartment. Wondering what a check is? Yeah me too. Those things have been phased out in 2002 in the EU. PS thanks @brexHQ for the time square billboard