Ben Kuhn
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. ppll compiled it from their own words, each linked to the source. Is this you? · Report a mistake
Latest x.com
What they believe
-
The default social mood in many public spaces is ironic detachment.
The default mood of a lot of spaces is a sort of ironic detachment.
benkuhn.netSaid 24 Apr 2026This on korrents
-
Most software rewrites fail and take longer than people expect them to.
most rewrites fail and most people are over-optimistic about how long they will take
benkuhn.netSaid 19 Apr 2025This on korrents
The bold line is korrents’ wording; the quote is theirs. These 2: what they wrote before what they said aloud, one per source, newest first.
Feed
As its own page →Hiding
25 April
24 April
From one piece You should try contra dancing 3 beliefs · benkuhn.net
-
Their words
It's pretty common for people to use contra as a gateway into more difficult forms of dance.
-
korrents.com
Most forms of dance require weeks of lessons before newcomers are welcomed to dance socially.Their words
Many other forms of dance require weeks of lessons before you're even encouraged to do it socially at all.
-
Their words
The default mood of a lot of spaces is a sort of ironic detachment.
28 February
14 October 2025
21 June 2025
19 April 2025
From one piece Impact, agency, and taste 3 beliefs · benkuhn.net
-
Their words
People who can be trusted to make something inevitable are really rare, and are typically the bottleneck for how many different things a team or company can do at once.
-
korrents.com
Different people's areas of strongest judgment or taste rarely overlap much with each other.Their words
it's quite rare for different people's "zone of best taste" to overlap very much.
-
Their words
most rewrites fail and most people are over-optimistic about how long they will take
2 April 2025
1 April 2025
From one piece Advice for time management as a manager 2 beliefs · benkuhn.net
-
Their words
The stereotype is that new managers often micromanage, but at Wave, I've noticed that new managers often err on the side of undermanaging, or being too hands-off, perhaps out of a desire to signal that they trust their reports.
-
korrents.com
A manager's own individual technical output drops by roughly 10-20% per engineer they manage.Their words
you should expect to have something like 10-20% less individual output per engineer you manage, depending on how experienced you are, they are, etc., and with substantial week-to-week variance.
16 March 2025
From one piece How I've run major projects 3 beliefs · benkuhn.net
-
korrents.com
The best project managers are usually not the strongest technical individual contributors.Their words
The best project-managers are often not the strongest technical ICs.
-
Their words
"Direction is more important than magnitude"-it's usually better to have a lower-velocity project that works on the right things, than a higher-velocity one that's pointed at the wrong goal.
-
Their words
One of the most common megaproject failure modes is to not freak out soon enough, and having a concrete plan is the best antidote.
22 July 2024
21 July 2024
From one piece Categories of leadership on technical teams 3 beliefs · benkuhn.net
-
Their words
Good project management is barely visible-it just feels like "things humming along."
-
Their words
The bar I typically suggest is that the people manager doesn't need to have the most technical depth on the team, but they need enough depth that they can follow most discussions without slowing them down, understand who's correct in most debates without needing to rely on trust, and generally stay oriented easily.
-
Their words
Team leadership covers a huge array of things-as you can see from how long this post is-and trying to find someone who can be great at all of them is often a unicorn hunt.
13 July 2024
-
korrents.com
Trust between colleagues comes from shared mental models built through mutual investment.Their words
Trust comes from common knowledge of shared mental models, and that takes investment from both sides to build.
23 May 2024
16 May 2024
12 May 2024
10 May 2024
6 March 2024
26 February 2024
25 February 2024
12 February 2024
23 April 2023
1 February 2023
29 December 2022
Nothing matches.
Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 23 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
Each is a — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.
Recent
The default social mood in many public spaces is ironic detachment.
The default mood of a lot of spaces is a sort of ironic detachment.
You should try contra dancing Said 24 Apr 2026
Most forms of dance require weeks of lessons before newcomers are welcomed to dance socially.
Many other forms of dance require weeks of lessons before you're even encouraged to do it socially at all.
You should try contra dancing Said 24 Apr 2026
Contra dancing often serves as a gateway into more difficult forms of dance.
It's pretty common for people to use contra as a gateway into more difficult forms of dance.
You should try contra dancing Said 24 Apr 2026
Show 20 more
Most software rewrites fail and take longer than people expect them to.
most rewrites fail and most people are over-optimistic about how long they will take
Impact, agency, and taste Said 19 Apr 2025
Different people's areas of strongest judgment or taste rarely overlap much with each other.
it's quite rare for different people's "zone of best taste" to overlap very much.
Impact, agency, and taste Said 19 Apr 2025
People who can reliably make outcomes happen without oversight are rare and are the real bottleneck on how much an organization can take on at once.
People who can be trusted to make something inevitable are really rare, and are typically the bottleneck for how many different things a team or company can do at once.
Impact, agency, and taste Said 19 Apr 2025
A manager's own individual technical output drops by roughly 10-20% per engineer they manage.
you should expect to have something like 10-20% less individual output per engineer you manage, depending on how experienced you are, they are, etc., and with substantial week-to-week variance.
Advice for time management as a manager Said 1 Apr 2025
New managers are more likely to under-manage (be too hands-off) than to micromanage.
The stereotype is that new managers often micromanage, but at Wave, I've noticed that new managers often err on the side of undermanaging, or being too hands-off, perhaps out of a desire to signal that they trust their reports.
Advice for time management as a manager Said 1 Apr 2025
The biggest risk in a large project is failing to raise the alarm early enough, and a concrete plan is the best defense against that.
One of the most common megaproject failure modes is to not freak out soon enough, and having a concrete plan is the best antidote.
How I've run major projects Said 16 Mar 2025
A slower project aimed at the right goal beats a faster one aimed at the wrong goal.
"Direction is more important than magnitude"-it's usually better to have a lower-velocity project that works on the right things, than a higher-velocity one that's pointed at the wrong goal.
How I've run major projects Said 16 Mar 2025
The best project managers are usually not the strongest technical individual contributors.
The best project-managers are often not the strongest technical ICs.
How I've run major projects Said 16 Mar 2025
It is rare to find one person who is great at every dimension of team leadership.
Team leadership covers a huge array of things-as you can see from how long this post is-and trying to find someone who can be great at all of them is often a unicorn hunt.
Categories of leadership on technical teams Said 21 Jul 2024
A people manager needs enough technical depth to follow discussions and judge debates without relying on trust, but not the deepest technical expertise on the team.
The bar I typically suggest is that the people manager doesn't need to have the most technical depth on the team, but they need enough depth that they can follow most discussions without slowing them down, understand who's correct in most debates without needing to rely on trust, and generally stay oriented easily.
Categories of leadership on technical teams Said 21 Jul 2024
Good project management is nearly invisible when things are going well.
Good project management is barely visible-it just feels like "things humming along."
Categories of leadership on technical teams Said 21 Jul 2024
Trust between colleagues comes from shared mental models built through mutual investment.
Trust comes from common knowledge of shared mental models, and that takes investment from both sides to build.
Trust as a bottleneck to growing teams quickly Said 13 Jul 2024
Fast-growing companies will never achieve full pairwise trust between all employees.
In a large, fast-growing company you'll probably never get to the utopian ideal of full pairwise trust between everyone-it takes too long to build.
Trust as a bottleneck to growing teams quickly Said 13 Jul 2024
Repeated vague platitudes without follow-up specifics signal weak first-principles thinking.
If they don't follow this up with a more specific, precise or nuanced claim, they may not be a strong first-principles thinker.
How I build and run behavioral interviews Said 25 Feb 2024
Someone who can't name what they'd do differently is unlikely to be good at improving over time.
if the person responds to "what would you do differently" with "nothing," or with non-actionable vague platitudes, it's a sign they may not be great at figuring out how to get better at things over time.
How I build and run behavioral interviews Said 25 Feb 2024
Most workplace problems have more than one person contributing to them, not a single culprit.
Sometimes this is true, but usually problems aren't a single person's fault!
How I build and run behavioral interviews Said 25 Feb 2024
Delegation and oversight should be matched to how experienced and autonomous a person is at that specific task, not applied uniformly.
Manage projects according to the owner's level of task-relevant maturity.
Some mistakes I made as a new manager Said 23 Apr 2023
People with little experience at a task often welcome a degree of close oversight, provided it is given thoughtfully.
People with low task-relevant maturity appreciate some amount of micromanagement (if they're self-aware and you're nice about it).
Some mistakes I made as a new manager Said 23 Apr 2023
Neglecting maintenance of infrastructure over time makes it degrade faster and become costlier to repair later.
unmaintained infrastructure degrades more quickly, and is more expensive to fix in the long run.
Some mistakes I made as a new manager Said 23 Apr 2023
Impatience is a good thing: it is the best way to get faster at things, and being fast correlates strongly with being effective.
Being impatient is the best way to get faster at things. And across a surprising number of domains, being really fast correlates strongly with being effective.
Be impatient Said 1 Jul 2020
What is a korrent?
A korrent is a belief a person has stated in their own words: one sentence stating the claim, backed by a quote and a source, kept at korrents.com.
Under a name here, the quoted block is what they actually said. The korrent beneath it is the claim those words support, in korrents' wording — tap it to see the record, its source, and who else holds it.
Nobody here wrote their own korrents. They are compiled from public statements, and a person can change their mind, which is recorded too.
Recommends rcmnd
rcmnd What they recommend 8 things — each backed by an exact quote.
Compiled by rcmnd.app, not by them: the quotes are theirs, and each links to the post it was copied from.
Recent
Uses nativefier
For the rest (e.g., oddly, most Google web apps), I use a command-line tool called nativefier to turn them into desktop apps.
benkuhn.net 1 Aug 2020
Disliked Slack
A special dishonorable mention goes to Slack, which can easily suck away a quarter of your time without you noticing. If you use Slack and you haven’t disabled the “unread messages” badge, stop reading this post and do it now.
benkuhn.net 1 Aug 2020
Uses Kindle4RSS
I do most of my Internet reading on my Kindle via Kindle4RSS.
benkuhn.net 1 Aug 2020
Show 5 more
Uses Witch
Witch can display separate app windows separately, only display windows from the current workspace, and supports text search on window titles so that you can search directly for the window you want without having to skip over.
benkuhn.net 1 Aug 2020
Loved uBlock Origin
I block distracting parts of websites with uBlock Origin’s amazing “element blocker,” which lets you select and remove any part of the page. As a fan of minimalism in web design, I really enjoy being able to adversarially enforce it on any rogue webpage.
benkuhn.net 1 Aug 2020
Recommends Focus
For websites that are habit-forming but still feel useful on net, like Twitter or Hacker News, Focus lets me restrict my usage to certain times of day. It’s the only website blocker I’ve used that lets me fully automate blocking things in the exact way I want.
benkuhn.net 1 Aug 2020
Loved Complice
(Complice is my favorite app for making lists of what I want to do today.) This helps me recover quickly from unintentionally going down rabbit holes.
benkuhn.net 1 Aug 2020
Uses Cree 100W-equivalent 5000K LED bulbs
Update 2020-11-16: For my home, I ended up switching from the corncob bulb to three 7-way splitters and 21 100W equivalent 5000K Cree bulbs from Home Depot. I found the Cree bulbs on sale so they were about the same price, the light was more diffused and they have a higher color-rendering index.
benkuhn.net 1 Nov 2019
What others say about Cree 100W-equivalent 5000K LED bulbs →
Where they publish
Blog benkuhn.net His essays on attention, engineering and management.
Recent
- You should try contra dancing 24 Apr 2026 a story of middle school Ben • a not-very-illuminating description of the mechanics • flow, joy, and community • the antidote to the rest of life • how to try contra
- Impact, agency, and taste 19 Apr 2025 understand + work backwards from the root goal • don’t rely too much on permission or encouragement • make success inevitable • find your angle • think real hard • reflect on your thinking
- Advice for time management as a manager 1 Apr 2025 have accurate expectations of yourself • prioritize ruthlessly • unemploy your future self • a five-step “help, I’m overwhelmed” checklist • carve out focused time
Show 7 more
- How I've run major projects 16 Mar 2025 focus • maintain a detailed plan for victory • run a fast OODA loop • overcommunicate • break off subprojects • have fun • bonus content: my project management starter kit
- Categories of leadership on technical teams 21 Jul 2024 overall direction • people management • project management • technical leadership • example divisions of labor
- Trust as a bottleneck to growing teams quickly 13 Jul 2024 non-trust is reasonable • trust lets collaboration scale • symptoms of trust deficit • how to proactively build trust
- How I build and run behavioral interviews 25 Feb 2024 budget 2+ hours to build • think ahead about follow-ups and rubric • focus on a small number of skills • dig into details • make yourself a rubric
- Some mistakes I made as a new manager 23 Apr 2023 the trough of zero dopamine • managing the wrong amount • procrastinating on hard questions • indefinitely deferring maintenance • angsting instead of asking
- Leaving Wave, joining Anthropic 1 Feb 2023 love for Wave • why leave • where to • why there • what’s next
- Why and how to write things on the Internet 29 Dec 2022 because you’ll have more awesome friendships • be consistent • suggested post ideas • setup advice • getting initial readers
Link verified 4 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
x.com @benkuhn His X account.
Recent
- New post! "You should try contra dancing" I took a break from managementposting to pitch you all on my favorite niche activity: 25 Apr 2026
- One thing I love about Anthropic is that our hiring process often includes a disclaimer that we will absolutely do something that zeros our equity if we think it's the best thing for the world. We are not anywhere close to that here—DOW can only block us from DOW contracts—but 28 Feb 2026
- Do I know anyone who works at @Etsy and could escalate a ticket? They arbitrarily decided they were 100% sure my (passkey 2fa'd) email was hacked and banned me. I'd like to be able to keep paying them money :) 14 Oct 2025
Show 17 more
- You know your AI lab is run by physicists when they plot revenue on a log scale 21 Jun 2025
- New post! "Impact, agency, and taste" (link below): 19 Apr 2025
- New post! "Advice for time management as a manager" (link ⬇️): 2 Apr 2025
- New post! "Categories of leadership on technical teams:" https://t.co/qea715y2LA A writeup of a framework I reference a lot when talking about how to structure and staff teams: 22 Jul 2024
- New post! "Trust as a bottleneck to growing teams quickly": https://t.co/rlQBvWkQ2d Something I've been thinking about a lot given how fast Anthropic's been growing—meaning a constant stream of new people we need to proactively build trust with, ASAP. Hope it's helpful :) 13 Jul 2024
- "Mechanistic interpretability never does anything useful" they said "It'll never beat a standard baseline" they said "Talk to me when you ship something" they said Ahem: 23 May 2024
- Talent density at Anthropic continues to increase :) 16 May 2024
- A bit surprised by how little I've heard about GCP literally fat-finger *deleting a customer account.* Seems like their business was only saved by cross-cloud backups, a practice I previously thought was compliance theater bullshit and will never, ever, ever, question again. 12 May 2024
- Milan is really great! If you're the w̶r̶o̶n̶g̶ other kind of engineer, you should think about working with him :) 10 May 2024
- I really liked this writeup. I think it does a good job of capturing by far my favorite thing about Claude 3: 6 Mar 2024
- Wrote a post on how I build and run behavioral interviews! I used to think that "tell me about a time when..." questions were all bullshit—people answered everything with vague platitudes, I had no idea what the bar should be and I'd feel "ok, I guess" about every candidate. 26 Feb 2024
- Related: I’m hiring for a new team that I’m really excited about, to build infrastructure and tools for our RL research. I’m hiring for both a manager and engineers. If you think you or someone you know could be a good fit, let me know! 12 Feb 2024
- I’m going to start managing some research teams at Anthropic! (Specifically RL.) I want to learn more about how to support research groups specifically—Twitter brain, what are your best suggestions for (a) relevant books, (b) role model orgs/people who do this well? 12 Feb 2024
- New post! "Some mistakes I made as a new manager": https://t.co/bpwSbDWJqY (Specifically, ones I've also noticed are an attractor for other folks.) If you're a new manager, hopefully it will help you level up faster to level 2: making new, innovative types of mistake :) 23 Apr 2023
- I've been reflecting recently on Wave's growth spurt in 2019-21. Most teams grew 2-4x a year for multiple years, and culture and effectiveness stayed remarkably strong compared to what I'd have expected (or heard of elsewhere). Some thoughts on what might have helped: 4 Mar 2023
- A lot of talk about managing focuses on "decisionmaking": how to run decision meetings, who gets to sign off on what, how they flow up + down the hierarchy... But IMO, management isn't (mainly) about decisions; it's about understanding and tweaking a complex system (of people). 28 Feb 2023
- One thing I love about both Wave (past job) and Anthropic (current) is how much everyone who works here cares about the mission. I think it's easy to underrate how much of a difference this makes if you haven't worked in that kind of environment. Some ways it's different... 26 Feb 2023
Link verified 4 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
About the English under a post
Some people here publish in a language other than English. Where they do, this site shows a machine translation beneath the post, in this typeface — the site's own, not theirs.
The post itself is never changed, moved or hidden: what is set in the serif above is exactly what the person published, and it is what to quote them on. A translation can be wrong in ways that matter, especially about tone.
Only the post's own words are translated. A quoted post, a linked article and a belief on korrents.com are left in their original language.