Latest news with #Silicon Valley
Forbes
a day ago
- Business
- Forbes
How Developers Can Build Lasting Value With AI Coding Tools
Deepa Shekhar, Director, E-commerce & Marketing Technologies @ Logitech is passionate about engineering leadership and mindset. For years, the life of a developer has been a sprint. We solve problems, close tickets and ship features. However, a fundamental shift is underway. With AI assistants generating functional code in seconds, the ability to simply "make it work" is becoming a commodity. This isn't a threat; it's an opportunity. The future belongs to developers who move beyond writing code and learn to craft it. This is the shift from being a coder to a code craftsperson—focusing on intentionality, experience, elegance and building systems that last. In practice, it means adopting a set of deliberate, professional disciplines. The Assembly Line Mindset Many developers have been conditioned to work on a digital assembly line driven by velocity. The goal is to close the ticket and move on, often treating code as a temporary artifact to be fixed later. The joy comes from solving the puzzle. When AI can solve the puzzle, our value must shift from finding just the solution to architecting the right solution that is elegant, maintainable and strengthens the entire system. This is a continuous journey. Here's how you can start walking the path, integrating AI effectively and fostering a culture of innovation. 1. The Learning Process: Getting Started This is the single most effective way to learn. When reviewing, don't just hunt for bugs; improve quality by asking, "Why?" When your code is reviewed, embrace feedback as a gift to make your work more valuable. Proactively ask for guidance on specific parts you're unsure about. Just as writers read great books, developers should read great code. Explore well-regarded open-source projects to look for patterns and modern practices. Shift your focus from what you are building to who you are building for. A true craftsperson anticipates the user's needs and designs solutions that feel effortless. This empathy translates directly into better technical choices, leading to simpler user flows, faster load times and an overall better outcome. A craftsperson doesn't work in a vacuum. Stay current by following key industry newsletters and tech blogs to understand emerging trends. Critically evaluate new tools, asking what problems they solve and their trade-offs. Share what you learn by writing internal posts, answering questions online or presenting at team talks to reinforce your knowledge and elevate your community. 2. Integrating AI Into Your Daily Craft Think of AI as a pair—a programmer and an assistant. You provide the direction, context and critical judgment. Prompt your AI to improve existing code. ("Refactor this function for readability, adhering to the Single Responsibility Principle. Add comments explaining the 'why' for any non-obvious logic.") Ask your AI partner to help improve quality. ("Write a comprehensive set of unit tests for this function using Jest, including happy paths, edge cases like null inputs and potential error states.") Use AI to explore architectural possibilities. ("Propose three different caching strategies for user profile data using Redis, explaining the trade-offs for each in terms of performance, cost and complexity.") Eliminate the tedium of documenting your work. ("Generate clear, concise documentation for this function in the Markdown format, explaining each parameter and what the function returns.") 3. Fostering A Culture Of Improvement Craftsmanship is a team sport. Elevating your skills in isolation has limited impact; the goal is to raise the quality of the entire team. Create a dedicated Slack or Teams channel where developers can share great code, discuss challenging refactoring problems and post effective AI prompts. Once a month, have a developer share a 20-minute presentation on a single craftsmanship topic, from advanced error handling to using AI for better testing. Work as a team to create governance documents and a library of "golden path" code examples for your key architectural patterns. This allows you to integrate AI tools to generate code that is already aligned with your team's specific style. Actively building the skills of a code craftsperson is the key to excelling in the world of AI. 4. Go Beyond The Stack: Redefining Your Boundaries The rise of AI coding tools isn't just about writing code faster; it's about expanding what you can imagine and build. These tools remove the traditional boundaries between languages, frameworks and even entire tech stacks. AI dramatically reduces the ramp-up time on new technology, unlocking potential that used to take months to build. This means you are no longer limited by your primary expertise. You can now confidently explore systems you never dared to touch and ship features in areas you once tiptoed around. With new tools at your fingertips, the boundaries of development are dissolving. Explore new domains, deepen your impact and go beyond what you once thought possible. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
The Guardian
a day ago
- Business
- The Guardian
Silicon Valley trades researchers like football teams poach players
The tech industry is in a high-flying war over who can dole out more millions to attract artificial intelligence specialists. Individual researchers, most equipped with PhDs in computer science, are commanding giant salaries and mammoth signing bonuses in hiring negotiations. You might call them talent. The Washington Post called them Olympians in a recent headline: 'Why AI superathletes could be winning $100 million bonuses in Silicon Valley.' These are the most sought-after employees in the world. Tech companies are tasking the star players of their AI squads with developing technology that can outperform humans in any task, a goal known as 'artificial general intelligence', or with creating AI models that surpass human intelligence overall, an objective known as 'superintelligence'. In pursuit of these grails, Silicon Valley is throwing around amounts of money that could found dynasties. The scramble is so desperate and remunerative that the poaching of individual researchers makes news, though they may have been unknown before now. A headline in Wired: 'Another High-Profile OpenAI Researcher Departs for Meta'. In Bloomberg: 'Meta Hires Two Key Apple AI experts After Poaching Their Boss.' In the Information: 'Anthropic Hires Back Two Coding AI Leaders From Cursor Developer Anysphere'. All of these stories were published in the past week. The tech press' furor over these researchers reminds me of sports media covering the trades of star players. The dissection of their pay, the speculation about who's next on Meta's list, the playing of one company off another, the discussion of each company's team composition or overall strategy and the attention to this individual player or that one are all redolent of the scrutinized trade of US basketball phenomenon Luka Dončić from the Dallas Mavericks to the Los Angeles Lakers, for example. The word 'Another' in Wired's headline is a cue that one company is fueling this frenzy: Meta. Mark Zuckerberg has made eye-popping claims about his firm's spending over the past week. He said that his company will spend 'hundreds of billions' of dollars on its artificial intelligence efforts. In April, Meta revised its planned capital expenditure for this year alone upward to a range of $64bn to $75bn. The company's previous range was $60bn to $65bn. In 2023, Meta's capex was a measly $28bn, according to Fortune. Zuckerberg is backing his pledges with cash. In early July, Meta hired away the leader of Apple's AI models team, Ruoming Pang, with a jumbo-sized pay package worth some $200m. The researcher joins Meta's Superintelligence team, perhaps the most expensive team of engineers since the Manhattan Project. Putting this trading frenzy in perspective is one Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, who made the point early last week that half of the top AI researchers in the world reside in China. Huang made the remark in Beijing, where he was attending a conference and celebrating Donald Trump's new allowance for Huang's extremely profitable company to sell its most advanced semiconductors in China, where there is strong demand for them. Previously, Nvidia's chips had been subject to strict export restrictions. Huang's nod to China's stock of AI researchers highlights the fact that American firms are pouring money into a pool of English-speaking talent that may yet be outclassed by its competition across the Pacific, no matter how much the tech giants pay. Several companies have created phones in recent years attempting to provide alternatives to the industry's biggest players, in some cases capitalizing on growing anxieties over how smartphones are dominating our lives or simply attempting to rebel against the monopolistic hold Apple and Samsung have over the market. One option is a device newly released in the UK by Sage Mobile, which is an iPhone 16 loaded with custom software that prohibits internet searches, gaming downloads and social media apps like Instagram. As UK technology editor Robert Booth writes, the bespoke handset costs more than double a standard UK iPhone contract and is marketed at children with the selling point of helping them 'reconnect with real life': The devices will include an app store that is curated by Sage Mobile and will only allow users access to apps for tasks like banking, public transport, schooling, calendars and weather. Experience with a similar device sold in the US showed children used it for between 15 minutes and an hour a day, instead of average screen time in the UK of almost three hours a day among eight to 14-year-olds. Kaspar said children lose interest in it because 'it's not as magical, it's not as fun', resulting in many reclaimed 'life hours'. An anonymous 16-year-old reviewer gave the phone a test run for the Guardian, finding that using Sage highlighted just how dependent their social life was on the myriad of apps and platforms they had grown up on. Although they felt more productive and spent more time talking with their family, creating a clean severance between online and offline life was more complicated than simply blocking your apps: The people at Sage said it could take a month to get used to the limitations, but I don't have that long to test it. I can already tell you that if you are a teenager you are going to feel disconnected from all of your friends and the rest of the world and that feels unfair. Having TikTok and Instagram is the way the world is wired now. If you take them away then it's quite hard to stay in the loop. If I stayed with this phone I would also end up feeling left out when speaking in real life to my friends as this is where so many of our sayings and jokes come from. The London-based company Nothing takes a different tack with its device, the minimally named Phone 3. Rather than a restricted or pared-down version of an iPhone or Android it is an attempt to create a design-forward, quirky phone with touches like a tiny LED screen on the back of its transparent semi-transparent case. Built off Nothing's version of an Android operating system, the phone carries much of the functionality but with unique elements that try to differentiate it from Apple and Samsung's ubiquitous devices. As consumer technology editor Samuel Gibbs writes in his four out of five stars review, you'll need to really prize that differentiation to make it worthwhile: The Phone 3 is a good but not great Android from Nothing. It is more interesting than rivals, but you have to actively want something different for it to make sense as you can easily get better-performing and longer-lasting handsets at about this price. In his pledge to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on AI, Zuckerberg said his company was at work constructing a data center nearly as big as Manhattan. The enormous complex, brought to life by Meta's equally humongous capital expenditure, will be named after Hyperion, a Greek titan who personified the sun. Zuckerberg christened a second, smaller data center Prometheus after the titan who brought humans fire and was punished eternally for stealing sacred knowledge from the gods on Mount Olympus. Is the data center the titan bringing us the fire? Or are we, the human beings who have created AI, the titan? If so, what will our punishment be? Whatever the feelings the name inspires in you, Zuckerberg has made yet another declaration of titanic ambition. The novel Frankenstein has a second, less famous title that seems relevant: The Modern Prometheus. Google is also expanding its earthly ambitions, with a $3bn hydropower deal and a plan to invest $25bn in data centers across Pennsylvania and neighboring states over the next two years. Apple, too, is leaving its mark with a $500m deal for rare earths minerals that it struck with a US mining company. Inside Elon Musk's plan to rain SpaceX's rocket debris over Hawaii's pristine waters OpenAI launches personal assistant capable of controlling files and web browsers Royal Society suggested to Elon Musk he consider resigning science fellowship Zuckerberg and Meta officers settle claim they lost company billions by violating privacy laws Risk of undersea cable attacks backed by Russia and China likely to rise, report warns Houthi-linked dealers sell arms on X and WhatsApp, report says
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
You Have $1,000 to Invest. Should You Buy GOOG or GOOGL?
Key Points Alphabet offers investors exposure to powerful tech megatrends like artificial intelligence (AI), cybersecurity, and autonomous transportation -- all under one roof. Alphabet trades under two ticker symbols, but they both represent the same underlying business. Unless voting rights are important to you, either ticker is a great way to invest in this "Magnificent Seven" stock. 10 stocks we like better than Alphabet › The "Magnificent Seven" is a popular tag for the most dominant, high-performing tech companies on the planet. Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL), (NASDAQ: GOOG), Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla have delivered market-crushing returns over the past decade, in large part because their businesses are on the forefront of the most disruptive technology macrotrends in modern history. While all seven companies are juggernauts in their own right, one Magnificent Seven stock stands out due to its dominant core business, exposure to multiple megatrends, and attractive valuation relative to its cohorts. That stock is Alphabet. An unconventional company There's something else that makes Alphabet different. Unlike the other members of the Magnificent Seven, Alphabet trades under two tickers: GOOG and GOOGL. Why would Alphabet do that? A little history will provide some helpful context. Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google (Alphabet's predecessor) in 1998. When Google filed its IPO paperwork in 2004, Page declared in a letter to prospective shareholders: "Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one." In that same letter, Page fretted that becoming a public company could undermine the independence and creative spirit that had been critical to Google's success. He also made it clear that the company would not "shy away from high-risk, high-reward projects" just to hit some arbitrary quarterly financial target. To ensure that Page, Brin, and the rest of the executive team would retain "control over the company's decisions and fate," Google implemented a dual-class stock structure. It's all about insider control Common stock represents partial ownership in a company, and it usually comes with the right to vote on issues such as executive compensation, board members, and mergers and acquisitions. When Google debuted as a publicly traded company in August 2004, it used the dual class structure to concentrate 99% of the voting power in the hands of its founders, executives, and board members. Here's how: Each share of Class A common stock (available to regular investors) came with one vote. Each share of Class B common stock (held by founders and insiders) came with 10 votes. At the time, Page acknowledged that this was an unconventional move for a tech company, although it wasn't uncommon for other types of businesses. Perhaps the most well-known example is Berkshire Hathaway. However, in the years since Google's 2004 IPO, a number of tech companies have adopted dual class structures to maintain insider control, including Meta Platforms, Palantir, and Roblox. . This is where it gets a little confusing In April 2014, Google added another layer of complexity to its share structure by way of a 2-for-1 stock split. On April 2, 2014, Google's shareholders received one share of newly issued Class C stock for every share of Class A stock that they already owned. Starting on April 3, 2014, two classes of Google stock were available to the public: Class A shares (GOOGL): One vote per share Class C shares (GOOG): No voting power The important thing to note is the Class C shares don't come with voting rights. That was the whole point of the 2014 stock split. By issuing nonvoting Class C shares, Google could fund acquisitions and offer stock-based compensation and incentives without diluting executives' voting power. To recap, this is the share structure that exists today: Class A shares (GOOGL): One vote per share Class B shares (held by insiders): 10 votes per share Class C shares (GOOG): No voting power Should you buy GOOG or GOOGL? Today, Google the search engine is just one piece of Alphabet, the umbrella company formed in 2015. What makes Alphabet such a compelling investment is that it's not just a search-engine provider. Owning Alphabet is a bit like owning an ETF with exposure to some of the biggest themes in tech -- from cloud computing and AI to autonomous vehicles, cybersecurity, and streaming. And as I alluded to earlier, Alphabet trades at a discount to its Magnificent Seven cohorts based on its forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio: But there's still one question left to answer: Is GOOG or GOOGL the better investment? Because GOOGL comes with voting rights, you'd think it would trade at a premium to its Class C sibling, GOOG. But interestingly enough, GOOG has outperformed GOOGL since April 3, 2014, ever-so-slightly: As of July 16, GOOG was priced at $183.77, just a hair above GOOGL at $182.97. So based on the recent price action, you could look at it this way: GOOGL gives you the same exposure to Alphabet's basket of businesses, but at a slightly lower price, with the added benefit of voting power. In reality, most regular investors can't purchase enough shares to have any meaningful impact on the company's strategic direction through their votes. And because both tickers represent the same underlying security, there likely will never be any wide variation in price between the two. So unless you care deeply about voting rights, either ticker is a great way to invest in this Magnificent Seven standout. Should you buy stock in Alphabet right now? Before you buy stock in Alphabet, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and Alphabet wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $652,133!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $1,056,790!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 1,048% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 180% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of July 15, 2025 John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Randi Zuckerberg, a former director of market development and spokeswoman for Facebook and sister to Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Josh Cable has positions in Alphabet, Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Palantir Technologies. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia, Palantir Technologies, Roblox, and Tesla. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. You Have $1,000 to Invest. Should You Buy GOOG or GOOGL? was originally published by The Motley Fool Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Priscilla Chan's recruiting pitch? We can't pay as well as tech companies, but we've got GPUs
Mark Zuckerberg's Meta is betting on GPUs and compute power to help attract top talent. His philanthropic organization, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, is doing the same. His wife, Priscilla Chan, talked about CZI's recruitment efforts on a recent podcast episode. Compute power is a big draw for top talent, but not just in the world of AI. Priscilla Chan, Mark Zuckerberg's wife and the cofounder of the couple's philanthropic organization, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, spoke about the appeal of massive GPU clusters for biology researchers during a recent episode of Ashlee Vance's "Core Memory" podcast. "The other thing researchers really care about is access to GPUs," she said. "You're not going to make the most of someone if you don't actually have the GPUs for them to work from." Chan said, "We have that at CZI," adding that the organization has roughly 1,000 GPUs in its cluster, with plans to keep growing. In short, Chan said the pitch is: "Come work with us because we're going to have the computing power to support the research that you want to do." Another important factor is compensation, which she said is "obviously important," though she added that "we cannot compete with tech companies on this." CZI has in recent years narrowed its mission to focus on its "next phase" with a "bolder, clearer identity as a science-first philanthropy." The change marks a strategic shift, as the organization previously also supported education and other causes. "While CZI remains committed to our work in education and our local communities, we recognize that science is where our biggest investments and bets have been and will be made moving forward," Chan, a pediatrician by training, wrote in a memo to staff last year. Zuckerberg made a similar point about the importance of GPUs in recruiting on a recent episode of The Information's TITV show. Meta is spending billions to build an AI division it calls Superintelligence Labs. "Historically, when I was recruiting people to different parts of the company, people are like, 'Okay, what's my scope going to be?'" the Meta CEO said. "Here, people say, 'I want the fewest number of people reporting to me and the most GPUs.'" Meta, of course, has significantly more GPUs than CZI. Zuckerberg has said the company will have 1.3 million GPUs for AI by the end of 2025. "Having basically the most compute per researcher is definitely a strategic advantage, not just for doing the work but for attracting the best people," he said. Read the original article on Business Insider Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Priscilla Chan's recruiting pitch? We can't pay as well as tech companies, but we've got GPUs
Mark Zuckerberg's Meta is betting on GPUs and compute power to help attract top talent. His philanthropic organization, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, is doing the same. His wife, Priscilla Chan, talked about CZI's recruitment efforts on a recent podcast episode. Compute power is a big draw for top talent, but not just in the world of AI. Priscilla Chan, Mark Zuckerberg's wife and the cofounder of the couple's philanthropic organization, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, spoke about the appeal of massive GPU clusters for biology researchers during a recent episode of Ashlee Vance's "Core Memory" podcast. "The other thing researchers really care about is access to GPUs," she said. "You're not going to make the most of someone if you don't actually have the GPUs for them to work from." Chan said, "We have that at CZI," adding that the organization has roughly 1,000 GPUs in its cluster, with plans to keep growing. In short, Chan said the pitch is: "Come work with us because we're going to have the computing power to support the research that you want to do." Another important factor is compensation, which she said is "obviously important," though she added that "we cannot compete with tech companies on this." CZI has in recent years narrowed its mission to focus on its "next phase" with a "bolder, clearer identity as a science-first philanthropy." The change marks a strategic shift, as the organization previously also supported education and other causes. "While CZI remains committed to our work in education and our local communities, we recognize that science is where our biggest investments and bets have been and will be made moving forward," Chan, a pediatrician by training, wrote in a memo to staff last year. Zuckerberg made a similar point about the importance of GPUs in recruiting on a recent episode of The Information's TITV show. Meta is spending billions to build an AI division it calls Superintelligence Labs. "Historically, when I was recruiting people to different parts of the company, people are like, 'Okay, what's my scope going to be?'" the Meta CEO said. "Here, people say, 'I want the fewest number of people reporting to me and the most GPUs.'" Meta, of course, has significantly more GPUs than CZI. Zuckerberg has said the company will have 1.3 million GPUs for AI by the end of 2025. "Having basically the most compute per researcher is definitely a strategic advantage, not just for doing the work but for attracting the best people," he said. Read the original article on Business Insider Sign in to access your portfolio
