Notes ยท Ben MilleareNotes on technical leadership, AI systems, and building things that scale.https://benmilleare.com/en-gbIs the 10x engineer still a thing?https://benmilleare.com/notes/10x-engineer/https://benmilleare.com/notes/10x-engineer/A CTO friend can no longer pick out the 10x engineers on his team, because agentic coding has turned every capable engineer into one.Fri, 02 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTaiengineeringteams438 million wallets, one app updatehttps://benmilleare.com/notes/438-million-wallets/https://benmilleare.com/notes/438-million-wallets/Stripe already owns stablecoin issuance, wallets, and a chain. Buying PayPal would put 438 million funded accounts one app update from Web3.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTweb3paymentsfintechNever double-charge: the UPDATE is the lockhttps://benmilleare.com/notes/never-double-charge/https://benmilleare.com/notes/never-double-charge/Fixed Temporal workflow IDs, an UPDATE that doubles as a lock, and fail-closed reconciliation: layering double-charge protection into a payments system.Sat, 18 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTpaymentstemporaldistributed-systemsDoes every CTO need a skunkworks?https://benmilleare.com/notes/do-you-need-a-skunkworks/https://benmilleare.com/notes/do-you-need-a-skunkworks/With agentic teams, two hackers can spin up five MVPs while a normal team ships one feature. The case for keeping a skunkworks in your back pocket.Tue, 07 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTaiengineeringteamsContainment beats permissionhttps://benmilleare.com/notes/containment-beats-permission/https://benmilleare.com/notes/containment-beats-permission/Coding agents should run unsupervised, but inside a dev environment that's safe to be wrong in. The agent boundary is the wrong line to defend.Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTaisecurityengineeringLet the price do the migrationhttps://benmilleare.com/notes/let-the-price-do-the-migration/https://benmilleare.com/notes/let-the-price-do-the-migration/Most companies run a migration campaign to clear users off a deprecated API. Anthropic just tripled the price of theirs and let market forces do the work.Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTbusinesspricingGitHub got hackedhttps://benmilleare.com/notes/github-breach-rotate-your-secrets/https://benmilleare.com/notes/github-breach-rotate-your-secrets/GitHub had 3,800 internal repos exfiltrated via a poisoned VS Code extension. If your private repos have ever held a secret, rotate it today.Thu, 21 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTsecurityleadershipinfrastructureMarketing is the workhttps://benmilleare.com/notes/marketing-is-the-work/https://benmilleare.com/notes/marketing-is-the-work/Brent Roose says PHP's biggest problem is marketing, not the tech. The same is true of almost every business that's quietly good at what it does.Tue, 12 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTbusinessmarketingReselling tokens isn't a businesshttps://benmilleare.com/notes/reselling-tokens-isnt-a-business/https://benmilleare.com/notes/reselling-tokens-isnt-a-business/OpenAI is reportedly burning $1.69 for every dollar earned, and Anthropic is already raising prices. If your AI business is mostly API markup, the price floor is coming for you.Fri, 08 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTaibusinessMulti-token prediction, on a small laptophttps://benmilleare.com/notes/gemma-4-mtp-on-a-small-laptop/https://benmilleare.com/notes/gemma-4-mtp-on-a-small-laptop/Google shipped multi-token prediction for Gemma 4. The headline 3x speedup is for big GPUs, but the edge-model drafters quietly target laptops like mine.Wed, 06 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTailocal-firstVibe coding isn't engineeringhttps://benmilleare.com/notes/vibe-coding-isnt-engineering/https://benmilleare.com/notes/vibe-coding-isnt-engineering/Engineers treat coding agents as smart junior devs. Vibe coders treat them as their CTO. The gap matters more than the AI hype suggests.Sun, 03 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTaiengineeringleadershipWelcome to Noteshttps://benmilleare.com/notes/welcome-to-notes/https://benmilleare.com/notes/welcome-to-notes/What this section is for, what to expect, and the loose rules I'm writing it under.Sun, 03 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTmeta