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Hobbies build happiness, teams as ecosystems, and hiring force-multipliers
Aug, 2025
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👋 This is The Pipette – a monthly newsletter for product builders with links so good their ideas warrant a reply, a forward, or even a discussion in real life.
- Psychology – Denmark is one of the world’s happiest countries, and hobbies may be a key contributor to that. The author tried 17 different hobbies for a year, and discovered that they are a great way to challenge yourself, set boundaries, and find purpose outside of work. She recommends having multiple hobbies to satisfy the different parts of yourself: one for your brain, one for creativity, and one for your body. Hobby communities also help form new social connections and fight loneliness.
- Leadership – To adapt to new workforce dynamics, some are advocating for a new paradigm: building teams like ecosystems rather than machines. This approach takes a human-centric view of companies, relying on creativity, worker satisfaction, and long-term career growth to fuel innovation. The authors point to the success of 4-day workweek experiments in Japan (increased sales, decreased energy and costs) as evidence that focusing on employee wellness can yield real results.
- Engineering – A 2025 survey of over 8,000 developers worldwide sheds light on the human aspects of engineering, including demographics, health data, and hobbies. Example stats: The most common physical activity for respondents was hiking/walking (47%), followed by strength training (36%). Poor sleep was the top health issue reported. The average company size is ~400 people, with 5% of respondents being self-employed/solopreneurs.
- Leadership – 10x engineers have long been considered the key to success for SaaS companies, single-handedly solving the most challenging problems on their own, without regard for their methods. Force multipliers are hires that 10x the entire team, bringing strong collaborative skills, humility, and an appreciation of the whole sociotechnical system they work within. Attracting these hires starts with tweaking the interview process, where a team-wide perspective (“we” language) tends to be frowned on in favor of individualism.
- Future Tech – A promising smart glasses app can block ads from view in near-real time. With the Ray-Ban Meta glasses gaining traction with mainstream users, it feels like smart glasses may be near their moment.
- Engineering – A top Computer Science program is adapting its curriculum in the age of AI. The argument is that AI can handle the purely mechanical aspects of translating instructions into code, but the human part of software engineering remains as relevant as ever. This new approach embraces AI as a collaborator and encourages experimenting with different AI tools. A blend of AI experience and deep curiosity is helping some grads land entry-level positions, despite a challenging market.
- Artificial Intelligence – A growing number of consultants are making bank by fixing AI’s mistakes. As potential clients turn to ChatGPT and other AI tools for project implementation decisions, ranging from copy to code, seemingly cheap upfront deliverables often go live without an expert in place to correct them. The chatbots often lack the additional context and feedback loops necessary to create a working solution. The experts get called in to fix the mistake later on, when it’s harder to spot, and at a higher rate.