Interviews with Cluely's Roy Lee, Donald Boat, and other highly “agentic” young men, as agency becomes more valuable than technical skills in Silicon Valley
Tech's new generation and the end of thinking … Cluely and its co-founder Chungin “Roy” Lee were intensely, and intentionally, controversial.
The emphasis on initiative over conventional technical polish also matches the investment rationale previously articulated for Cluely: speed in marketing and building over an “artisan” product in a fast-moving AI market. The article matters as evidence that this operating logic is becoming a cultural ideal, not merely a company tactic.
First-order effects
Cluely and Roy Lee gain further visibility as exemplars of a founder style that treats rapid action, self-promotion, and controversy as strategic assets.
Young workers and founders receive a clearer market signal that distribution, networking, and execution speed can carry more weight alongside technical ability in AI startups.
Second-order effects
Competing early-stage AI companies may put more resources into founder-led marketing and rapid product iteration, intensifying pressure to show momentum before products are fully polished.
Recruiting and evaluation at startups can shift toward evidence of initiative and audience-building, widening the advantage for candidates already embedded in Silicon Valley networks.
Third-order effects
If this norm persists, AI startup advantage may increasingly rest on the combination of technical tools and a founder’s capacity to command attention, recruit quickly, and convert visibility into momentum.
The trade-off is cultural as well as commercial: a sector that rewards speed and provocation may make conventional signals of craftsmanship or institutional credibility less decisive, though the durability of that shift depends on whether such companies sustain product value.
The trend: AI’s low-friction building environment is elevating founder agency and distribution as competitive inputs alongside engineering skill.
there is a brand of leftist brainrot where the writer finds the most attention seeking hacks with their calendars fully open and takes their incompetence or unseriousness as representative of entire industries. surely these idiots must mean industry itself is idiotic!
Incredible work here, per usual. I try to keep it pretty professional on X, but I feel impelled to say that the Roy Lee contingent in SF deserves nothing but scorn (and gonzo ethnography of the Sam Kriss variety, so we can keep tabs, and figure out how it all went wrong). These
“Until we build an all-powerful but distant God, the agency problem remains. AIs are not capable of directing themselves; most people aren't either.” Sam Kriss reports from San Francisco on the next generation of AI technologists. https://harpers.org/...
What kind of twisted world is it where the place I work publishes an essay about Donald Boat yet he still has me blocked on Twitter. Very messed up situation
sam kriss wrote about the cluely founder and adjacent sf tech scene people in harper's where donald boat makes a delightful supporting act appearance, but this was my favorite side bit from it. like clavicular, this hyper optimizer type of guy makes up like 10-20% of men now. [im…
I keep telling anyone who will listen: the students in my classes are starving for knowledge, for big hard ideas, and for opportunities to actually think and challenge themselves harpers.org/archive/2026...
a friend of mine recently turned me on to this incredible article about the bleak state of the ai tech world and the robin hood-esque escapades of one guy on twitter and now i must share it with all of you because it's the best reporting i've read in a while — harpers.org/archi…
This made me rub my eyes at least every three sentences, thinking it must be satire or fiction. Unbelievable story, extremely believable writing. — harpers.org/archive/2026...
“The future they seem to envisage is one in which people don't really do anything at all, except follow the instructions given to them by machines.” — harpers.org/archive/2026...
“In San Francisco the world automatically assumes that instead of wanting food or drinks or a new phone or car, what you want is some kind of arcane B2B service for your startup. You are not a passive consumer. You are making something.” —Sam Kriss harpers.org/archive/2026...
“As a child, he loved reading—Harry Potter, Percy Jackson—until he turned eight. 'My mom tried to put me on classical books and I couldn't understand, like, the bullshit Huckleberry, whatever fuck bullshit, and it made me bored.'” — harpers.org/archive/2026...
This article was truly hilarious/disturbing & also, ratified one strong approach to tech journalism, which is, “go talk to the craziest, most quotable lunatics you can find” harpers.org/archive/2026...
I miss SuperHappyDevHouse. I miss my local Python meetup. I miss a sense of possibility and wonder and art and just _fun_ at what we could do with computers. — When I look at what remains of that culture though, it's like reading Heart of Darkness now https://harpers.org/...
‘"I would rather have an interesting life than a couple hundred million dollars in my bank account. Racing cum is definitely interesting." I found Eric very hard not to like.’ — Delicious writing from Sam Kriss harpers.org/archive/2026...
“He didn't see anything valuable in overcoming adversity.” — If you're only reading one article today, read this one. What empty AI-directed lives these techbros envision - and actively pursue. — H/t @lavidagata.bsky.social (who is great, and you should all follow her). — …
Two fantastic articles for your Sunday reading. First up, from Harper's, a profile of AI's underbelly of young males with nothing much on their mind but raking in millions creating agents that don't entirely work. — harpers.org/archive/2026...