why does boris have this urge to become an influencer

Just retire at this point, you don't even have to work.

The most annoying thing about this is that the steps are out of order unless the definition of problems and goals are intermixed 1. define a goal 2. understand information and gaps in information 3. define and prioritize the problems to achieve that goal 4. identify potential solutions for top problems and prioritize 5. measure success

and do all of it with urgency (magically managers want everything done with urgency)

I'm not sure how this relates to "building a product in the age of AI" or being wrong at all, this is just a list of steps that an elementary school student would be taught when learning how to approach any reasonably complex problem.

Aha, another iterative improvement variant. (see also eg OODA and PDCA)

I'd argue that Boris Cherny is in fact nearly always wrong;

except when he's right, which is in the final pass just before the work is done. ;)

you can only admit to being wrong if you are unfirable up in the hierarchy.

rest of us get fired if we ever admit at work that we were 'often' wrong.

nice

Yeah? A very basic process, most people use some variation of this implicitly without talking about it.

This sounds like a slightly narcissistic manager who thinks people are doing it wrong if they don't act like small copies of him. There are multiple ways to reach the same outcome and a lot depends on your information. E.g. I typically have a mental model of a system in my head, meaning when some problem needs fixing very likely I already know where it would need fixing and already think about the various future implications arising from a different fix. A point that is totally absent from that framework.

Being a senior dev myself I have seen enough good software turn bad to know that seemingly innocent technological decisions can come with huge and lasting implications. The fact that this is missing here is speaking volumes about the lack of experience at display here.

Your task as a manager isn't to create small copies of yourself. Your task is to know each persons weaknesses and strengths and compose the work in such chunks that the weaknesses have little effect, while the strengths multiply. For this you will first of all have to trust your people and lead them to discover certain ideas themselves.

E.g. if you feel someone always jumps gun-ho I to the task without doing the research, just tell them to give you the research first. Do that a few times and they might realize how useful that is.

quick - someone turn this into agentic harness :)

This misses the problem that your problem might not even be a problem in the first place and you shouldn't even be working on that in the first place. I'd recommend looking into Elon Musk's ethos which first focuses on finding what is actually needed and what actually needs to be done before going in and solving problems.