In the second episode of our second season of the Platformer Podcast, Raycast co-founder and CEO Thomas Mann offers a clear-eyed critique of commercial software. In his telling, most software is a compromise: companies chasing growth pile features onto their products until they turn generic. His answer is hyper-personalized software: apps built for a market of exactly one person, then remixed and shared from there.

He predicts that within three years, 30 to 50 percent of the software on your Mac could be software you made yourself.

Thomas also broke some news on the show for Glaze Pro subscribers. And he offered a bracing counterpoint to the star-athletes-only hiring wisdom taking hold across the industry. The engineers who benefit most from AI, he argues, are the most junior and the most senior, while the person in the middle is in "a bit of a weird spot."

Plus, Platformer fellow Ella Markianos joins at the top of the show to discuss this week's news about AI and jobs.

Sponsored by Atlassian Jira | Try Today. Jira.dev

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.