From open source hits to OpenAI (Changelog Interviews #682)

Chapters

1. 0:00 This week on The Changelog
2. 0:52 Sponsor: Coder.com
3. 4:09 Start the show!
4. 5:48 Max's drive to make things to solve his own problems
5. 8:14 Why for free instead of charging?
6. 10:14 Does it still make sense to share work for free in the current world?
7. 14:28 Even if the value isn't in writing code, it's still worth it to share things with the world
8. 14:45 Building things is still hard work
9. 18:36 The history of Spectrum and Spec.fm
10. 23:09 Sponsor: WorkOS
11. 26:12 How Max joined the Spectrum team
12. 31:04 Joining GitHub and the origins of GitHub Discussions
13. 33:05 Any regrets about the outcome of Spectrum and Github Discussions?
14. 36:33 Exploring the idea of buying Spectrum back
15. 38:45 Reflecting on the time spent working at GitHub
16. 40:08 What Max worked on after GitHub
17. 44:35 The challenges of building a good team
18. 49:38 Learning how to provide good critical feedback
19. 50:05 Using the COINS framework for feedback
20. 53:53 The benefits of providing better feedback
21. 56:00 Building Stellate
22. 1:03:20 Sponsor: Notion
23. 1:05:03 Why Stellate's caching worked so well: Partial Query Caching deep dive
24. 1:07:37 Is GraphQL still popular?
25. 1:09:16 The danger of building a good product for a undersized market
26. 1:13:27 Managing a dual aquisition for Stellate
27. 1:19:54 Moving from Stellate to Shopify and discovering the right role
28. 1:23:05 Why Max chose to work on Shopify's Liquid Storefronts
29. 1:26:34 Why Max decided to join OpenAI
30. 1:29:32 What Max is working on at OpenAI
31. 1:33:47 MCP Apps deep dive (MCP server for UI)
32. 1:37:32 Are MCP Apps a potential replacement for building a website?
33. 1:42:45 Max's closing thoughts
34. 1:45:13 Closing thoughts and stuff