OpenAI Poaches Meta Talent & Microsoft Focuses on AI Devs

Hello everyone,

For most companies, laying off 9,000 employees signals trouble, but for Microsoft, it’s a reset. The company is doubling down on AI, just as the talent war between Meta and OpenAI heats up after the newest round of poaching.

Cursor found itself in hot water when its pricing update sparked a wave of developer backlash and sudden exits. You’ll find that story below, along with a guide to measuring the ROI of AI coding assistants, and the news on the NuxtLabs–Vercel merger.

Also, Jack Dorsey (yes, from Twitter) is back with a Bluetooth messaging app that might take on WhatsApp.

Grab your coffee and enjoy this week’s Frictionless.

In the Queue

• Discord’s Strategy for Storing Trillions of Messages

• Deleting Accidental Git Commits Won’t Keep You Safe

• How One Dev Fooled Four Startups

• Should You Use React Native?

• No-Nonsense Approach to AI Agent Development

Reduce Friction

CTOs Reveal How AI Changed Software Developer Hiring in 2025

Technical skills still matter, but they’re no longer enough. Check what other tech leaders are looking for in their new hires in 2025: adaptability, autonomy, or cross-functional communication?

How to Measure the ROI of AI Coding Assistants

When Q3 comes in without the boost GenAI promised, you might find yourself wondering: Are AI assistants worth the cost? Find out by combining DORA metrics, developer sentiment, and structured pilot experiments.

The 5 Levels of Communicating Impact As an Engineer

Many engineers think in features, but few speak in outcomes. If your team struggles to explain how they drive business results, this article outlines five levels of communication that can help them (and you) make the value of their work clear to everybody.

Engineer Caught Juggling Multiple Startup Jobs Is a Cautionary Tale of ‘extreme’ Hustle Culture, Experts Say

Soham Parekh was the most talked-about dev last week, but not for his code. Without any of his employers knowing, he quietly worked at multiple startups at once. Parekh’s case shows we shouldn’t skip keeping up with our remote employees.

Deepen Your Expertise

How Discord Stores Trillions of Messages with High Performance

Storing trillions of messages might sound impossible, but Discord’s engineering team took the challenge head-on. Migration from MongoDB to ScyllaDB, rewriting services in Rust, and shrinking their database cluster from 177 nodes to 72, helped them cut p99 read latency to just 15 ms.

React Native Pros and Cons For App Development in 2025

Mobile apps are a $935B market, and picking the wrong tech could cost you a share of it. Norbert Kamienski explains the real pros and cons of React Native to help you decide if it’s the right fit for your app, team, and long-term goals.

How I Scanned all of GitHub’s “Oops Commits” for Leaked Secrets

Accidental commits happen, but deleting them doesn’t mean your secrets are safe. By tracking GitHub’s zero-commit PushEvents, Sharon Brizinov uncovered exposed credentials worth $25k in bug bounties and released an open-source tool to help others do the same.

NuxtLabs joins Vercel

Nuxt is now officially part of Vercel, which is a big step for the Vue ecosystem. If your team uses Vue, this change means tighter integrations, better tooling, and long-term support from a company that’s shaping the modern front end.

AI Corner

OpenAI Poaches Senior Engineers from Tesla, xAI, and Meta

The AI talent war is getting serious. After Meta pulled in top scientists from OpenAI and, more recently, Apple, OpenAI hit back by hiring a Tesla VP, two xAI infrastructure leads, and a Meta AI researcher for its Stargate scaling team.

Microsoft Plans to Replace Many Of the Salespeople It Laid Off with More Technical Roles to Compete with OpenAI, Google

After laying off over 9,000 employees, Microsoft revealed its next move: replacing many traditional sales roles with technically skilled solutions engineers. These new hires will focus on AI development, as Microsoft prepares to take on OpenAI and Google.

🎥 The No-Nonsense Approach to AI Agent Development

Vercel CTO Malte Ubl explains how to build secure, context-aware, and performance-ready AI agents, and how tools like the AI SDK, Gateway, and Fluid Compute make that possible. It was one of my favorite talks from Vercel Ship 2025, so give it a watch!

Cursor’s Pricing Backlash Sparks Developer Exodus

One pricing change cost Cursor its developer goodwill almost overnight. After shifting to a $20/month usage cap, the AI coding assistant sparked a wave of developer backlash. The team has since apologized and issued refunds, but regaining user trust won’t be easy.

Just Cool

Jack Dorsey Working on Bluetooth Messaging App, Bitchat

Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter, takes on WhatsApp with his new project. Bitchat is a Bluetooth-based messaging app that works entirely offline, which is perfect for emergencies. Built on BLE mesh, it lets users send encrypted messages without internet, SIM cards, or servers.

Let’s Stay in Touch! 📨 

Do you have any comments about this newsletter issue or questions you want to ask? Drop me a message or book a meeting.