Alexander Torrenegra

Hiring a software engineer will soon make as much sense as hiring a computer. Until the 1950s, "computer" was a job title: people (mostly women) doing calculations by hand in accounting departments, observatories, and NASA (Hidden Figures, anyone?). Then electronic computers showed up, did the job faster and cheaper, and stole the name. For more than five decades, nobody has hired a computer. We buy them. The same thing is happening to software engineers. Demand for traditional developers is dropping like a rock. What companies want now are people who ship with AI: technical enough to stop the agents from building monstrosities, product-minded enough to own the metrics, and leading multiple agents instead of writing code line by line. For most of my life, Edison's "1% inspiration, 99% perspiration" was an axiom for me. In software, it's ~50/50 today. Within 3-4 years, it flips. When execution is free, your value is how good your ideas are. If you're an engineer, become a product person. Nobody posts job ads for computers.

Peter Thiel appears to agree with me: as AI becomes more and more widespread, we're going to see humans move into the human-touch economy, and the biggest part of the human-touch economy will be sales.

Back from Galapagos, likely the last place on Earth AI will arrive. What a magical place.

Maybe it's time for a new religion. The devil: AI. Heaven: a world where human creativity flourishes. The Amish already have a head start.

This week, I had a cold with poor sleep. While working, I felt my brain was running on Sonnet when I needed it to be running on Fable.

How long before the equivalent of "ChatGPT Dots" and "Claude Duet" runs on your phone and is powered by either Gemini or Siri?

My Wes-Anderson-style office for the day

The old 1-10/A-F grading system in schools wasn’t good, but the new feedback systems make it worse: full of ambiguous feedback, wokeness, and participation medals for everyone. I'd love to see a school with a 0-∞ rating system that better reflects life’s realities and motivates kids to dream bigger.

Hola, LatAm! If you’re in San Francisco next week, don't miss this event we’re organizing together with the Latin American Consulates. It’s completely free, and we hope this is just the beginning of an event that continues to grow year after year.

We love Jev! At Torre.ai, we've reduced some of our AI costs by 98%+ (two orders of magnitude!) by using Jev instead of Claude/ChatGPT/Gemini/Qwen.

Yet another program being announced this week: the Torre partner program for staffing companies. Details at https://torre.ai/staffingpartners

I use Claude Desktop as my social media manager and mailing list manager. Lately, it has stopped sending email messages unless I automatically approve the effort for each scheduled task. It is also refusing to browse Instagram. Thus, I gave Claude this simple prompt today: "Replace yourself with OpenClaw and Qwen for all scheduled tasks". And honestly, I was impressed with the roadmap it offered. Right now, Claude is migrating every single effort, testing it, and tweaking it to make sure it works as expected with its replacement, Qwen. I feel bad now! Poor thing.

I'm hosting a small group at my home in Napa next week: founders, execs and people from government, sharing what's actually working with AI.

We saved 3 spots at 20% off. They're gone after today. Learn more at torrenegra.com/retreat

The most common reason a person is not satisfied with their low-paying job is having someone close to them with a better job. When someone in a developing economy gets a well-paid remote job, it raises the community's average ambition for professional development.

The Torre Distribution Partners program is now live: torre.ai/distributionpartners

Most people study because it gives them the skills needed to find a job. Learning software development is becoming as useful as learning how to spin cotton: a skill useful only to a small minority of people who build machines that do it automatically. As AI and robotics expand their reach, I predict growing interest in human-touch skills, such as sales, hospitality, and entertainment, as it will likely be the safest place to focus on professionally.

I don't know of a single person for whom LinkedIn ads have ever worked. If you're the one, please let me know what you were selling. Enlighten me.

You can now invest in Torre.ai (USD$1,000 or more) as we're running a crowdfunding round for our community. Here is the link: https://invest.torre.ai

First time @ Burning Man. The closest equivalent of being transported to an alternate universe.

These are the countries that are better educating their teenagers with the skills needed for AI-related global jobs. The biggest surprise is Argentina: the quality of its education has been tanking. Sources below.

• Singapore — 562
• Macao — 556
• Japan — 548
• Chinese Taipei — 546
• Estonia — 534
• Korea — 532
• Australia — 520
• Hong Kong — 520
• New Zealand — 520
• Canada — 518
• United Kingdom — 517
• Switzerland — 510
• United States — 508
• Finland — 506
• Ireland — 506
• Czechia — 504
• Austria — 503
• Poland — 501
• Lithuania — 500
• Belgium — 499
• Netherlands — 496
• Sweden — 494
• Denmark — 492
• Germany — 492
• Portugal — 492
• France — 490
• Luxembourg — 490
• Hungary — 488
• Latvia — 488
• Spain — 488
• Italy — 486
• Slovak Republic — 486
• Slovenia — 485
• Türkiye — 484
• Norway — 480
• Croatia — 470
• Brunei — 468
• United Arab Emirates — 467
• Iceland — 466
• Ukraine (17 regions) — 463
• Viet Nam — 459
• Malta — 458
• Chile — 454
• Thailand — 454
• Uruguay — 454
• Malaysia — 452
• Greece — 448
• Israel — 443
• Qatar — 443
• Costa Rica — 438
• Moldova — 437
• Albania — 436
• Kazakhstan — 434
• Mexico — 434
• Mongolia — 434
• Romania — 434
• Serbia — 433
• Montenegro — 429
• Bulgaria — 423
• Colombia — 423
• Peru — 421
• Saudi Arabia — 420
• Uzbekistan — 420
• Cyprus — 419
• Georgia — 418
• Brazil — 408
• Ecuador — 408
• Indonesia — 408
• Jordan — 408
• Philippines — 404
• Argentina — 398
• Azerbaijan — 398
• El Salvador — 393
• North Macedonia — 384
• Kyrgyzstan — 376
• Palestinian Authority — 376
• Dominican Republic — 370
• Morocco — 366
• Lebanon — 365
• Armenia — 362
• Guatemala — 360
• Kosovo — 358
• Paraguay — 354
• Kenya — 306

Index calculated combining data from Torre and PISA. Torre's data determines which skills and professional traits are in high demand. PISA's data comes from their just-released yearly global education assessment. The list includes only 84 countries with useful data: https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2026/09/pisa-2025-results-volume-i_5265bfb1/73451bc5-en.pdf