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Anthropic acquires Stainless

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Re: Anthropic acquires Stainless

#291

Post by trueno »

fnord77 wrote: post #266
rattray wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... and their team is joining Anthropic to build, who knows, some dumb integration to make Hubspot data available in Claude, or something equally as boring. Fun fact, I named it "Stainless" after Stainless Steel pipes, likening ourselves to a high-end plumbing supply shop. If you look at the earliest versions of stainlessapi.com on archive.org, you'll see our original motto was "Quality fittings for your REST API".…

I can't even figure out what Stainless does (did)

do they have one of those websites that looks like all of those websites

edit: they sure do

Re: Anthropic acquires Stainless

#292

Post by klooney »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #235
abirch wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI can let you downsize the number of employees that you have and maintain the status quo or it can let you maintain the number of employees, reduce technical debt, improve products, and services.

Do the economics work out ? You can downsize the devs you have, but you need to maintain a smaller stable of very expensive devs, and then factor in the token usage. For example, a recent story about the openclaw creator using $1.3M of tokens/month. And let's assume he's getting paid $5M/yr which is probably a vast under estimate. Is he providing value that a traditional software development org with normal developer…

I honestly believe that most Silicon Valley developers could have their pre-AI output replaced by 10 dollars/day in Gemini 3 pay as you go spend.

I don't think existing companies will bite that bullet, but I think you'll see AI native companies in five years with like, a baffling small number of people.

Re: Anthropic acquires Stainless

#293

Post by xhevahir »

827a wrote: post #241
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Successfully building a company, and using that company's products, is actually the best job interview you can ask for if you can pay for that caliber of candidate. This tests for very different skills than being an exceptional programmer.

I did use the word "software engineer" there, but realistically what they're looking for is exactly the name of the role they wear: Member of Technical Staff. Software Engineer, businessman, product manager, designer, agentic harness engineer, cloud, devops, all rolled into one. They want people who can own the entirety of a product from end-to-end. A responsibility domain so vast that most peoples' first thought is…

The candidate you're describing is a unicorn. Even assuming that this acqui-hire routine is a good way of finding such people, that doesn't answer the question why they're needed for "some dumb integration to make Hubspot data available in Claude, or something equally as boring" (as you suggested above).

I think you're overestimating the rationality of this game.

Re: Anthropic acquires Stainless

#294

Post by nmfisher »

AIorNot wrote: post #151

Stainless has 93 people: https://www.linkedin.com/company/stainless-api/people/ It's funny that Anthropic needs to spend millions acquiring a dev doc platform, can't they just vibe code something up with Mythos a few junior devs at Anthropic? We have Dario claiming SWE development is obsolete and both OpenAI and Anthropic and big tech bros like Musk are still spending millions like this..

Stainless has a laundry list of VC investors that overlap with Anthropic. It wouldn't surprise me if they're the ones engineering these kind of deals to shore up their books by shifting a loss-making investment inside a profitable one.

Re: Anthropic acquires Stainless

#295

Post by ryanmcgarvey »

rattray wrote: post #255
827a wrote: post #211

Anthropic is at a place where they need the world's best software engineers, and they're willing to comp at insane levels to get them. However: You simply cannot post a Linkedin job for "Really Good Software Engineer, comp $10M+" and make any sense of the inbound applications you'll get. They're not the first to figure this out, and they won't be the last: Successfully building a company, and using that company's pro…

> ... and their team is joining Anthropic to build, who knows, some dumb integration to make Hubspot data available in Claude, or something equally as boring. Fun fact, I named it "Stainless" after Stainless Steel pipes, likening ourselves to a high-end plumbing supply shop. If you look at the earliest versions of stainlessapi.com on archive.org, you'll see our original motto was "Quality fittings for your REST API".…

Good for you guys. I'm happy for you.

Re: Anthropic acquires Stainless

#296

Post by samrus »

fnord77 wrote: post #266
rattray wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... and their team is joining Anthropic to build, who knows, some dumb integration to make Hubspot data available in Claude, or something equally as boring. Fun fact, I named it "Stainless" after Stainless Steel pipes, likening ourselves to a high-end plumbing supply shop. If you look at the earliest versions of stainlessapi.com on archive.org, you'll see our original motto was "Quality fittings for your REST API".…

I can't even figure out what Stainless does (did)

It turned API specs into ssoftware devolopment kits and model context servers. Basically connecting existing tools to AI agents so they can actually use them.

They might be a big part of the reason why claude code can edit notion docs for you pretty easily

Re: Anthropic acquires Stainless

#297

Post by bendmorris »

klooney wrote: post #292
IncreasePosts wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do the economics work out ? You can downsize the devs you have, but you need to maintain a smaller stable of very expensive devs, and then factor in the token usage. For example, a recent story about the openclaw creator using $1.3M of tokens/month. And let's assume he's getting paid $5M/yr which is probably a vast under estimate. Is he providing value that a traditional software development org with normal developer…

I honestly believe that most Silicon Valley developers could have their pre-AI output replaced by 10 dollars/day in Gemini 3 pay as you go spend. I don't think existing companies will bite that bullet, but I think you'll see AI native companies in five years with like, a baffling small number of people.

Why in five years? Where are these hyper productive small companies running laps around bigger ones right now?

Re: Anthropic acquires Stainless

#298

Post by vatsachak »

AIorNot wrote: post #151

Stainless has 93 people: https://www.linkedin.com/company/stainless-api/people/ It's funny that Anthropic needs to spend millions acquiring a dev doc platform, can't they just vibe code something up with Mythos a few junior devs at Anthropic? We have Dario claiming SWE development is obsolete and both OpenAI and Anthropic and big tech bros like Musk are still spending millions like this..

Powerful AI is here as Dario said in 2024. Open your eyes. Anthropic acquired Stainless because they know how to use Claude better than their own employees

Re: Anthropic acquires Stainless

#299

Post by grogenaut »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #253
IncreasePosts wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do the economics work out ? You can downsize the devs you have, but you need to maintain a smaller stable of very expensive devs, and then factor in the token usage. For example, a recent story about the openclaw creator using $1.3M of tokens/month. And let's assume he's getting paid $5M/yr which is probably a vast under estimate. Is he providing value that a traditional software development org with normal developer…

The issue is there’s non linearities involved. Although I don’t know I would use the open claw guy, but let’s take Isaac Newton. You can’t sum up people and arrive at an Isaac Newton worth of talent. He’s singular, unique, and irreplaceable at what he did. There were others similarly outsized in their ability to change things, and there are today as well. But you can’t funge talent at some level with more people - in…

| Newton... He's Singular, unique, and irreplaceable at what he did.

Leibniz, literally parallel.

Was Newton just a smart guy at the right place and the right time. These smart folks require other smart folks to understand and verify what they did. There are many who have amazing pedigrees in history.

Re: Anthropic acquires Stainless

#300

Post by bulbar »

827a wrote: post #211

Anthropic is at a place where they need the world's best software engineers, and they're willing to comp at insane levels to get them. However: You simply cannot post a Linkedin job for "Really Good Software Engineer, comp $10M+" and make any sense of the inbound applications you'll get. They're not the first to figure this out, and they won't be the last: Successfully building a company, and using that company's pro…

> and their team is joining Anthropic to build, who knows, some dumb integration to make Hubspot data available in Claude, or something equally as boring.

Normally I would say those Engineers would leave eventually, because there are not enough technical challenges and/or the pace is slower. But I guess when you pay much above market rate that doesn't really matter.

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