Polymathic Podcast
Reflections on building software, AI, and staying human. Subscribe to get new episodes automatically.
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About the host
Paul Welty is the author of The Work of Being: A Philosopher’s Guide to Becoming Human in the AI Era, available on Amazon. He writes about work, judgment, and what it means to stay human as artificial intelligence reshapes how work gets done.
Recent episodes
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Why customer tools are organized wrong
This article reveals a fundamental flaw in how customer support tools are designed—organizing by interaction type instead of by customer—and explains why this fragmentation wastes time and obscures the full picture you need to help users effectively.
Infrastructure shapes thought
The tools you build determine what kinds of thinking become possible. On infrastructure, friction, and building deliberately for thought rather than just throughput.
Server-side dashboard architecture: Why moving data fetching off the browser changes everything
How choosing server-side rendering solved security, CORS, and credential management problems I didn't know I had.
The work of being available now
A book on AI, judgment, and staying human at work.
The practice of work in progress
Practical essays on how work actually gets done.
Nobody promotes you to operator
There's a moment in every project where the work stops being about building and starts being about keeping things running. Nobody announces this transition. Nobody gives you new tools for it. And most people keep building long past the point where they should have stopped.
The job you didn't know you were hiring for
Most organizations hire for tasks. The ones that survive hire for attention. And attention turns out to be the hardest thing to delegate.
The second project problem
Your system works. Then you try it somewhere else and it falls apart. The gap between 'works here' and 'works anywhere' is where most automation dies — and most organizations never look.