The Computomatix Times

Most people marry the wrong person for the wrong reasons and spend the rest of their lives telling themselves how right they were. Some end up seeing the light and separate while others go fully into the darkness as they head down the aisle, eyes not wide shut but horrifyingly clear sighted and aware of the incredible mistake they are making as it happens.
I write about money, power, and the ways people wreck their lives over both. Subscribe to read more: www.notyourtypicalfinancebro.com
I find myself at that awkward age where friends I saw get married are now getting divorced, friends who should get divorced are desperately fighting to stay married, and the rest are either panic-proposing or considering downloading Hinge for the seventh time pretending this round will be different. Since I'm in the grown-up position of not offering my opinions on anyone's spouses and you can usually find me at the buffet line or in a corner eating (I am so serious when I say most photos of me at events involve food, I am an equal opportunity eater), I've had extensive time to observe this whole tragicomedy while feasting on canapés and champagne. Which is why I have some thoughts.
I make no claims at being an expert. God knows I've destroyed enough relationships or potential along the way. But I've built this theory from observation and discussion with others, and I think it holds up to scrutiny. It's certainly not popular nor the fun way to do it, but that's also because most people don't want to think about who the person sleeping next to them is going to be when they get the worst phone call of their lives.
From what I've observed, most people marry out of three impulses:
They have met someone who meets certain checkboxes at a certain time in their life.
They feel pressure from society, family, social circles, the media, gossipy aunts, gross uncles, whatever, and they meet someone with which they can settle to remedy that ache.
They are just plain afraid to be alone.
Sometimes it can be all three at once really, a perfect storm of bad reasoning dressed up in white and in blooming flowers with church hall music streaming in. But here is the problem - the person you meet today may not be the person you are with in a few years, much less in 5, 10, 15, or 20 - and the person you are expecting to grow or to change may surprise you along the way in ways good, bad, and ugly. What is in front of you and what is possible is not a guarantee of someone's character when the going gets tough.
As for reasons 2 and 3, well, I'll gloss over them, but it is fairly obvious - you have a problem, you think this is a solution because you come across another person, but actually, this is a horrible way to go about it. Do you remember group projects in school when you were assigned a mandatory partner to find? Sometimes it worked if you ended up clicking, but most of the time, it was not enjoyable nor an experience worth repeating. But you did it only because you thought you had to because of an authority, right? Same applies here.
As for people who can't be alone, well, I'll spare them the indignity of being told there's only so much running one can do - and how painful it must be to be someone in a relationship but lonelier than ever before.
You are probably marrying the wrong person. You may have married the wrong person already. Let me back up.
The person you want to marry is not the person in front of you today. It is not the person they will be tomorrow. It is not the person who is the smartest or hottest or wealthiest or whatever-liest. It is not about their potential, it is not about their possibility, it is not about their psychology even. It is not about who they are, what they do, or where they are going. Those are all elements to consider along with the broader decision. They are not the finalizing factors that make or break a lifetime's commitment.
The person you should marry is the 2am person. You know what I mean when I say 2am, but in case it isn't clear, let me cut to the chase: I want you to imagine the worst possible phone call you will ever get in your life. That is the 2am call.
That's the moment you pick up the phone, you hear something said to you, and there's your life before and your life after the call. That is your 2am moment. Now I want you to think about who is going to support you through what happens after you get that phone call.
Your 2am person is the person you marry. Your 2am person is the person who will be your partner, who understands high highs and low lows and everything in between, the person who at 2am has your back even if you weren't the best person you could be in that moment (which is, of course, a nuanced thing and not something that gives anyone a carte blanche to do whatever they want however. My point is the 2am person will be the person who sits with you or deals with it to support you instead of making it a burden or worse in the ways and forms that takes on specific to you.)
Is the hottes… continue on X ↗

Ambitious people often waste their lives by leaving things too early.
Everyone (i mean everyone) has switched lines at the grocery store and regretted it. You're in one that isn't moving, the one next to you is, so you cross over. Then yours starts, the new one stalls.
I run a company that has raised over a hundred million dollars. I switched lines to start this company. I switched lines, when we pivoted. I am not going to argue that people should never leave.
But I have watched enough of these decisions by now, across many companies and domains. The people who left almost always left at the moment things got hard, and very few who ended up where they had been hoping to go.
The people who stay through the ugly often seem to end up ahead, and they are the ones who now look lucky.
I know people who struggled for years, until it hit. I've also seen overnight pivots to success. There's no one recipe. But below is some sincere thoughts on when to stay, and when to leave. And why switching lines usually ends up failing.
I. Your Line
The line you're standing in is the only one you know from the inside. You know exactly what's wrong with it. You've been watching the slow cashier for six minutes and you have opinions about her. The other line you see from across the store, and from across the store almost anything looks fine, because you can't see the coupons or the price check or the man reaching for his checkbook. You're not learning anything about that line. You're seeing it from an angle that hides its problems.
Nobody switches lines because they've studied both. They switch because their own line's problems are visible. A la.... the grass is always greener... Then they get to the new line and its problems become visible, and now there's another line, one aisle over, that looks fine.
II. It Feels Good
Switching feels like taking control. Staying feels like giving up. So when someone leaves a job at month eight, or a startup changes markets in year two, or a founder rewrites the strategy the week before the old one would have started paying, it registers as bold. People congratulate them. Nobody congratulates you for staying in a line.
But most of these moves are the same move. The thing got hard, another thing looked easier, and the person went toward the thing that looked easier, dressed up as ambition. It's hard to tell the difference from the outside, and sometimes from the inside, because the feeling is identical. If you're leaving right when it got hard, you're probably switching lines.
III. The AI Era
This was always a problem, but it has gotten a lot worse, and I think it's worst for people just starting out.
A new grad today looks at a job market where the fastest money is in AI, where twenty-three-year-olds raise rounds off a demo, where every week someone with fewer years of experience than you announces something enormous. Every line looks shorter than yours. And these lines are visible in a way they never were, because the whole thing plays out on a feed. You see the announcement. You do not see the four years of nothing that came before it, or the two years of nothing that will come after it for most of them.
So people move. They leave the solid job at a company that's learning slowly for the startup that's moving fast. They leave the startup at month ten for the one that just raised. They leave engineering for founding, founding for investing, investing for whatever gets written about next. Each move makes sense on its own. Together they add up to someone who is twenty-nine and has been new somewhere five times and deeply good at nothing.
The AI era rewards depth more than any period I've seen, because the tools make the shallow parts of most jobs free. What's left is the part you only learn by staying. And the era tempts people out of staying more than any period I've seen. That's the trap.
IV. Leave On the Way Up
If you take one thing from this, take this. The best time to leave a company is on the way up, not the way down.
Most people do the opposite. They stay while things are good, because it's comfortable, and leave when things get hard, because it's not. Which means they leave right before the hard part would have taught them something, and right before the company would have needed them most, which is when the people who stayed get the equity and the title and the story.
If you're leaving because it got hard, wait. Hard is where the value is. Hard is the part everyone else quits, and the people who don't quit are the ones with the résumé everyone wants five years later.
If you're leaving because you've won, because you shipped the thing and learned what there was to learn and the next mountain is somewhere else, go. That's the good kind of leaving. You'll leave with people who'll hire you again and a reputation for finishing. You'll also leave with a clear head, which you don't have when you're fleeing.
V. The People Who Stayed
The founders whose stories we tell mostly didn't switch lin… continue on X ↗

Earlier this week, I was at @SpaceXAI for a Grok @Bot Founder Build Night featuring Harper Insure. The SpaceXAI and Harper team
demoed Grok Bot and various workflows of how Harper uses Cursor agents
This is the core idea.
Bots running operations. Not a bot thinking for you.
The skills that matter today are critical thinking, problem-solving, and orchestration. Not just using a tool, but becoming someone who thrives while tools evolve.
You will hear a different story. About learning how to use Grok Bot and trusting the bot to think for you.
That’s how the idea dies.
The bot gives you an answer. You take it without questioning or adding your own original thought.
AI is not here to think for you. It’s here to brainstorm with you so you, the human, land on better options.
We’ve seen this wave before
San Francisco rewired daily life with new products that changed entire industries.
Twitter made news and media real-time
Instagram changed photography, venues, and tourism
Lyft and Uber disrupted ride-sharing and taxis
Airbnb transformed hospitality
Each one looked like just a product, but changed the way people move, share, and connect. All while creating new categories and opportunities for people to build on and launch businesses.
Bots are the next wave
Bots and agents are next.
They’ll run small business ops, internal processes in big companies, software dev, coaching, media, and automation everywhere. Agents today need a modern backend and infrastructure to run at scale. (hint convex.ai)
Grok Bot is not a pile of scripts. It’s a desk you talk to. Focused on human-led work.
Orchestration is the big-picture skill
You see an organization and spot what bots can automate. Then you have bots run and manage operations alongside you.
Harper’s CRM plus Grok Bot shows this in a GTM shop. It’s not trivia from prompts.
Critical thinking happens next to the bot. You don’t just accept answers. You question, add your own view, and improve. Or you build the app to enhance your workflow and day-to-day tasks, with convex.dev as your backend, of course.
The better option remains yours.
The bigger loop
This isn’t a skill frozen in time.
It’s about continuous learning tied to who you are becoming.
The skill is critical thinking and problem-solving, orchestrated by human identity. Bots and agents guide but do not replace.
This is how you thrive as agents change software and AI impacts every business on earth.
In other words, just call me BOO (Bot Orchestration Officer).

This article was originally sent by me (human) using Grok Bot, with the AgentMail plugin, and published through APIs on waynesutton.ai a @Convex-hosted app.