[1] software factories are super real but we need to be realistic. the factory aspects haven’t been cracked yet, the [3] innovators are toying around with discovering practices and pieces. if someone is selling you a factory rn and they aren’t in the super small cohort (ie. they are likely startups created in last six months!) or circa <10 people in the who’s-who, who have been trying (and realistically failing) over the last two years. they are selling bullshit. it isn’t cracked but it’s a puzzle that’s being solved daily. the best practices right now are to build abstractions/pieces needed which entails solving [2] non-agent topics. [1] almost lights out. [2] sandboxing, monorepo, reproducible builds, ci/cd, identity/secret management, smashing corporate friction in the realm of devex for agents. [3] at home, in your homelab, you should be cracking on this problem space in your free time if you want a super fast promotion and red carpet service at your next interview. highest roi you can have right now is learning the entire damn stack, automating it and showing it at your next interview/doing a recorded talk at a meetup.