The Peterman Pod OpenAI Codex Tech Lead On How His Career Grew And How He Uses Codex | Michael Bolin
108 snips
Mar 9, 2026 Michael Bolin, tech lead of the open source Codex repo and former Meta engineer behind Buck and NewClyde. He recalls building faster build systems, a virtual filesystem for massive monorepos, and why Codex was open sourced. He contrasts research-led and engineering-led cultures. He also reveals how he uses Codex daily, agent design choices, and practical career and engineering advice.
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Incremental Builds Beat Rebuilding From Scratch
- The core slowdown was rebuilding everything on any change because the original tool blew away state instead of caching.
- Designing for incremental builds and making modules cheap to add unlocked large speed gains and better developer behavior.
Built A Scalable IDE To Replace Xcode
- Michael built NewClyde (an Xcode replacement) because Xcode and other tools didn't scale to Facebook's massive monolithic app.
- He chose a React/desktop stack and targeted iOS first to avoid broad friction and ship a usable editor.
Choose Projects That Fit Your Strengths And Joy
- Do not chase hero problems outside your taste; pick problems you genuinely enjoy and where you can write lots of code from the start.
- Michael found projects requiring coordination/data work were a poor fit compared to code-first infrastructure work.
