Announcing the Amplify writing fellowship

We're bringing together a small group of writers with technical backgrounds to explore specific thematic areas and publish their research. The paid fellowship runs for 3 months and is a great fit for recent grad students, developers exploring their next thing, or seasoned technical writers.

Writing – and perhaps even deep thinking itself – is at a crossroads. 

We are absolutely drowning in slop. Across every discipline businesses are cutting (human) writing talent in favor of cookie cutter, brain numbing, information-hollow generated words that insult the intelligence of their barely engaged readers. 

Not only this, but the media we consume as a whole has become fifth grade reading level. Whether it be $20K startup launch videos that say nothing, notice me selfies on LinkedIn, or obvious rage bait and transparently purchased reposts on X, we are living in a post-information world. All that matters is attention, and there are no acts too base, no lies too bold, to acquire it. 

This is depressing, no doubt. But it’s also an opportunity! It has never been more obvious and refreshing to find deeply researched, considered writing. To read Derek Thompson, Sam Kriss, father_karine, and Gideon Lewis-Kraus, to work through a neal.fun project, a Sander Dieleman blog post, or even a 10,000 word exploration into the challenges of supporting foreign key constraints…this is to understand that participation in the slop circus is a choice and you can choose to say no.

Perhaps nobody understands this better than technical people (however you may define them). Developers, engineers, researchers, and scientists are some of the best remaining bastions of deep thought. The nature of their work is this deliberateness: the focus on details, the irrepressible obsession with the problem, the meticulous attention to standards and the willingness to equivocate. It is precisely this group who carry the solution to our problem. 

What is that solution? It is deep research, focus, and exploration. It is choosing an idea – better yet, a problem or a tension – and spending several months (or years! decades!) interrogating it. It is to move slowly, deliberately, and to consider something from all angles. It is to shield yourself from the vicissitudes of day- to- day social media and news cycles and to lock in. 

We want to encourage (and pay) people to do this. So we are launching a writing fellowship. It is for technical people – developers, researchers, scientists – who want to spend 2-3 months exploring and writing about an idea or topic space. 

The fellowship will give you:

• A space to spend time and mental effort going deep on an idea.
• A small cohort of fellow writers and researchers to do it with.
• A (very) dedicated editor in Justin.
• A monthly stipend.
• Access to the incredible teams Amplify works with like Runway, Modal, Chainguard, Temporal, Hex, and more.

You should apply (this is a misnomer, it should take 5 minutes) to the fellowship if you:

• Have a technical background and enjoy writing in your free time
• Have a topic that interests you, and you want to research and publish about it more deeply
• Want to improve your writing practice in a structured environment with a dedicated editor

Our first fellow is Sachin Benny. He is an incredibly deep product thinker with an eye towards history, which allows him to cover topics as temporally diverse as vibe coding and the maker movement and AI’s productivity stats paradox. At Amplify he’ll be spending a few months exploring the tension between governed deployment of a technology (highly legible, FDEs, playbooks) versus cultivated deployment (play-oriented, kit making, OpenClaw). 

If this sounds like you, apply here! 

Slop-ago Delenda Est.