Max Musing (@maxmusing), yes, the Basedash founder, asked a simple one: what are your top three dream companies to work for right now? The answers say more about 2026 than any trend report.
Almost every list was AI labs. Anthropic, OpenAI, DeepMind, Cursor, over and over, to the point where Levi (@levi_mitchell1) called it: "three out of four picks in this thread are AI companies now, would've been a totally different list two years ago." Even Max conceded he'd be surprised if anyone in tech doesn't have a big lab in their top three.
The counterpoint came from Nika (@busmark_w_nika), who used to dream of Meta and Netflix and now wants none of it: independence, with the dream companies as clients instead of employers. "It is always heart-warming when employees from a big company subscribe to my newsletter with their company mail."
Good thread if your own top three has quietly become Anthropic, OpenAI, and whoever's paying in GPUs.