We’re in a period where everything feels like it’s getting jumbled up across roles because AI lets you explore the adjacencies of other functions more easily. We all collectively have to figure out the new form of definition of what these jobs look like in a world of agents, and certainly many will look different from what they did before. But there are some immutable laws that will eventually re-emerge over time and become clear again. As an example, when you’re scaling, product managers should be spending an insane amount of time with customers and getting feedback on the product and thinking through what to do build next, how to design it so it’s usable, and so on. Engineers should be understanding the business objectives, and building systems that scale and are secure, even as feature velocity increases by 10X. Now both can do a bit more of the others role, and this can temporarily get conflated as doing the whole thing, but eventually the work adds up to be enough that it makes sense to specialize again. Similarly, in GTM, the product marketer can certainly generate a working design and video for a launch, but the specialist is always going to (or should) have an eye for quality that delivers a better outcome. My bet is that AI enhances specialization even further, even if a few roles collapse into each other, and the future toolchain and craft of the specialist will be much higher leverage and output far greater than anyone else as a hobbyist in that function.
我们正处在这样一个时期：由于 AI 让你更容易探索其他职能的相邻领域，一切都仿佛在不同角色之间被打乱、混杂在一起。我们所有人都必须共同摸索，在一个由 agent（智能体）构成的世界里，这些工作的新定义会是什么样子；当然，其中许多岗位看起来都会和过去不同。但随着时间推移，总有一些不可改变的规律会重新浮现，并再次变得清晰。举个例子，当你处在规模化扩张阶段时，product managers 应该花大量时间与客户交流、获取产品反馈，并思考下一步该构建什么、该如何设计才能让它易于使用，等等。Engineers 则应该理解业务目标，并在功能迭代速度提升 10X 的同时，构建可扩展且安全的系统。现在，双方都能多做一点对方的工作，这可能会暂时被混同为“把整件事都做了”，但最终工作量会累积到足以让再次专业化变得合理。同样地，在 GTM 中，product marketer 当然可以为一次发布生成一个能用的设计和视频，但 specialist（专家）总会——或者说应该会——对质量有更敏锐的把握，从而带来更好的结果。我的判断是，AI 会进一步强化专业化，即便有少数角色会相互合并；而未来 specialist 的工具链和技艺，其杠杆效应会高得多，产出也会远远超过任何只是把该职能当作爱好的业余者。
He just spent a year building scaffolding for his agent harness. Now release a new model update that makes all of it obsolete.
他刚花了一年时间为自己的 agent harness 搭建脚手架。结果一个新的 model 更新发布，就让这一切全都过时了。