ClickUp CEO presents a vision of a “hundredfold organization”: employees who manage artificial intelligence agents, product managers who also become designers, and frontline workers who are not replaced precisely because of the human connection with customers
Another month passes, another company lays off a fifth (22%) of its employees, and offers a salary cap of a million dollars a year to some of its employees. And no, not just for artificial intelligence people.
ClickUp CEO – Zeb Evans – posted this week open letter In it, he explains the reason for the move, and goes into detail about the change they are bringing about in the company, and what the new roles look like. And all of this is based on internal experiments the company conducted – at least according to what he says.
And if he is right in his claim that this is where the industry is heading, then we should all prepare accordingly.
In short, Evans argues that the most important goal right now is to rebuild society as a "hundred-fold" organization. That is, an organization that produces a hundred times more than before. The roles required to do so are dramatically different from those we saw in organizations of the past. And no, it's not enough to teach everyone to work with AI. What's really important, according to Evans, is to retain those who know how to do the new roles at the highest level, with the help of AI.
So, what are these new roles? According to Evans, there are four of them.
Engineer 100 times
The first is the "Pi-Meh Engineer." This is not just an engineer who uses AI to produce more code, but one who is able to conduct an entire orchestra of AI agents, direct them all at the same time, review and critique their work. Evans calls such people "Pi-Meh Engineers," and explains that their most important skill is the ability to judge and control. AI does work on a huge scale, but Pi-Meh Engineers know how to direct it correctly and retain only the most successful products at each stage.
Evans tried to pair Phi-Meh engineers with regular engineers, and found that it just didn’t work. Phi-Meh engineers work so much faster than the others that even when regular engineers use artificial intelligence to solve problems, they can’t keep up with the Phi-Meh engineers. In fact, they slow down the entire workflow, because the Phi-Meh engineers have to wait for their slower colleagues to verify and test the code they’ve written. The secret is to let the Phi-Meh engineers work on their own and build on their own developments.
The second type of employee that needs to change is product managers. The role of product manager is now merging with the role of designer. Here too, the key skill required is high-level judgment and critical thinking. The product manager can decide what he wants the product to look like, and if he uses the right tools – they do the design work for him. The product manager mainly needs to know how to talk to artificial intelligence, to customers, and to the 100 engineers. If he knows how to do this, then he himself gains superpowers.
Automation Managers
The third type of employee is the system administrator. These are the people who are ready to automate their work with the help of artificial intelligence. They build new platforms for their departments, and accelerate the entire organization forward with the applications and tools they create. Along the way, they also help the organization break away from the old and primitive systems that are accepted in it, and successfully enter the new world where engineers do a hundred times more work.
“Most companies are delusional if they think they can run on existing systems and still compete in the new world,” Evans writes. “You have to create enough of an upheaval that legacy systems are completely abandoned.”
The final role Evans highlights is that of the “front line pioneers”: the people who stand at the forefront of the organization and interact with customers. These, quite simply, cannot be replaced. Even when artificial intelligence reaches a level high enough to make video calls, those people will still have a job.
“One-on-one customer interactions should not be automated,” Evans writes. “The systems around those interactions should be automated—so that front-line workers spend nearly 100 percent of their time with customers.”
These are the key changes to the roles required to create a "hundredfold organization." And it turns out that such an organization needs fewer employees, which is why the CEO has just fired more than a fifth of the employees. What will the company do with all the money saved on the salaries of the laid-off employees?
It will redirect it to better reward the remaining employees.
“We have to reward the people who are creating productivity accordingly,” Evans explains. “And in a world where your best people are making a 100 times greater impact, you can’t afford to lose them. You have to aim to retain those employees for decades. It’s almost impossible to replace the understanding they have and their ability to effectively orchestrate and control [the work of AI agents].”
Don't believe it? Evans announced that he is opening new revenue streams at the company, with annual salaries of a million dollars. And almost anyone at the company can compete for these streams – if only they can show that they are producing a hundred times greater impact.
This The future of work According to Evans, and to tell the truth, it doesn't sound so terrible. There's room for people with all sorts of skills: those who know and want to work with artificial intelligence, those who are willing to develop systems for themselves and others, and even those who are simply good with people. And of course, everyone is rewarded according to their abilities and level of investment in their work.
Is this the right path for the future? It's still hard to say. It fits into what I call "The Age of Agents", where humans are still needed to supervise and manage the work of the agents. It is certainly possible that in a few years the agents will improve enough that they will no longer need human managers, and then we will enter a new era in which organizations will be able to manage themselves. If and when this change happens, the engineer's job will be combined with the product manager's job, and we will have the "manager times a million." Only one person will be needed to tell the artificial intelligence what to do - and it will manage the entire organization accordingly.
And even then, there will probably still be a need for humans to provide warm, personal service to customers. Simply because we, as humans, value investment. And in that future where everyone can receive excellent service from artificial intelligence, we will only know that society is truly investing in us if it sends real (and expensive) humans to serve us.
There are worse futures than these.
Short FAQ
What is a “hundredfold organization”?
This is an organization that is trying to greatly increase productivity with the help of artificial intelligence agents, automation, and new roles.
Will artificial intelligence replace all workers?
Not necessarily. Under the described model, some employees are replaced, but others are given more powerful roles in managing, controlling, and operating AI systems.
Why do customer relations professionals remain important?
Because even in an era of automated service, customers still appreciate personal, human, and direct attention.
What are “hundredfold engineers”?
These are engineers who manage many AI agents simultaneously, review their work, and decide which products are worthy of use.
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