Manuel Palli

PM & Ops Strategist | AI · Tech · Gaming

[Manuel Palli @PalliManuel]

So true…

[Abhishek B R @abhitwt]

Every company’s AI workflow rn be like 😭💀

[Zeb Evans @DJ_CURFEW]

Today we reduced headcount by 22%. The business is the strongest it's ever been. So I think it's important to be direct about what I'm seeing and why.

First, I made this decision and I own it. I did it because the way to operate at the highest level of productivity is changing, and to win the future, ClickUp needs to change with it.

Second, this wasn't about cutting costs. Most savings from this change will flow directly back into the people who stay. We'll be introducing million-dollar salary bands. If you create outsized impact using AI, you'll be paid outside of traditional bands.

Most importantly, I have the deepest gratitude for those affected. We're doing this from a position of strength specifically so we can take care of people properly. Everyone affected receives a package aimed at honoring their contributions and easing the transition.

I only see two options: wait for this to play out gradually in the market or be honest about what I'm seeing and act proactively.

THE 100X ORGANIZATION
The primary change is that we're restructuring around what I call 100x org. The goal is 100x output. The roles required to build at the highest level are fundamentally different than they were a year ago.

Incremental improvements to existing systems won't get us there. We need new ones. That means creating enough disruption to rebuild rather than iterate on what's already broken.

The common narrative is that AI makes everyone more productive. It doesn't. Many of the workflows of today, if left unchanged, create bottlenecks in AI systems.

These roles will evolve. But waiting for that to happen naturally means falling behind now.

The 100x org is actually heavily dependent on people - infinitely more than today. This is only possible with 10x people that have embraced and adopted new ways of working.

THE BUILDERS, AGENT MANAGERS, AND FRONT-LINERS

— THE BUILDERS: 10X ENGINEERS
I don't think most companies have internalized what's actually happening with AI in engineering. The common narrative is that AI makes all engineers more productive. That may be true in isolation, but at an organization level - that is the farthest thing from reality.

Here's what we've validated recently at ClickUp: the great engineers, the ones who can orchestrate, architect, and review, are becoming 100x engineers. They're not writing code. They're directing agents that write code. The skill is judgment.

AI makes the best engineers wildly more productive, and everyone else using AI slows these engineers down.
Think about it - the bottlenecks are (1) orchestration - telling AI what to do, and (2) reviewing - what AI did. Everything is leapfrogged and no longer needed.
So who do you want orchestrating and reviewing code?

And how do you want your best engineers to spend their time?

If your best engineers are spending time reviewing other people's code, then this is inherently an inefficient bottleneck. These engineers can review their agent's code much faster than reviewing human code.

The new world is about enabling your 10x engineers to become 100x.

The wrong strategy is to push every engineer to use infinite tokens. Companies doing this are celebrating 500% more pull requests. But customer outcomes don't match the volume of code being generated.

I call this the great reckoning of AI coding, and every company will face this soon if not already.

More code is just another bottleneck to the best engineers, and ultimately to your company's impact as well.

— THE BUILDERS: 10X PRODUCT MANAGERS
Product management and design roles are merging.

Designers that have customer focus, become more like product managers.

And product managers that have intuition for UX become more like designers.

The bottleneck of user research is gone. It takes us just one mention of an agent to kickoff research and analyze results.

The bottleneck of product <> design iteration is also gone. The product builder iterates on their own, along with agents and skills that ensure alignment with quality and strategy.

Also controversial today - I believe that the wrong strategy is to have your PMs shipping code - that just introduces another bottleneck that the best engineers will waste their time on.

To be clear, PMs should be coding but they should do this in a playground to iterate, validate, and scope. That code should not go to production.

Everything outside of managing systems, orchestrating AI, and reviewing output becomes a bottleneck.
That's why the other roles that are critical along with these are the systems managers (to reduce bottlenecks) along with a bottleneck you can't replace - customer meeting time.

— THE SYSTEM MANAGERS
Ironically, the people that automate their jobs with AI will always have a job. They become owners of the AI systems - agent managers. We have many examples of these people at ClickUp.

The underlying systems in which we operate are absolutely critical to get right. I think most companies are delusional to think they can iterate on existing systems and compete in this new world.

You must create enough disruption so that old systems are deprecated entirely. If there's any definition for 'AI native' that's what it is.

— THE FRONT-LINERS
In a world that will become saturated with AI communication, the human touch will matter more than anything to customers.

This is a bottleneck that you shouldn't replace - even when agents are high enough quality to do video meetings.

One-on-one meeting time with customers is something that shouldn't be automated. The systems around the meetings should be - so that front-liners spend nearly 100% of their time with customers.

REWARDING 100X IMPACT
In a world where companies are able to do so much more with less, where does that excess money go?
In our case, much of the savings in this new operating model will flow directly back to those that enabled it.

We must reward people that create productivity accordingly. This aligns incentives on both sides. Plus, in a world where your best people create 100x impact, you can't afford to lose them.

You should aim to retain these employees for decades. The context they have and their ability to efficiently orchestrate and review will be nearly impossible to replace.

Compensation bands of today should be thrown out the door. We're introducing $1 million cash/year salary bands with a path available to nearly everyone in the company if they produce 100x impact by creating or managing AI systems.

THE FUTURE
Nearly every company will make changes like these. The ones that do it proactively will define what comes next.

The future is not fewer people. It's different work, new roles, and better rewards for those who embrace it. We're already seeing entirely new roles emerge, like Agent Managers, that didn't exist a year ago.

ClickUp is positioning to lead this shift, not just internally, but for our customers too. I've never been more certain about where we're headed.

[CG @cgtwts]

Coinbase’s CEO lays off a ton of employees and says:

“Non-technical teams are now pushing code to production with AI”

less than 24 hours later:

coinbase’s trading engine goes down and somehow even the status page breaks too

[Javarevisited @javarevisited]

When an Ex-FAANG Engineer Joins a Startup 😂😂

[NZ ☄️ @CodeByNZ]

✅ Claude Code
✅ Claude Cowork
✅ Claude Design
🔲 Claude Marketing
🔲 Claude Sales
🔲 Claude Finance
🔲 Claude HR
🔲 Claude Operations
🔲 Claude Customer
…

[Mark Gadala-Maria @markgadala]

AI moves so fast.

We now have Breaking Bad by Balenciaga.

Credit: demonflyingfox on YT

[Vercel @vercel]

We’ve identified a security incident that involved unauthorized access to certain internal Vercel systems, impacting a limited subset of customers. Please see our security bulletin:
https://t.co/0S939n3qHC

[Mariano @Mariandipietra]

creo que nunca estuve tan locked-in en toda mi vida.
Mi ADHD es un motor inagotable, me sobran ideas, me falta tiempo y tokens.

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

Shopify just mass-democratized something most people won't register for another 6 months.

$378 billion in GMV. 5.6 million stores. And they just gave every AI coding agent direct write access to the entire store backend: products, orders, inventory, SEO, images.

That screenshot is a solo merchant typing "Optimize all my products for SEO" and Claude updating 32 product listings, rewriting alt text, applying meta descriptions, and verifying every change. One prompt. No Fiverr freelancer. No $200/month app subscription. No agency retainer.

The old cost stack for a small Shopify store: $200-500/month in apps, $2,000+ for an SEO audit, $50/hour for a VA. That just collapsed into a terminal command.

4.8 million active merchants. Most run 10-200 SKUs and manage everything by clicking through the admin one product at a time. Claude Code plus MCP just gave every solo founder the operational capacity of a five-person team.

And Shopify isn't building the agent. They're building the protocol that makes every agent a Shopify agent. That's the platform play.

[Lex Fridman @lexfridman]

Same, I have a similar setup. A mix of Obsidian, Cursor (for md), and vibe-coded web terminals as front-end.

Since I do a podcast, the number/diversity of research interests is very large. But the knowledge-base approach has been working great.

For answers, I often have it generate dynamic html (with js) that allows me to sort/filter data and to tinker with visualizations interactively.

Another useful thing is I have the system generate a temporary focused mini-knowledge-base for a particular topic that I then load into an LLM for voice-mode interaction on a long 7-10 mile run. So it becomes an interactive podcast while I run, where I ask it questions and listen to the answers to learn more.

Anyway, heading out for a run now, thanks for the write-up 👊

[jon allie @jonallie]

Personal rule of thumb: don't use an LLM for something that a deterministic program can do.

I get it, LLMs are exciting, but they don't mean that software ceases to exist. They are fantastic at dealing with human language and ambiguity, but are terrible (by design and for good reason) at repeatability.

To borrow terminology from the book Thinking Fast and Slow, LLMs are "system 2"...slower, more "expensive" (for LLMs, both in time and dollars), but flexible and creative. Traditional programs are "system 1" ..fast and cheap, but inflexible and dumb.

Instead of trying to put an LLM in the "hot loop" of your program, it's usually worth asking an agent to write a deterministic program to do the thing you need done. Since code is "cheap", this deterministic tool can do exactly what you want it to, and doesn't consume tokens on every execution.

(This applies to agents too..I find myself regularly yelling at Claude to stop repeatedly generating the same 30 lines of python to inspect a file, and instead telling it to generate a 3-line shell script wrapper around jq that it can check in and call repeatedly)

[SfdxShow 🛡️ @sfdxpro]

Un ruso se encontró unas ruinas que le resultaron sospechosamente familiares…

Y sí, eran básicamente el puto Dust 2 en la vida real 😅

[OpenClaw🦞 @openclaw]

We just passed React on GitHub stars. 🦞

Let that sink in. A personal AI assistant built by a lobster-obsessed Austrian and an army of crustacean enthusiasts just outstarred the library that powers half the internet.

We shipped 90+ changes today. They shipped a conference.

[Peter Agboola @baba_Omoloro]

Anthropic has launched free courses to master AI with certificates for $0.00

https://t.co/hwJvuJHIdo

[Manuel Palli @PalliManuel]

@josealvaradoo @Janeirus1 @MaestroAngeles @grok A Elon le cobra la electricidad que consume para chequear esas huevadas

[Eric Daugherty @EricLDaugh]

🚨 BREAKING: This Venezuelan man is going viral for explaining to everyone why Maduro NEEDED to be toppled

The Democrats are clueless.

“Venezuela has already been invaded.” 🔥🇺🇸

He knows his country.

The people are ecstatic.

[Manuel Palli @PalliManuel]

@LuciaAlvites 🤣

[Manuel Palli @PalliManuel]

@AnitaMontanaro @pabloquirno No es lo mismo decir Anita siéntate en la hamaca que siéntate en la macanita… chorra cochina!

[Manuel Palli @PalliManuel]

@roxanapwkz @OPRArgentina @Kicillofok @CFKArgentina @JMilei 🤦🏻‍♂️

[Eric Matheny 🎙️ @ericmmatheny]

This performance feels so different now. Like he was saying goodbye to the world.

RIP Ozzy.