As engineering, product, design, DS, etc. melt into a new kind of role, I was reflecting on what roles might look like in the future. For example, when I look at the Claude Code team I see what I think is five archetypes:
1. Prototyper: comes up with brand new ideas; churns out many ideas, most of which don't ship
2. Builder: quickly turns a prototype/idea into production-grade product/infra
3. Sweeper: cleans up the UI, simplifies the code and system, unships, optimizes performance
4. Grower: takes a product that has been built and iterates on it to improve Product-Market Fit
5. Maintainer: owns a mature system to make it secure, reliable, fast, and efficient as it scales
Many people span across 2 roles, and sometimes 3 roles. I also notice that these roles are not really tied to job function -- eg. across Anthropic, some designers match category 1, some 2, some 3; same for engineers, PM, DS.
A healthy team needs a mix of these, depending on the product:
- A product that is new and pre-PMF needs people that are strong at 1+2+3
- A product that is growing and has found PMF needs 2+3+4 and some 5
- A product that has strong PMF needs 3+4+5 and some 2
Maybe product roles of the future will look more like this, and less like the domain-specific roles of today?
The whole of England supported Aston Villa and they won the Europa League
The whole of England supported Crystal Palace and they won the Conference League
Over to you PSG, the whole of England are supporting you 🤝
🚨 All flights in and out of London cancelled after a huge dust cloud erupted when Arsenal opened their trophy cabinet to put the Premier League trophy.
Ops was a no-no for the last many decades.
Going forward Ops will be where moats will get built.
These Ops will look dramatically different than the Ops of the past though.
Let’s call them AI-powered Ops.
We are seeing the first generation of builders creating these AI-powered Ops businesses in massive TAMs.
But it has been hard to pitch these to Seed and Series A investors who are unsure how to model these - are these software companies? are these services companies? are these …?
But, like always, these bleeding edge founders building these new cos will define this next generation category and investors will eventually follow.
Knowing when stages come to an end.
Knowing when to say goodbye when you feel that you will be remembered and respected forever.
Four months to give my all for this badge and for our goal.
Eternal respect and affection for Manchester United and its wonderful fans.
Forever Red Devil.