Mike Hopper

Christian, Father, Software Engineer, Instructor

[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.

[Anatoli Kopadze @AnatoliKopadze]

instead of watching 2 hours of Netflix tonight, watch this Stanford lecture

it's the clearest explanation I've seen of how ChatGPT and Claude actually work

useful whether you've never touched AI in your life or have been using it every day for the past year

I took the key ideas and turned them into a practical guide on how to actually get 100% out of Claude

find it below

[darkzodchi @zodchiii]

https://t.co/8cVJj5fczP

[Anatoli Kopadze @AnatoliKopadze]

https://t.co/xHKvUDKhG2

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

True

[dunik @dunik_7]

40% of the code Claude writes for you is wasted. you're paying for the rewrite.

a 65-line markdown file fixes it. 120,000 developers have starred it.

the author tested it on "30 codebases over 6 weeks" and reported a mistake rate drop from 41% to either 11% or 3%

depending on whether you read the headline or the body.

the irony is that the article is right.

CLAUDE.md is the most under-leveraged file in your stack.

65 lines of behavioral rules outperform a 4,000-token preferences dump.

"be careful" is useless. testable imperatives are gold.

"be senior" doesn't work Claude already thinks it is.

the 4 rules that ship the most leverage:

/ state assumptions, never guess silently
/ minimum code, nothing speculative
/ surgical changes, don't refactor adjacent code
/ define success, loop until verified

compliance: ~80%. mistake rate: from ~40% to single digits.

no human caught the contradicting numbers in the title.

nobody had to.

[Yossi BenYakar @YossiBenYakar]

Top British attorney Natasha Hausdorff stunned the audience by completely destroying the Palestinian narrative about the conflict. The truth the world refuses to accept:

Palestine never existed as a sovereign Arab state.
The British Mandate of Palestine was a British territory taken from the defeated Ottoman Empire after 1917. Jews lived continuously in the Holy Land for centuries — long before modern Zionism. They were the majority in Jerusalem under Ottoman rule. Jews legally bought desert land (including the area that became Tel Aviv) and turned it into thriving cities and kibbutzim. Not a single Arab was displaced by these purchases.

The Arabs rejected the 1947 UN partition plan and launched war to destroy the newborn Jewish state. They lost. During that war, Arab armies ordered local Arabs to flee so they could “push the Jews into the sea.” Many did exactly that.

Israel has never committed genocide. It has fought for survival against repeated attempts to commit genocide against the Jewish people. Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran’s regime are the real obstacles to peace in the Middle East.

The historical facts are clear. The propaganda is not.

Share this. The truth needs to be heard.

[Joel Berry @JoelWBerry]

It’s an automated factory. It’s a supercomputer. We can’t make one, with all our knowledge and technology.

People pretending to be serious scientists say this was created by lightning striking a mud puddle. That’s what they still teach in school.

[Isabel Brown @theisabelb]

Teenagers are sharing photos of their AP U.S. Government textbooks, and the sheer amount of indoctrination is wildly disturbing.

Apparently, Barack Obama is ideologically a right wing authoritarian.

Hillary Clinton and George W Bush are entirely indistinguishable politically.

Donald Trump is of course virtually the same as Hitler.

@tedcruz is apparently more radically authoritarian than Fidel Castro AND Joseph Stalin..??!!??

@Linda_McMahon — can we expedite some major changes to American public education?

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Well said

[Captain Allen @CptAllenHistory]

This is an excellent place to start to expose the ever-popular “Shrinking ‘Palestine’” map meme.

[Mike Hopper @drmikeh]

@newstart_2024 I noticed a dramatic shift in the 1990s with the emergence of post-modernism, which states that there is no absolute truth. The "Your truth is not my truth" kind of thinking. This led to moral pragmatism, where individuals choose what is right for them based on what feels good.