Michael Dubakov

Building OS for your company at @FiberyHQ. Riding the edge of cHaoS. Posting about systems, startups, creativity & products.

[Michael Dubakov @mdubakov]

1/ Fibery in 2025. Finally a good year in review
📈 +85% MRR growth
📉 -85% sales and marketing expenses
🐛 13,500 new leads
💪 51 releases, 420 new features and 1400 fixed bugs
🫩 Engineering Bottlenecks
🍱 Product unification and polishing
🎁 fibery dot com
(and more ↓ 🧵)

[Fibery @FiberyHQ]

Every Fibery homepage was an honest attempt to explain what we're building and why. Each had an idea, a story, a lot of care.

So we built a Museum to preserve them as they were meant to be seen. Curious what Fibery looked like in the past? Check it out:
https://t.co/pZJUPPpqqj

[Michael Dubakov @mdubakov]

@theiiimpact @Avishai_ab True. Now I added shekel/dollar thesis to my playbook.

[Michael Dubakov @mdubakov]

true "Until AI can reason causally about systems, human judgement remains the foundation of software delivery."

[Michael Dubakov @mdubakov]

@Sebz @NoorAlTrades @clickup @FiberyHQ Thank you for this! :)

[Michael Dubakov @mdubakov]

@Holmyverse @nycthinker That is my main job, keep our customers happy

[Michael Dubakov @mdubakov]

@Holmyverse @nycthinker Unfortunately it is unlikely that offline mode will come anytime soon. We do not have plans to add it this or next year so far.

[Michael Dubakov @mdubakov]

@mathemagic1an If the future of SWE at tech companies looks like this, I will do gardening soon.

[Michael Dubakov @mdubakov]

One of the worst examples how to announce headcount cuts. Pls learn from this and do it somehow better if you need to do that sometimes.

[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.

[Michael Dubakov @mdubakov]

+100!

[eigenrobot @eigenrobot]

asking people to read ai-generated text is offensive.

this is not because ai text is intrinsically bad. rather, the author has not paid a cost to write the text himself. this cost is a credible signal he finds its communication important.

so: not paying that cost is telling

[Michael Dubakov @mdubakov]

@artman @linear This will not age well I guess...

[Michael Dubakov @mdubakov]

@amix3k I think when you are walking the dog it is better just walking the dog.

[Michael Dubakov @mdubakov]

Taste and intuition — the most required skills in the new era.

[Jess @ FireTeam 🔥 An agency on fire... @HireFireTeam]

You CAN get lucky and create a winning ad.

But usually you don't get lucky...

...you fall to the level of your systems.

Which is why your systems better be the best winning-ad-production-machine in the whole game.

We used to roll with Notion, but it had too many limitations.

An F1 car is entirely custom. To the driver, the engine, the track. That's what we needed.

And we found it in @FiberyHQ and the system we designed with @blockwork_so (Ron) help.

I can confidently, perhaps naievely 🤷‍♂️, say we have the best system in this space.

More deets in this video👇

btw, this aint sponsored, I don't do that. But good people and good tools deserve to be shouted out.

[Fibery @FiberyHQ]

Since a while back, Fibery looks… different. We changed a lot of things and it took us longer than we care to admit.

We'd like to share a little about the process, so we hereby present an ironical, humorous, but true video about this glorious process.
https://t.co/s5Vj8aBNUY

[Michael Dubakov @mdubakov]

@clementallain_ @FiberyHQ Could you provide more info? os, app version, login method, steps, video would help. Did you try to re-install mobile app?

[Michael Dubakov @mdubakov]

@nkohari Simplicity for non-devs

[Amir Salihefendić @amix3k]

Prediction: remote-first and async-first will come back in a big way, driven by AI and agents.

In a remote company, collaborating with people or agents will feel increasingly similar. That makes adopting agents and agentic workflows much more natural.

Context is another huge advantage. Even at a ~100-person company like Doist, we have millions of artifacts that AI systems can use. Most of it is transparent because remote forces you to be more open.

In office-centric companies, much more knowledge lives inside people’s heads. Many critical decisions are made in closed or ad hoc meetings. Writing and reading skills are less developed because less of the work depends on them. All of that becomes a major constraint when collaborating with AI systems.

Over time, companies will be pushed toward remote and async structures because the productivity gains from deeply infusing AI into organizations will be too large to ignore.

[Michael Dubakov @mdubakov]

makes sense

[Michał Podlewski @trajektoriePL]

Terence Tao proposes what he calls a "Copernican view of intelligence".

Instead of buying into the common, one-dimensional narrative that artificial intelligence will simply evolve from "subhuman" to "superhuman" and ultimately make humanity entirely redundant, Tao urges us to look at the bigger picture.

Much like the Copernican revolution proved the Earth is not the center of the universe, Tao suggests we need to realize that human intelligence isn't the only, or necessarily the highest, form of intellect. Historically, we have treated other forms of storing or creating knowledge—like animals, books, and computers—as secondary. However, we actually exist within a much richer universe of intelligence.

Both human intelligence and computer intelligence possess their own distinct strengths and weaknesses. The true potential lies not in viewing them as direct competitors, but rather in focusing on collaboration. By working together, humans and computers can achieve additional things that neither could accomplish on their own, requiring us to think in much wider terms than just what humans or computers can do alone.

[Michael Dubakov @mdubakov]

@clementallain_ @FiberyHQ Hi, thank you for the very detailed report! We will look on Monday and hope fix soon