Super excited about our new initiative at @Pixelmatters_, positioned to help overseas enterprises open their Tech Hub in Portugal. 🇵🇹
ℹ️ +info here: https://t.co/DQxxviZpsp
If you'd like to know more, just DM me here on X! 💪
Welp, that happened faster than I predicted. Thought it would be end of 2027, then early 2027, but agentic traffic growing so fast that bots have now passed human traffic online for the first time in the Internet's history. https://t.co/2zX5bHdhsa
Here's my honest take on the state of non-infra AI services as of June 2026 ⬇️
→ With few exceptions, nobody really knows what they're doing.
→ The current winners aren't the best at doing the work. They're the best at marketing it.
→ It's all about naming and packaging. The people, the roles, the skillsets are the same... and were already there.
→ Turning a "Consultant" into a "Forward Deployed Engineer" is the best rebrand of the decade.
→ Half the offerings are 30% substance, 70% vocabulary. Agents, orchestration layers, agentic-stuff, AI-native everything.
→ Surprisingly or not, clients are buying the jargon! Makes the FOMO go away.
→ So yeah, we're all kinda throwing sand in each other's eyes. And we're all kind of enjoying it. It feels like progress!
Follow me for more inspiring takes. 😅
The Portuguese under Henry the Navigator invented the technology to explore the world.
Now struggling to run the passport processing machines at the airport.
Craftmatters 2026, in 60 seconds ⚡️
A full day of real conversations about craft, AI, and building great products. Thank you to everyone who made it happen 🔥
Craftmatters conference by @pixelmatters_ 2nd Edition is in the books. ✨
It was "Premium but intimate".
I believe we, as @Pixelmatters_ and as a community, may be creating something special here.
We're putting Portugal on the map, with something that may slowly be becoming one of the best small digital Conferences in Europe. 🇵🇹 🇪🇺
See you all next year!
OpenAI and Anthropic are effectively telling the market they can't solve every problem with a generic AI coworker.
You don't pour billions into massive forward-deployed joint ventures if you think the next model release is going to take care of it.
In the cloud supercycle, semis led and software followed (and you didn't need Qualcomm or ARM to tell you the value was migrating up the stack).
In AI, the infra layer itself is telling us the application layer is a separate, massive opportunity they can't fully capture.
a16z's @joeschmidtiv on why the app layer isn't dead: https://t.co/84QN5Mj9T3
20.000+ people already watched my podcast with @miguel_milhao — aka Mike Billionzz! 🔥
The DMs have been great. Some of the public comments… less so. This combo is what makes these public chats to be so fun and worthwhile. 😀
If you haven't watched it yet, you're still on time:
→ YouTube: https://t.co/sk5LJWsYkl
→ Spotify: https://t.co/KlLpquNTlY
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.
How do you catch up with AI as a team? 🤖
We didn't have a playbook either. So every Friday we run a 45-min open session to share what we're building with AI, what's ready to use, and how to get started.
Show up. Share what you're learning. Watch it compound.
12 anos depois de ter trabalhado com o @miguel_milhao na @prozisofficial, é dia de contar a história desse capítulo do meu percurso. 💪
Sai hoje à noite o "meu" episódio do podcast CdK. Conversa longa, honesta, e acima de tudo...super divertida! 😀
Obrigado @miguel_milhao uma vez mais pelo convite, foi top!