I'm Yaf: A fluid dynamicist, blockchain and AI enthusiast. I love to solve engineering problems using computers, adopt decentralization, and train intelligence.
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.
20 year ago it took 1 hour to stream Eminem songs on Limewire, and now it’s instant.
Can’t wait for Claude’s “Puttering”, “Flambéing”, “Contemplating” to be instant,and not take minutes, by next year.
Introducing TurboQuant: Our new compression algorithm that reduces LLM key-value cache memory by at least 6x and delivers up to 8x speedup, all with zero accuracy loss, redefining AI efficiency. Read the blog to learn how it achieves these results: https://t.co/CDSQ8HpZoc
Lot of crypto folks asking me "What happened?"...
It's probably time to dust off the Taleb book 'Antifragile'.
The amount of Open Interest that has been taken off in one day is unreal. 15B -> 6B on hyperliquid alone, the real total number must be insane!
People always want a clear simple headline. FTX, Luna, Celsius, we've had plenty smoking gun collapses in the past so makes sense to look.
But most likely this is more like the liquidation cascade of May 2021 where after months of run-up and low volatility, people start taking more and more risk as they chase more money.
Especially in this macro environment where gold is at $4k, stocks break all time high every day, and even if you are up you don't know if you are up relative to others when the denominator USD is rekt.
In recent months I've been hearing more and more retarded theses for buying coins. Did you know that CZ's gardener dog is called $ASTERIX? Time to bet on that shit, its BSC season.
Solana trenchers used to flipping shitcoins on their mobile phantom trying to tell me why this or that shitty perp dex is worth billions. Zero self-awareness of knowing what their game is and what it isnt.
Add to that people chasing perps as a narrative, while the liquidity isnt there to support. Hidden risks everywhere, where people are using synthetic dollars as collateral, trading premarket perps with no funding external reference, and telling you not to cry in the casino like they are some hotshot from a Joe Pesci mob movie.
Reality is, in recent months as we were awash with liquidity and every launch was faced with a huge hot ball of money, a lot of the fragility was being hidden under it.
Too much FOMO from retail, not enough focus on robustness from founders seeing their token price as the school report card instead of thinking about their product being more resilient to shocks.
I get it, if you dont play the hype game in crypto you die anyway. If you dont fomo sometimes you miss the big trades. Its a fine balance and none of us are perfect at finding it. And maybe there are some timeless lessons from that cranky boomer that can at least explain why this happened.
🧵 We’ve been building quietly.
But now it’s time to open the gates.
DexPal is officially coming out of stealth!
The first universal rewards program and discovery tool for on-chain perpetuals.
If you trade perps, you’re gonna want to see this!
Want a chance to win 1 full bitcoin? Yeah, you do. Repost and reply with #WealthsimpleCrypto and #contest to be entered into our all-time highest giveaway.
🔺Welcome to Avalanche Canada 🇨🇦
Mark your calendars for April 25th🔥
Join us for the official launch of Avalanche Canada! We are thrilled to host our inaugural community event in Montreal🇨🇦 Proudly presented by new @AvaxDAO_ ambassadors 🎉
Register below👇🏻
🚨 Grok-1: Now Open Source! 🤖
This afternoon, xAI announced the open release of Grok-1, a 314 billion parameter Mixture-of-Experts model. This groundbreaking large language model, trained from scratch, is now accessible to the public.
🌟 Key Highlights:
→ Versatile base model, not yet fine-tuned for specific applications.
→ 314B parameter Mixture-of-Experts architecture, with 25% active weights.
→ Trained on a custom JAX and Rust stack, demonstrating advanced AI techniques.
This release marks a significant step towards democratizing AI technology and fostering innovation in the field. We're excited to see how the community will leverage Grok-1 to push the boundaries of what's possible.
For more details about the architecture, and how to get started through GitHub, visit: https://t.co/ctd5fGqxqm
How do you think the open-sourcing of Grok-1 will impact the future of AI development? Share your thoughts below! 👇
#OpenSource #Grok #AI #LLM #xAI
Confirmed the @SECGov has approved ALL ETF applications.
VanEck
Bitwise
Fidelity
Franklin
Valkyrie
Hashdex
Ark Invest
Grayscale
BlackRock
WisdomTree
Invesco Galaxy
After yesterday's minor hiccup, #2024 is back on track as the most important year for digital assets on record.
1/ #SDM would like to reassure our clients that we have no material exposure to Prime Trust and that we remain fully operational for all fiat and digital settlements.