Topic
AI and Teams
New capabilities land before new structures do. The gap between what a team can do with AI and how it's still organized is where most of the operator questions live. The writing about it is mostly alarmist or dismissive, and neither reads like it was written by anyone actually running a team through the shift.
Start here
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Judgment is the new unit of performance
AI made output cheap. Judgment became the scarce thing.
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The junior role after AI
When a model can do most of what a junior used to do, the choice is between shrinking the role and losing the talent funnel, or redesigning it so the human work starts at a different rung. The harder question is where the human work now begins.
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The hiring bar after AI
The skills that used to do the heavy work in an IC role are partly automated. The skills that took their place are still being defined, and most hiring processes are still screening for the old ones.
Sub-threads
All memos
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The ‘AI replaces juniors’ story points at the wrong layer
The first role under pressure is often the manager who translated senior asks into team work.
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A weekly structure for a team with uneven AI use
Both halves should leave with something they couldn't have gotten from a model.
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I don’t know how to measure a team where AI use is uneven
Output goes up while learning may flatten. I'm not sure which signal a manager should be tracking.
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Reviewing work when AI wrote part of it
The performance review system was built for a world where everyone wrote their own first draft. The harder job now is reviewing the human judgment in the work without pretending the AI wasn't there.
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The hiring bar after AI
The skills that used to do the heavy work in an IC role are partly automated. The skills that took their place are still being defined, and most hiring processes are still screening for the old ones.
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The junior role after AI
When a model can do most of what a junior used to do, the choice is between shrinking the role and losing the talent funnel, or redesigning it so the human work starts at a different rung. The harder question is where the human work now begins.
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Managing a team where AI use is optional
The heavy user usually produces more output and may learn less from the work. The refuser keeps the old learning curve and gets outpaced on volume. Managing both honestly is now part of the job.
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Judgment is the new unit of performance
AI made output cheap. Judgment became the scarce thing.