Shopify reposted this
Most of the conversation about AI is about execution. How fast you can ship. How many tasks you can automate. How much output one person can produce. But I’ve always thought what’s more interesting is what's underneath it. I've spent most of my career on what I call the “invisible” side of work — decision architecture, information flow, how context gets compressed into something simpler. It doesn't have a name. But as AI extends into the execution layer, it becomes some of the most important work we do. I had a recent conversation with Tobi on Context that went deep on this. A few things I keep coming back to: 1/ Someone still has to design the system. AI can run your critic loop, red team your idea, play devil's advocate. But who decides what gets generated, what you’re solving for, the first principles you’re working from - that's the intentional work. And the outcomes vary enormously based on how carefully it's done. 2/ Context isn't cheap, it's compressed. There's a framing going around that AI makes context "cheap." I don’t think so. What it does is compress it in a way that enables better, faster decisions. That compression still has to be designed. 3/ The ceiling on breadth is now open. Shopify has always hired for T-shaped people: deep craft, broad curiosity. But X-shaped is where I think we're going: two axes instead of one. The vertical doesn't disappear. But the constraint isn't depth anymore. It's judgment: knowing what's worth building, and designing the right conditions to get there. The execution layer is getting a lot better, but the design layer is where the interesting work lives. Watch here: https://lnkd.in/gKRrXWsU
