We're Not Cutting People Because of AI. We're Hunting for 10x and 100x Players.

29 Jun 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:02

In this segment, the speaker explains that the company’s staffing decisions are not driven by AI‑induced layoffs but by a strategic focus on acquiring ultra‑high‑impact talent. Citing examples like ClickUp and Cloudflare, he references Naval’s idea of engineers who can deliver 10x, 100x, or even 1,000x productivity. He describes using an AI assistant named Hermes to quantify his own speed gains, and shares a conversation with a recruiter about being willing to exceed budgeted salaries to secure such super‑performers. The overarching message is that as the organization scales, it will prioritize hiring and retaining people who can multiply the output of a role manyfold, rather than cutting staff because of automation.

Chapters

Because if he needs to, like ClickUp or Cloudflare, they need a cut, and they're talking about making way for 100x employees. Naval has talked about this concept of you're not even like a 10x engineer anymore. You're not even a 100x engineer. You could be a 1,000x engineer in this case. And when I look at the way I'm working now, just on the right side of my screen, I can't help myself, right? And I even asked my Hermes, I'm like, how much faster am I, right? And so I do think it's smart. Like even when I talk to our recruiter right now for people that are looking for, let's say, a lot of money that we have, maybe very over budget for what we budgeted for that role. I'm like, hey, if they're really good, I still want to have them on the bench because as we continue to scale with these things, we're going to need amazing people. And if these people can do, you know, 10x or 100x of the job, we want to pay these people. And that's what I think— this kind of goes back to what you were saying earlier where it's like, you know, are you trying to fire people because of AI? No, not necessarily. It's more so we want to find all the people, most like as many as we can, that can be 10x or 100x or so. That's what really it comes down to. It's not really like an AI or not AI thing.