Claude Code's Father's Latest Judgment: The Division of Labor in Teams in the AI Era Has Been Rewritten, and These "Five Types of People" Are the Most Sought-After

In the current era when Agent Coding is booming and reshaping the software industry, the industry seems to have gradually accepted the undeniable fact that the role of "engineers" is being changed. In fact, what may be changed is not just the position of "engineers." A more profound transformation is quietly taking place at the bottom of the team organizational structure...

Recently, Boris Cherny, the leader of the Anthropic Claude Code team, put forward a very interesting observation on X.

He pointed out that as functions such as engineering, product, design, and data science gradually merge, he has been thinking about what these roles will evolve into in the future. Taking the Claude Code team as an example, the traditional "job labels" within the team are being completely removed, and are being replaced by 5 types of "unbundled" new roles based on behavior patterns: The Prototyper, The Builder, The Sweeper, The Growth, The Maintainer.

The Prototyper: They are mainly responsible for proposing brand - new ideas and continuously generating a large number of creative ideas. Most of these ideas will not be launched in the end. That is to say, they pursue the quantity and subversiveness of ideas, rather than being entangled in whether each idea needs to be implemented.

The Builder: They are mainly responsible for quickly transforming scattered creative ideas or rough prototypes into products or highly available infrastructures that can be truly put into the production environment and face a large number of users. In other words, they are responsible for achieving the hard - core leap from 0.1 to 1.

The Sweeper: They are mainly responsible for "subtraction." The most terrible side effect in the AI era is the excessive expansion of code and functions. The responsibility of the sweeper is to clean up and streamline the user interface, simplify and restructure the chaotic code and system architecture, and remove unnecessary redundant functions in order to obtain high performance and high maintainability of the system.

The Growth: They take over a fully - formed product that has been built. When the product enters the market, the growth person is responsible for continuous iterative improvements in small steps. They need to care about: how to make the product closer to the market? How to make users more willing to stay? How to make a product go from "usable" to "needed." However, this role is not equivalent to the traditional growth operation. It is more like a combination of product, data, user understanding, and experimental abilities.

The Maintainer: They are responsible for the long - term operation of a mature system. They may not necessarily participate in the pursuit of dazzling new functions, but they focus on security, reliability, ultimate operating efficiency, and system elasticity to ensure that the service can remain stable under any extreme traffic.

It should be noted that these five types of roles do not correspond to traditional positions. That is to say, unlike in traditional organizational management, a person's role is not fixed in a job title.

Boris Cherny believes that many people may span two roles, and sometimes even three roles.

"I also noticed that these roles are not really bound to specific positions. For example, within Anthropic, some designers are more in line with the first type, some are more in line with the second type, and some are more in line with the third type. The same is true for engineers, product managers, and data scientists."

This means that in an efficient AI - empowered team, many members are no longer 'a single screw.' A designer can be a prototyper or a sweeper; an engineer can be a builder or a maintainer; a product manager can take on the role of a growth person or become a prototyper; a data scientist may not only do analysis but also directly participate in product growth and system optimization...

In other words, the way teams view people in the future may change. In the past, the main question might have been "What position are you in?" In the future, or even now, it is becoming "Which stage of the product life cycle can you promote?"

Boris Cherny analyzed and believes that the combination of these roles required for a healthy team specifically depends on the stage the product is in:

A brand - new product that has not yet found product - market fit needs people who are good at the first, second, and third types of roles;

A product that is growing and has already found product - market fit needs the second, third, and fourth types of roles, and some of the fifth - type roles;

A product that already has a strong product - market fit needs the third, fourth, and fifth types of roles, and retains some of the second - type roles.

"Maybe the product roles in the future will be more like this, rather than the positions divided by professional fields today."

As soon as this post was published, it immediately sparked a heated discussion among netizens, and most people expressed their agreement.

"This is very consistent with people's real work status. In some projects, I am indeed a combination of the first and third types, and in other projects, I am almost purely the fourth type. Job titles have never really summarized these."

A data scientist also "shared his experience" and said that as a data scientist, he found that he often did the work of a sweeper and also built products with a data - science taste. "So, does this mean I am a combination of the second and third types?"

The netizen Kun Chen@kunchenguid said that he deeply agreed. He said that he has never really liked the idea of defining "role prototypes" because people tend to think, "Ah, so this is me" after seeing them, and then stop reflecting on themselves. In reality, "a person's role often needs to change with the project."

He gave an example. For instance, when starting a new project, he is usually a prototyper and a builder. But soon, when the rough and imperfect parts start to become bottlenecks, he becomes a sweeper. As the project matures, he turns to being a growth person and a maintainer... "If I confine myself to a certain role, then I will have to let go when the project reaches a certain stage."

Another reality is that people are increasingly working on multiple projects simultaneously, which requires them to play different roles in different projects. "Classifying oneself into a certain fixed prototype often limits a person's ambition to expand."

So his suggestion is: stay flexible, focus on the most important things needed to achieve the goal, and worry less about role boundaries. Because these boundaries will only continue to become more blurred over time.

Boris Cherny said that this completely hit the nail on the head for him: "I completely agree. Roles often change continuously over time and with the project stage."

Some netizens also expressed their doubts. "Since the issue of AI writing code has basically been solved, why do we still need roles like builders and sweepers? Can't we just let Claude execute continuously in a loop?"

In response, Boris Cherny explained that Claude can help with these things to varying degrees, and it will continue to become more powerful over time. Currently, today's Claude is already quite good at undertaking the work of sweepers and builders.

So, what do you think of this change in job roles? Welcome to leave comments and communicate in the comment section!

Reference links:

https://x.com/bcherny/status/2071379474277613732

https://x.com/kunchenguid/status/2071382977628795289

This article is from the WeChat official account "Almost Human" (ID: almosthuman2014). The author is someone who pays attention to AI. It is published by 36Kr with authorization.