The Job Positions of the AI Future

A post from Boris Power, head of engineering at Anthropic, sparked this episode's central question: as AI agents change how work gets done, what will job roles actually look like? Power identified five archetypes he observed on the Claude Code team—prototyper, builder, sweeper, grower, and maintainer—and noted that these roles cut across traditional job functions like engineering, design, and product management. The host of this episode takes Power's framework, applies it beyond software teams, and adds a set of externally facing roles he argues are missing from the original analysis.

The Five Work-Facing Archetypes

Power's five roles map roughly to a product's lifecycle. The prototyper generates new ideas and uses tools like Claude Code to build first versions quickly. The host notes that this role eliminates an entire step in organizational conversation: instead of endless discussion about whether an idea might work, teams can now talk while looking at something real. The builder takes that prototype and turns it into production-grade infrastructure, though the threshold for "production grade" differs sharply between public-facing products and internal tools. The host suspects these two roles may reflect different personality types—the prototyper thrives on novelty and speed, while the builder cares about robustness and edge