I’ve been thinking about this article from Ajey Gore (former Gojek CTO). His argument (I think): An org is why, what, and how. ‘Why’ defines the strategy. ‘What’ defines the execution of the strategy. ‘How’ is simply translating the ‘what’ into the finished artifacts. AI shrinks the How, so the shape of the organization changes. Fatter at the top, with a wide agent layer in the new basement.

I nodded sagely at the time, but something about this feels off and I’ve been coming back to it. I think I can articulate what now.

I think translation is being used interchangeably with transliteration. It’s not the same. We have a zillion translations of the Tao. There isn’t one right translation, and AI doesn’t seem particularly able to do a better (or even equally good) job.

That’s why it feels off when I try to map these abstract categories to actual work. Most tasks and roles are a mix of why, what, and how. A spec would be transliterated to a feature only if it was a complete definition to one. It has to be translated instead, and that involves inferring micro objectives from larger ones (why), filling the blanks for unspecified implementation detail (what), and then implementing it (how).

I buy that the proportion of types of work will change, that the nature of roles will, that the architecture of the org will follow. Still not sure what that new architecture is though.