Unobvious skills

Such a good internal memo from Shopify - apparently it was leaked, but now shared openly by Shopify’s CEO.

Great points worth reiterating and HEEDING not just for employees of Shopify but just knowledge workers in general, in the era of AI:

1. About learning how to use AI –

“…using AI well is a skill that needs to be carefully learned by… using it a lot. It’s just too unlike everything else.”

“Learning to use AI well is an unobvious skill. My sense is that a lot of people give up after writing a prompt and not getting the ideal thing back immediately. Learning to prompt and load context is important…”

Love the concept of “unobvious skill”. So true. Because everyone thinks just because they can type in English, they know how to use AI. That couldn’t be further from the truth. That’s in fact akin to the curse and dangers of a little knowledge. Most of the AI haters I see on X are veteran technologists and developers who (thinks) they know it all, tried ChatGPT-3 once, decided it hallucinates too much, and then never tried it again, never bothered to update their knowledge, keep up with the progress. Of all people, they should know tech moves fast. Yet, all too human to fall prey to ego bias.

2. About AI being the 10x ‘colleague’ –

“We also learned that, as opposed to most tools, AI acts as a multiplier. We are all lucky to work with some amazing colleagues, the kind who contribute 10X… for the first time, we see the tools become 10X themselves. I’ve seen many of these people approach implausible tasks, ones we wouldn’t even have chosen to tackle before, with reflexive and brilliant usage of AI to get 100X the work done.”

This definitely resonated with my experience using AI. Just a few years ago, the scenario of me working as a frontend dev, coding in a language that I’m not familiar with, is frankly implausible. Yet here I am, all thanks to the 10x tool of Claude.ai.

3. You’re stagnating if you don’t learn it –

“Frankly, I don’t think it’s feasible to opt out of learning the skill of applying AI in your craft; you are welcome to try, but I want to be honest I cannot see this working out today, and definitely not tomorrow. Stagnation is almost certain, and stagnation is slow-motion failure. If you’re not climbing, you’re sliding.”

I use AI everyday and feel pretty updated on the latest AI news, but even I feel I’m sliding and stagnating at my level of usage. Hard to imagine being in an industry where if you disappear for a few months you’re outdated already. Yet, we’re all so early.

4. AI before headcount –

“Before asking for more Headcount and resources, teams must demonstrate why they cannot get what they want done using AI. What would this area look like if autonomous AI agents were already part of the team?”

I don’t work in big corporations so this is less relevant, but love how Shopify is so ready to dig into AI agents. I think the future workplace will be one where you work alongside AI, like they are colleagues, with personality. Wild to think that.