we're not taking into consideration the new bottleneck: product growth. imo it's the growth/expansion of the product that creates new work and opportunities for more work. at the moment, product growth is human-driven--because it's a risk to take a product in any direction, and whoever makes it has to bear the full responsibility. ideas that cause product growth are still generated by humans (and rightly so), perhaps also augmented by ai.

there's also what the market is ready for. we've said that some products failed because they were ahead of their time. it's even more true now where the power of ai, ai productivity, etc could take the product far beyond the markets expectation. what does that lead to? the deliberate slow rate of growth means power/potentials have to be controlled somewhat. so even without hiring, if ai is adopted as a first-class tool within the organization, there will be surplus resources that need to be shed somehow.