Let’s start with this organization chart:
First off, it’s kind of a miracle that I have that document at all, since it’s a quarter century old. As you’ve probably deduced, it was the organization chart for my company Prophet, which I founded in 1992 and sold in 2005, which feels like about three or four hundred years ago. To put things in perspective, we actually still had relatively organic markets back then. That’s how long ago it was.
The reason I was thinking about it is because the world has changed so, so much with respect to what it takes to run a web content company like Prophet or, these days, Slope. The Slope of Hope is about as lean an organization as you can imagine.
I’m the writer. And the web developer. As well as the network engineer, the infrastructure manager, customer service, finance, sanitation services, and Chief Executive Officer. Added to which, let’s face it, Slope is a very complex and amazing site which never sleeps.
But it’s just me! Me! It all falls on my shoulders. Whereas back in the days of Prophet, among the twenty-one people there, I had…….
- One guy whose sole purpose in life was managing the network
- A trio of skilled engineers to deal with data
- Not one, but two, assistants
- A product manager
- A project manager
- Two people for quality assurance
………………ok, you get the point. I don’t need to name them all. Somehow, based on one website, I was able to provide employment for almost two dozen people. Even more amazing, the profits that Prophet generated were greater than OpenAI, SpaceX, and Anthropic combined!
It’s actually kind of stunning how much we got accomplished back in those days. Those were simpler, more innocent, and more decent times. And, yeah, just like I name everything Slope-this and Slope-that, I pulled the same stunt with Prophet.
What’s fascinating to me is how I’ve personally endured, on the one hand, the total collapse of the value of the information I am selling while, simultaneously, benefiting from the collapse of costs required to create and maintain something like this. Of course, this all ignores the fact that there are twenty good-paying jobs that don’t exist anymore.
I suppose, in a way, that is a microcosm of what Earth is going to deal with during the advent of AI, assuming it is as impactful as people anticipate. Of course, the stakes are a little higher than my beloved Prophet ever was.
