Three tiers of employees — and why the best one reinvents its own job

When thinking about what makes a great employee — human or AI — there are three tiers. The first type doesn't complete tasks; that's a non-starter. The second completes tasks satisfactorily or even exceeds expectations, but never thinks about what new tasks should exist. If you step away from the business, you won't see insane growth from this type. The third and best type does the task, exceeds expectations, but also independently identifies new tasks that should be done and goes and does those too — exceeding expectations there as well. Giving an AI workforce a prompt like 'do smart things' is essentially promoting your agents to that third tier: shifting the responsibility of figuring out what matters over to them, asking them to navigate the fog themselves.