What AI Is Teaching Us About Management

This week, the Every team is gathering for Think Week, our twice-yearly meeting to dream up what’s next for Every and our readers. We’re capping it off with our first conference, Thesis: 2027. Register for the livestream to watch all 27 sessions for free.

While we’re together, we’re revisiting some of our favorite pieces on working with agents. First up, head of evals Mike Taylor’s piece from January on managing agents like you’d manage people.–Kaushik Viswanath

Every time you rewrite a prompt because Claude misunderstood you, you’re learning to be a better manager.

I know this because I’ve lived it from both sides. Building a 50-person marketing agency taught me more about working with AI than engineering ever did: The techniques that make AI agents reliable—clear direction, sufficient context, well-defined tasks—are identical to the techniques that make human teams effective.

But AI lets you practice without consequences. An agent won’t get annoyed if you ask it to do the same task 15 times. It won’t hold a grudge when you give unclear instructions. It won’t gossip about how disorganized you are, or get upset when things don’t work out.

The CTO of Moondream captured this dynamic in a recent tweet: