This text was written at midnight, just as a ramble.

In the future, large-scale operations may no longer require large-scale hiring.

In the near future, if a company wants to expand its business, it may only spend money on equipment and tokens instead of hiring more employees; meanwhile, some super individuals may also leverage AI to directly manage production at the level of a company.

As assets can be managed automatically, large-scale production no longer has to rely on a massive workforce, decoupling production scale from headcount may become the starting point for the re-differentiation of social classes.

In the past two years, these changes have quietly begun to occur. Some super individuals have already completed early accumulation in silence and are investing their assets into further expansion; new production organizations and social classes are beginning to take shape: they can continually expand production without necessarily becoming employers to more people.

As for how this path will unfold, in this article, I will explore it together with you.

No need to hire so many people anymore.

Let us first establish a premise: AI will gradually take on most cognitive tasks, and robots will become more reliable. Therefore, for businesses, while production still requires continuous investment, there is no need to proportionally increase staff.

The initial changes may occur in newly added businesses. Some projects that originally required hiring can be completed by a small number of employees leveraging AI. When someone leaves, as long as the work can be taken over by the existing system, there’s no need to recruit new hires. At this stage, the company can continue to expand its business without necessarily increasing the number of employees.

To handle more work, the computing costs incurred by a few employees may far exceed their salaries. However, as long as the investment can yield sufficient returns, the company has reason to continue increasing its input. Salaries may represent only a small portion of the production resources mobilized by a person.

Gradually, those proficient in leveraging AI may contribute increasingly more actual business revenues. However, according to the conventional promotion pathways in companies, constrained by job levels, these super employees may not receive compensation that matches their workload. Companies may also not have new operational machines, budgets, or authority to delegate to them.

Thus, when a person's managerial capabilities exceed the business scale that the company can assign to them, the operational scope and decision-making efficiency of the company begin to limit their ability to increase output.

Full-time work is starting to become unviable.

Since the company has become a constraint for individuals, super individuals no longer need to stay with a single tree. They may begin to explore side jobs, generate influence, or serve multiple parties simultaneously, which may align better with personal development than going all-in on one job.

From the company's perspective, it naturally prefers to fully possess its employees. From a fairness standpoint, the company needs to pay this individual a significant premium to compensate for the losses of not engaging in side jobs. Yet undeniably, the mainstream pay structure does not support such a substantial increase, inevitably failing to cover this cost.

As a result, the collaborative relationship between companies and individuals begins to shift from fixed job hiring to specific business collaboration. Companies can retain asset ownership while granting the operational rights of certain businesses to small teams, allowing them to operate autonomously within agreed parameters and share profits based on operational outcomes.

Initially, such arrangements can occur within the company. However, when these "super individuals" are capable of independently reusing systems, they may start serving other entities, gradually transitioning to non-exclusive collaborations with their original firms.

This process does not require all companies to actively accept: Companies that cannot rearrange benefits may lose core producers. This part of the adjustment pressure will be conveyed through external competition.

Thus, companies can no longer assume that a single salary can monopolize an individual's entire managerial capability.

The "new generation."

These super individuals, who serve multiple companies and obtain excess returns, are not yet sufficient to form a new class. Their income still depends on their continuous work, and they stop earning when they stop working. However, a turning point will soon appear: Super individuals will begin to manage assets that can be sustained and obtain corresponding rights to profits.

The production assets they initially rely on may simply be a set of operational systems that they are authorized to reuse independently. In the internet industry, it could be a conversion system for "automated advertisement production and placement," where operators collaborate with brands for marketing management based on performance splits. The brands retain related business assets and grant partial operational rights to external operators, with both parties expanding their cooperation based on operational results. During this process, operational rights may transfer before ownership rights.

Entering the physical industry, operators may not necessarily need to purchase all production equipment upfront. For instance, a customized furniture operational system can be organized by an agent to collaborate with manufacturing factories based on customer orders, where the operator pays factories to lock in capacity and bears the profits and losses of this business.

Through such collaborations, operators can first generate operational profits, then invest these profits into their owned production systems, acquiring the assets needed for sustainable operation and retaining the profits generated by these assets, thus completing their original accumulation.

These individuals will become "the new generation." New in that operational capabilities themselves begin to become replicable productive resources. In the past, expanding investment required finding sufficiently reliable operators; if a mature system can manage multiple businesses simultaneously, new businesses would no longer need a complete management team. As systems can reliably undertake daily tasks, these individuals will gradually withdraw from specific execution while still retaining the rights to profits from assets. Initially, they accumulate assets based on their capabilities, and later, even without personally working, they can continue to gain profits based on ownership.

Old asset owners can likewise acquire automated operational capabilities to transform existing businesses. The new class structure may arise from the integration of some independent operators with existing asset holders, without necessitating the exit of old owners.

For super individuals, being ahead in operational capabilities does not necessarily guarantee long-term maintenance. Their opportunities are concentrated during several non-continuous windows: individuals are already able to operate independently with systems, while current enterprises have not yet universally completed corresponding transformations. They need to exchange their leading operational capabilities for sustained profit rights during this phase, using it to accumulate their assets, seizing this fleeting time window for identity transformation, transforming their operational advantage into assets and profit rights they own while it still exists.

If they fail to complete this step, even with exceptional capabilities, they may only be building productive assets for others.

The dissolution of companies.

We cannot conclude that "the future belongs to super individuals"; most of them may still fall along the way. However, one trend is likely to be confirmed: when individuals can independently complete business without the company, the company that originally had efficiencies will need to reassess its value.

At this moment, the company is no longer just an employer but essentially reverts to being a "stronghold for collectively owned assets, distributing profits, bearing risks, and making long-term commitments." In economic activities, certain assets may require multi-party investment and agree on profits and responsibilities during long-term cooperation; the company, as a legal entity, will continue to perform these functions without necessarily retaining the original employment structure.

Therefore, a company can retain asset ownership while delegating operations to external systems, representing a form of "company hollowing/channeling," without needing to establish a complete employment organization; operators do not necessarily have to own the assets.

Once a company has undergone hollowing, we will see the next spectacle: the number of companies increases while asset ownership concentrates, both happening simultaneously.

The surface manifestation is: in the future, many companies will have only a few employees, and a small number of individuals may concurrently hold interests in many companies; even if the number of operational entities in the market increases, the ultimate profits may still belong to the same group of owners.

Delving deeper into the reasons behind it, the super individuals who complete asset transformations in this wave will expand with almost zero management costs through an agentic approach, a speed far exceeding past merger rates: in the past, money could buy a business, but there would not necessarily be reliable people to run it; now, AI can act as a purchasable operational capability.

Of course, there will also be a division in the future (which may co-exist):

→ A: The new class can gain larger businesses here.

→ B: Large asset holders here control more businesses.

I believe the key point lies in whether the "new class can quickly acquire assets and afford the holding costs"; if critical production assets remain difficult to acquire, the newly added operational capabilities may mainly be used to enhance profits from existing assets.

For independent operators, the ability to retain their accumulated operational systems will also affect the sustainability of this independence. If changing partners means losing the original operating conditions, they will find it challenging to genuinely establish their productive assets.

In the end.

For some lucky individuals of this era, they see a new upward path; for companies that quickly adjust their focus around this timing, they can also enjoy considerable growth.

But there seem to be some clouds hanging over the building: the speed of changes dependent on human resources may outpace the new distribution adjustments.

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