随着一些公司竞相利用人工智能来缩减团队规模，一位初创公司创始人却反其道而行之，计划招聘更多员工。客服人工智能初创公司 Chatbase 的创始人亚瑟·埃尔赛德（Yasser Elsaid）表示，该公司目前拥有 40 名员工，并计划在未来六个月内将团队规模扩大一倍。
As some companies race to use AI to shrink their teams, one startup founder is going against the grain by planning to hire more people. Yasser Elsaid, the founder of customer-service AI startup Chatbase, said the company now has 40 employees and plans to double its team over the next six months.
埃尔赛德本月在社交平台 X 上的一篇帖子中写道：“在人工智能时代，我可能在打造精简团队这件事上犯了错。”埃尔赛德此前曾青睐较小的团队。他在 1 月份的一篇 LinkedIn 帖子中表示，总部位于旧金山的初创公司 Chatbase 允许企业为客户服务和支持构建人工智能代理，在成立头三年的大部分时间里，其全职员工一直保持在 17 人，其中大多数新员工都是工程人员。
"I might have been wrong about building with a lean team in the age of AI," Elsaid wrote in a post on X this month. Elsaid previously embraced smaller teams. In a LinkedIn post in January, he said Chatbase, a San Francisco-based startup that lets companies build AI agents for customer service and support, had stayed at 17 full-time employees for much of its first three years, with most hires in engineering.
然而，在发给《商业内幕》网站的评论中，埃尔赛德表示，他现在认为自己对精简团队的押注“大错特错”。他说：“我认为，对于创始人来说，活在一个尚未成型的未来是一个巨大的错误。”
However, in comments sent to Business Insider, Elsaid said that he now considers his bet on lean teams "pretty wrong." "I think it's a big mistake for founders to live in a future that doesn't exist yet," he said.
埃尔赛德表示，更具能力的编程模型（包括 Anthropic 最新的 Claude 模型 Opus 5.5）最初让他认为 Chatbase 可以用更少的人应付。但埃尔赛德表示，这一结论只有在初创公司保持与人工智能出现之前相同的路线图的情况下才成立。他没有接受代码已经变成一种商品的现实，而是决定将 Chatbase 的目标定得更高。
Elsaid said that more capable coding models, including Anthropic's latest Claude model Opus 5.5, initially made him think Chatbase could get by with fewer people. But Elsaid said that this conclusion only holds if a startup keeps the same roadmap it had before AI. Rather than accept that code had become a commodity, he decided Chatbase should set its sights higher.
更强大的编码模型，包括 Anthropic 最新的 Claude 模型 Opus 5.5，最初让他认为 Chatbase 仅凭较少的人手就能过关。但他表示，只有当一家初创公司保持与人工智能出现之前相同的路线图时，这个结论才成立。他没有接受代码已经成为商品的现实，而是决定让 Chatbase 将目光放得更高。
"If building is easier, build harder things," he said. "Most moats in software come from someone doing something hard for longer, and being right. That hasn't gone away." That view runs counter to a broader push toward AI-powered lean teams.
他说：“如果构建变得更容易，那就去构建更难的东西。软件中的大多数护城河都来自于某人长期做困难的事情并坚持正确。这一点并没有消失。”
Block cut nearly half its workforce in February, with CEO Jack Dorsey saying AI and "smaller and flatter teams" were changing how companies are built.
这种观点与向人工智能驱动的精简团队迈进的更广泛趋势背道而驰。Block 在 2 月份裁员近半，首席执行官杰克·多尔西（Jack Dorsey）表示，人工智能以及“更小、更扁平的团队”正在改变公司的构建方式。与此同时，Coinbase 在 5 月份裁员 14%，理由是工程师有能力在几天内交付过去需要团队数周才能完成的工作；该公司目前正在测试更小的人工智能原生小组和“单人团队”。
Coinbase, meanwhile, cut 14% of staff in May, citing engineers' ability to ship in days what once took teams weeks; it is now testing smaller AI-native pods and "one person teams." The same logic has powered the "tiny teams" startup trend: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has predicted a one-person billion-dollar company, while Cursor grew from $1 million to $100 million in annual recurring revenue in under a year with fewer than 50 employees, according to private market research platform Sacra.
同样的逻辑也推动了“微型团队”初创公司的潮流：根据私募市场研究平台 Sacra 的数据，OpenAI 首席执行官萨姆·奥尔特曼（Sam Altman）曾预测会出现市值达 10 亿美元的单人公司，而 Cursor 在不到一年的时间里，以不到 50 人的员工规模，将年经常性收入从 100 万美元增长到了 1 亿美元。
But Elsaid said the best models are not yet independent enough to replace people. They still need humans to decide what to build, give them direction, and make sure the result works for customers, he said.
但埃尔赛德表示，最好的模型还不够独立，无法取代人类。他说，它们仍然需要人类来决定构建什么、为它们提供方向，并确保结果对客户有用。
"Code is largely right or wrong: it does what you want or it doesn't," Elsaid said. "But what to build, how it should work and what the experience should feel like is what makes your product different."
埃尔赛德说：“代码大体上非对即错：它要么按你的意愿行事，要么不按。但构建什么、它应该如何运作以及体验应该是什么感觉，才是让你的产品与众不同的地方。”
He estimated that about 90% of Chatbase engineers' work is now product work: researching, talking to customers, forming an opinion, and turning that into a specification an agent can code.
他估计，Chatbase 工程师目前大约 90% 的工作都是产品工作：研究、与客户交流、形成观点，并将其转化为代理可以编写代码的规范。他说，其余工作则需要能够理解代码并确保不同的人工智能代理不会互相冲突的工程师。
The rest requires engineers who can understand the code and make sure different AI agents are not working against each other, he said. Chatbase is also hiring customer-facing staff, particularly in sales and customer success, he said, because enterprise customers still need to be heard and persuaded.
他说，Chatbase 还在招聘面向客户的员工，特别是在销售和客户成功部门，因为企业客户仍然需要被倾听和说服。他补充说，这些模型“极其聪明且有能力，但并不完全独立”。
The models are "extremely smart and capable, but not fully independent," he added.
“也许情况会改变，有一天你在建造过程中根本不需要人类。但那不是今天。”
"Maybe that changes and one day you won't need humans in the building process at all. But that isn't today."