Are you an NPC?

"Eventually, the only thing left for humans is agency."

– Akshay Kothari, Notion Co-Founder

I spent most of last weekend hanging out with my lacrosse teammates, most of them Gen Z or whatever comes after that. Phrases like "digga was ist das für ein Bot" (= "dude this guy is such a bot") or "der ist übelst der NPC" (= "he's such an NPC", NPC referring to "non-player character" from computer games) are thrown around regularly.

I don't think they realize it, but what they're implying with these statements (or, better: insults) is a lack of agency.

The people they're insulting are non-player characters. They do what the script tells them to; not what they believe they should do.

Ever since George Mack released his seminal essay on High Agency, the idea has been dripping everywhere. And, apparently, also made it into the Gen Z idea space – somewhere between Frutanovelas and Brawl Stars.

A new class of "high agency" people is emerging.

AI makes putting ideas into practice easier; but it still needs humans to provide said ideas.

Otherwise, it runs into problems, ranging from the catastrophic Claude Vending Machine experiment (that eventually worked) to not being able to beat Pokémon Red on a GameBoy emulator (something most 8-year-olds are able to; source: my 8-year-old self).

What the guys on the team don't realize yet: they're onto something.

In today's world, having agency vs. being an NPC will be the dividing line in both work and life.

Let's take a look.

The Future of Jobs in a High Agency World

One Generalyst candidate blew my mind recently. From a small town in Italy. Moved to Berlin. Excellent profile, but in a non-obvious way (paper published in major computer science journal, wrote books at 15, ...). Struggled to find a job.

So he took matters into his own hands, built live prototypes and case studies for a few companies he wanted to work with, and asked me to share it with them.

Result: he now has interviews with every single one.

It worked because he fits one of the four archetypes of work that will exist in the future, according to Yoni Rechtman. This candidate is a "slop cannon", in the most positive sense.

I'll just quote Yoni here:

"There's a very real possibility that the only jobs in tech companies are going to be:

1. product eng/vibe coder/PM/slop cannon: self explanatory. This is the high velocity, high tool use generalist. they are obviously not restricted to product and eng roles. Anyone can be commercial and product minded.
2. SREs/infra/security/systems: we're going to be producing so much STUFF across every org that there's going to need to be really really good people stitching it together, making it stable, secure, and robust.
3. Adults: sometimes you need a grown up in the room to just say "hey, come on." They are effectively a much needed governor on an otherwise accelerating organization. You will find them across roles but there are obvious places like legal and finance where you're NGMI without an adult in charge.
4. Hot people: You will find hot people in roles ranging from sales, to people, to CX. There will always be an important place for those who present an easy UX to the world and are pleasant to be around. Remember, there are many ways to be hot."

Those aren't job descriptions, but archetypes. You'll find them across jobs:

1. Slop Cannons can be software developers, marketers, GTM engineers, or anything in between.
2. Infrastructure people can be QA, DevOps, but also copy editors and RevOps.
3. Adults are everywhere, not just in legal and finance; Product Managers are a good position for them, and the CEO should be an adult too.
4. Hot people you'll find in sales, customer success, talent acquisition, but also in engineering – and more often than not, in leadership.

What all of them have in common: they're generalists. Good at several things, not just one.

This is exactly what I'm observing in the job market right now:

• Salespeople are shipping (one of my best friends – an enterprise AE at HubSpot – is even building his own tools now)
• Engineers are obsessed with customer value (forward deployed engineers are all the rage right now)

And companies want this: as Rechtman writes, they want "people who are comfortable using tools AND thinking about product AND thinking about customers".

You can use this to increase your value on the labour market:

1. Whatever your role, master the AI tools of your industry
2. If you're an engineer, learn how to talk to customers
3. If you're a commercial hire, learn how to build and ship small products

Like Rechtman, I believe that most early-stage startups will hire teams of multi-hyphenate, commercial generalists. The high-agency people we talked about earlier who can take an idea, build it, and sell it.

But there's a harder questions besides which archetype you are.

It's what you do with all that agency once you have it.

Designing Your Life in a High Agency World

In 2014, I read the "Four-Hour Workweek" and subsequently became obsessed with personal productivity (so much, in fact, that I turned my knowledge about it into an online course).

I got really good at it. Locked in for deep work every morning. Optimized my time, not a single free minute.

I was being productive for the sake of ... being productive.

The same is true for agency.

In a way, I've used "agency" to buy more agency for most of my career.

Start a business → make lots of money → financial freedom → … then what?

Using agency to get more agency isn't the point.

The point is to figure out what lifestyle you wanna live, and to do what it takes to live that lifestyle.

I don't care about being giga wealthy. So I don't need to raise a crazy VC fund, join a hot startup, or go into investment banking just for the money.

What I do care about:

• Lifting weights around lunch time
• Doing intellectually challenging things
• Writing every single day
• Spending time with the people that matter to me
• Playing sports, lots of them
• Building things I wish existed (like Generalyst, or my future gym)
• Helping others unlock their potential
• Going down random rabbit holes (did you know, for example, that damage caused by corrosion is equal to 3.4% of worldwide GDP every year??)

This list will look different for everybody. And that's beautiful: individual agency, paired with the right skillset, will allow anyone to live the lifestyle they want.

But there's one thing AI cannot do: tell you which lifestyle is right for you.

If you can answer that question, chances are my Gen Z lacrosse friends wouldn't refer to you as "bot" or "NPC".

Be the main character in your life.