The second archetype
Issue 242: Expanding your talent as the stack collapses
Former Adobe Chief Strategy Officer and A24 partner Scott Belsky recently wrote about the talent stack collapsing. Traditional career ladders, carefully stacked layers of specialization, are flattening, especially this decade. Belsky isn't the only one seeing what's happening to crafts before our eyes. Replit CEO Amjad Masad puts it plainly: those in the murky middle between deep specialists and product-centric generalists risk getting squeezed. In a world moving faster and leaner, standing still isn’t safe. There are two paths: be an industry specialist in something or expand your range as a generalist.
To thrive as the latter, you'll should invest a second archetype: a complementary skillset or role that expands your creative range and makes you harder to replace. Whether you’re a designer, engineer, or marketer, the ability to augment your core craft with a new mode of augmenting yourself.
The good news is the ability to expand your range is more accessible and approachable than ever through human augmentation—a I learned as a 90s kid from watching the watching the animated television show Exosquad. The premise of the show (aside from selling toys) centered around human pilots who donned exosuits—mechanical extensions that amplified their abilities and adapted them to new challenges.
Sentient tools like LLMs and AI are our exosuits for knowledge and creation. As James Buckhouse once elegantly called it, Augmented Imagination. In today’s rapidly evolving tech landscape, professionals must augment their core skills to survive or thrive. Last year in Berlin, I gave a talk about Design & (Blank) where I hypothesize the role of design will be expansive and complementary as a path. Let's at the factors ahead of us that encourages expanding our range quicker.
“More with less” is the new norm
Regardless of how you feel about capitalism, the majority of us have professions built around the constructs of it. It's not surprising that the trend now is to do more with less. Others have found exits by starting their own independent companies or living on the retirement farm, but for those still here, a second archetype can make you be more indispensable; so much range they'll keep you around.
The new world defaults togeneralists
Though specialists remain important in the AI-first thinking world, the majority of roles favor generalists who can play multiple roles while orchestrating their team of AI Agents. If you think this sentiment is only for early stage startups, think again. Now, more than ever, large enterprise companies are thinking about how to operate leaner like a startup since the entire DNA of SaaS is being disrupted. The Fortune 500 may look more like the Fortune 5 million of small teams by the end of the decade.
As Masad said in an interview, specialists will remain on the deep expertise such as infrastructure, algorithms, security, icon design, and high expertise roles. For the rest of us, this means having a strategy to artifact mindset in our crafts. This may be a product-oriented engineer, a marketing-oriented product manager, or engineering-oriented designer.
Your second archetype is augmented with AI
Historically the time you'd need to invest in a second archetype would take years to develop basic skills. With access to knowledge and actions of LLMs, the basics are available immediately.
To be abundantly clear, this doesn't mean you'll be an expert and you'll likely create a lot of slop. However, you now have the exosuit to create it and improve. The vibe coders who learn from thousands of iterations will survive and thrive.
Exploring your complementary archetypes
In art, a color wheel is a tool that guides you in your color selection. There is a concept of complementary colors, which warm/cool contrast increases the vibrance of the pairing—yellow and purple is an example. I created a career wheel to explore what might be complementary roles to explore as a second archetype.
I devised two piece of criteria in making this. The first is complementary archetypes needs to have a foundational relation to your primary archetype; making it more frictionless to ramp up. The complementary archetype has to also expand the range of your capability. For example, a Researcher archetype is too close in proximity to design, therefore is not complementary.
My huntch is the talent stack will collapse naturally on the complementary areas of the career wheel. The four primary orgs (General Administration, Sales and Marketing, Ops, and R&D)1 will blend their groups and look across the wheel for complementary skill mapping.
For R&D, let's look at Design as a primary archetype and explore what complementary archetypes might be available. One could apply a secondary archetype in these areas that are collapsing:
Demonstration: Sales, Dev Rel, Marketing
Development: Engineering, Product
Distribution: Marketing, Ops
A recent example of Design and Demonstration I've seen recently is from Joel Lewinstein at Anthropic; demo designer.
My interpretation of this role is the amalgam of a Designer Advocate at Figma and Developer Relations at Replit; someone who is able to show what is possible in an AI-native way. This is one example of many where a designer can cross the career wheel and try new things. You don't need Lewinstein to open the role and start doing it.
Archetype discovery
The most frictionless way to start exploring other archetypes is through conversations and pairing. Find a colleague in the room (or Zoom) who is an expert in your complementary archetype and find a mutual value exchange of time instead of, "picking their brain." Their time may be exchanged with something you can help them with design or make an internal connection that helps.
Take your notes from the conversation and begin conducting desk research with AI. Again, AI won't make you become that expert but you can get to a level of depth in understanding other crafts with AI to augment your ability more than ever. Put on the Exo-squad suit and start building.
Recap
AI is your exosuit. Put it on and understand how to pilot the copilot and use it to augment your second archetype
Learn the craft of other archetypes through coworkers and your network
Having a second archetype builds empathy and better collaboration regardless of market landscape
As baseline skills become automated with AI, we likely need a third or fourth archetype to explore. It's a good exercise regardless to expand your range. Whether it's Design & (Blank) or seeking the complementary archetype on the career wheel, expand your talent stack as it inevitably collapses. It may be what becomes the bridge to the new way of working.
Hyperlinks + notes
A collection of references for this post, updates, and weekly reads.
The monestary for startup founders → Found reading
Why junior designers struggle to find their footing by
→ Mentorship is broken—a reminder to mentor like a Sith
Jobs
Loom is hiring a Lead Product Designer, Growth
Included Health is hiring a Director of Product Design, Growth & Engagement → You get to work with Preethi Raju
Source is hiring a Founding Product Designer
Atlassian is hiring a UX Researcher, 2025/2026 Intern Australia & New Zealand
Daydream is hiring a Chief of Staff to the CEO
Org structures vary, but this is a common shape
Thanks for the mention! ✨
This is brilliant - one, made me miss color wheels, and two, now I need to make a ‘pretty’ version of this to play wirh 😆