The Head Of Claude Code Says Your Startup Needs These 5 Employee Archetypes

This article, written by Ashley Couto, was originally published on Inc.com.

Boris Cherny, the head of Claude Code at Anthropic, just handed founders a new way to think about hiring in an X post.

His argument: traditional job titles are dying. Engineering, product, design, and data science are melting into one blurry role. So he looked at his own team and broke it into five archetypes instead. If you’re building a startup right now, this is the org chart to steal.

The Prototyper

In Cherny’s words, this is someone who “comes up with brand new ideas; churns out many ideas, most of which don’t ship.”

Every early-stage startup needs one. You want someone comfortable throwing away nine ideas to find the tenth one that works. The key will be reigning in this person’s creative ambition and working with your leadership team to select which one of the ten ideas actually makes sense to pursue.

The Builder

Cherny’s definition of a builder is someone who “quickly turns a prototype/idea into production-grade product/infra.”

Without a builder, your prototyper’s best ideas stay sketches forever. This is the person who makes things real. And this doesn’t just apply to software a a service (SaaS). Every business needs someone who can ship quickly.

The Sweeper

He describes this role as someone who “cleans up the UI, simplifies the code and system, unships, optimizes performance.”

In plain terms, this person kills bad ideas as fast as they build good ones. Skip this hire too long, and your product turns into a mess nobody wants to touch. They’re the human touch that stops sloppy code or a lackluster straight-out-of-Claude page from hitting your customer.

The Grower

This is someone who, in Cherny’s words, “takes a product that has been built and iterates on it to improve product-market fit.”

Growers live in the data. Their job is to turn casual interest into something people can’t stop using. They will need to be in the weeds talking to customers, reviewing heatmaps, looking at customer service tickets for sentiment about features, and anything else that falls under the realm of data.

The Maintainer

Cherny calls this someone who “owns a mature system to make it secure, reliable, fast, and efficient as it scales.”

Nobody notices a good maintainer. You’ll notice fast when you don’t have one. This person takes on all the unsexy work that often doesn’t get enough credit and recognition. Make sure this person knows how valued they are.

Which Types Does Your Startup Need Right Now?

Cherny says that if you haven’t found product-market fit yet, you need prototypers, builders and sweepers. Nothing else yet, according to his framework.

If you’re growing and have found some level of fit, it’s time to add growers to the mix. Start looking for a maintainer too, but on a fractional, freelance, or part-time basis.

If you already have strong product-market fit, shift toward sweepers, growers, and maintainers. Keep a little bit of builder around, just not as much.

The important thing to remember is that these five types have nothing to do with job function. Some designers act like prototypers. Some engineers act like sweepers.

Anthropic itself gives everyone the same job title, member of technical staff, on the theory that everyone should be able to do a bit of everything—product, design, infrastructure, research. Job history doesn’t predict which of these five types someone actually is.

If you’re hiring right now, stop asking whether you need an engineer or a designer. Start asking which of these five types your product needs at its current stage, then go find that person.