Claim
The standard management orthodoxy is "raise the floor", bring the bottom performers up. AI tools invert this: top performers benefit disproportionately, the spread widens, and management leverage now comes from investing in the top, not the floor. At OpenAI, heavy Codex users open 70% more PRs and the gap is widening.
Mechanism
AI tools amplify whatever judgment, taste, and ambition the user brings. A top performer with Codex can run 10–20 agent threads in parallel; a bottom performer with the same tool struggles to ship a single one because they don't know what to ask. The tool isn't the differentiator; the user's pre-existing skill is. As tools improve, the multiplier widens.
Conditions
Holds when:
- The team has visible top performers whose work pulls everyone forward.
- The org culture can stomach widening pay or recognition gaps.
Fails when:
- The org needs a "raise the floor" approach for compliance, safety, or DEI reasons.
- The "top performers" are politically defined, not output-defined. Investing there reinforces the wrong selection.
Evidence
"Codex really empowers top performers to be a lot more productive... you see a broader spread in team productivity."
Heavy Codex users at OpenAI open 70% more PRs than average users. The spread is widening with each model release.
"Spend more time with top performers, not bottom performers."
· Sherwin Wu on Lenny's Podcast, 2026-04-28
Signals
- Output metrics published openly so the spread is visible.
- Top performers report leverage, not exhaustion. (If they're burning out, the leverage is fake.)
- Bottom-performer support is reframed as upskilling toward the top, not as floor-raising.
Counter-evidence
Asha Sharma's "polymath builder" thesis and Anton Osika's generalist hiring both argue for distributed capability across the team rather than concentration in top performers. The two views can coexist: hire generalists with depth, then accept that some of those generalists will compound faster than others. Don't artificially flatten the spread.
Cross-references
- Hire engineers with product taste rather than adding more PMs, the staffing precondition