This article shares the author's personal thoughts and insights on how Anthropic operates and the future of software development they are shaping. The author argues that Anthropic runs differently from other companies, operating through a "Hive Mind" approach where every member is organically connected, producing innovation at tremendous speed -- much like an ant colony. He also warns that many companies will face major disruptions in 2026, and that surviving in the AI era requires adapting to these new ways of working.

1. Something Big Is Happening at Anthropic

Recently, something significant has been detected at Anthropic. It's as if a spaceship is about to launch, radiating enormous energy. According to the author's firsthand observations, getting into Anthropic is as difficult as making it into a professional football league. He mentions that Anthropic's employees are composed of even more elite talent than Google at its peak, emphasizing: "Every single Anthropic employee I've met was the best of the best of the best."

Over the past four months, the author had the opportunity to engage in deep conversations with about 40 people at Anthropic -- from co-founders to engineering, sales, and product teams. Though Anthropic is known for being hard to penetrate from the outside, the author was able to open doors through his unique rapport. Through these conversations, he developed a strong conviction that the future of software development will be built on the Hive Mind model.

2. The Happy Yet Melancholic Atmosphere at Anthropic

If you were to paint Anthropic's atmosphere like an impressionist painting, it would be a coexistence of vibrant happiness and subtle melancholy. There's the same thrilling electricity the author felt at early Amazon, but also a solemn sense of shouldering some major civilizational responsibility.

"Every single person and team at Anthropic, without exception, has this sweet and sad, transcendently flavored feel. They have a distinct sense of people who are charged with midwifing something of civilization-level importance, and they are excited and yet somber, with an elvish gravity of an old world that is passing."

The author says Anthropic employees genuinely feel sorry for other companies because many aren't taking this critical moment seriously enough. 2026 will shake many companies to their foundations, yet most don't see it coming. Anthropic is like someone warning of an incoming tsunami in a village that hasn't seen one in a century.

3. A Hive Mind Run on 'Vibes'

Unlike other large companies, Anthropic appears to operate in a remarkably chaotic fashion. Normally, as companies scale up, they become specialized and systematized -- but Anthropic hasn't gone through that "boring" phase yet. While their production systems are maintained by world-class SREs, the real engine of the company is Claude. Claude evolves in various forms, constantly generating new work, and that is what keeps this great hive happy.

The author describes Anthropic as being entirely run on 'Vibes.' While externally-facing departments like production, GTM, and product marketing follow somewhat "normal" processes, the core of the company is in a golden age -- active, dynamic, and extraordinarily vibrant.

Employees themselves describe the company as a 'hive mind run on vibes,' suggesting this is not just the author's impression but an intentional direction set by leadership. If anyone tries to disrupt this hive mind balance, they quietly get pushed to the margins. The author assesses that while this approach is delicate and may have limits to scaling, it has been working well so far.

4. How Golden Ages End

Here the author discusses a related but distinct theme illuminated by Anthropic: the beginning and end of golden ages.

• A golden age is a period of intense innovation, new category creation, rapid pace, and high productivity lasting several years. During this time, the industry's best talent gathers quickly. Anthropic is going through exactly such a period right now.

The author experienced Amazon's golden age (through 2005) and Google's golden age (until April 2011) firsthand. After 2011, Google's organization became rigid, cross-departmental collaboration broke down, and innovation momentum was lost. Amazon, in contrast, continued innovating. Microsoft also had a golden age in the early 2000s, exploring the future of software development around C#/.NET.

The author long wondered why Google's golden age ended, and found his answer by observing Anthropic today.

• The end of Google's golden age: Google's original CEO Eric Schmidt's motto was "Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom," encouraging innovation through many experiments. But when Larry Page took over as CEO in April 2011, the motto changed to "More Wood Behind Fewer Arrows." He determined that the freewheeling 20% projects weren't producing results, imposed strict funding constraints, and the 20% projects gradually disappeared. From that point, the company became "political" and lost its innovative drive.

The author says eliminating 20% projects wasn't the direct cause -- Amazon never had them and innovated far longer. What was the real difference?

A colleague named Jakob Gabrielson provided the clue. When people at Google often fought over projects, Jakob said that never happened at Amazon, adding:

"Here, everyone is always slightly overstaffed with work."

From this, the author identifies the essence of a golden age:

• During a golden age, there is more work than people.
• When the golden age ends, there are more people than work.

At Anthropic, they are right in the middle of a golden age. There is far more work than people can handle, in almost every domain. So while things are chaotic and growing pains are real, there's no reason to fight over work -- infinite work exists. Every employee gets the chance to pursue their ideas, and their value is judged by the hive mind.

5. A Small-Scale Hive Mind: The SageOx Story

Beyond Anthropic, the author offers another example confirming that the 'hive mind' model will be the successful company operating model of the future: the three-person startup SageOx.

SageOx, run by the author's friends Ajit, Ryan, and Milkana, operates from an apartment about a mile from the author's home, alternating between coding and sleeping for weeks. They are level 7-8 developers in the author's developer evolution model. Most Anthropic engineers are at a similar level.

SageOx maintains complete transparency because everything moves too fast -- an external contributor acting on 2-hour-old information had already wasted time. So they share all their work processes in real time, like the whole team is pair programming. All conversations are recorded, transcripts are automatically uploaded and version-controlled. The complete record of every human and agent action is permanently preserved.

However, most developers would feel uncomfortable having all their work publicly visible, as it implies a death of the ego -- all mistakes, wrong turns, and work pace exposed to everyone. But in this new world, you simply need to be a happy worker bee.

The author emphasizes that the only way to increase a product's chances of success in the new world is to build it for yourself -- build something you love so much that you're convinced "everyone else should work this way too."