Jason Wei: in AI, 'who you know' now matters nearly as much as 'what you can do'
_jasonwei · x · 2026-11-12
Former OpenAI/Google researcher Jason Wei argues AI is shifting from merit-by-skill toward merit-by-connections: he estimates success was 75% skills / 25% connections five years ago, now 55% / 45%. Three technical drivers: (1) coding agents commoditized research execution, eroding the outwork-your-peers edge; (2) scaling means single RL runs need hundreds–thousands of GPUs, so access to resources — governed by reputation and relationships — determines outcomes; (3) closed research killed observability, forcing reliance on indirect signals like endorsements. Skills still matter, but connections' weight keeps rising.
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