If you have been to Japan, you know what I mean. There is an incredible spirit of service in this country. They try to add excessive value even when you don't ask for it.
If you buy souvenirs, they are carefully wrapped one by one, When you receive a package, it is always handed from person to person. It is often said that this is 'Japaneseness'. But this is inextricably linked** to human exhaustion.
This way of working was originally based on the assumption of steady economic growth. If customers were happy, salaries would increase. If you work hard, you will be rewarded - this was the service model of the era. But now, after 30 years of economic stagnation, Only the 'value-adding culture' has been left behind. As a result, only unrewarded kindness remains in society.
And now that structure is returning to the IT industry. Both start-ups and SaaS are becoming more competitive, moving towards infinitely higher service levels. Every time profit margins fall, The competition for added value is "more personalised" and "more attentive".
The concept of the Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE), proposed by Palantir, is emblematic. They go into customer sites and customise AI to deliver results. It is high value-added, but at the same time super-hard work.
I myself did similar work and was surprised by the intensity of the work. Not just brains, It requires on-the-ground sense, physical strength and an unusual level of concentration. It was like being a 24-hour online consultant, engineer and therapist at the same time.
In a world supposedly made more efficient by AI, Only humans are expected to provide a higher intensity of service. This could be the AI version of the 'Japanese spirit of service'. Anticipate and provide everything before the customer wants it. But its future still has the same structure. -Excessive service will eventually destroy people.
That is why the future of service development is, designing 'how far not to go'. CTOs and CEOs will have an important job.
In an age when AI can optimise everything, What is needed is "the courage not to overdo it".