FDE Is The Future

A lot of people have already noticed something happening abroad. OpenAI, Anthropic, these companies aren't just selling models or APIs anymore. They started sending people into enterprises, sitting right next to the client, asking how they work each day, how their systems run, what their industry jargon means, and then using AI to rebuild those workflows from the ground up. That's FDE: Forward Deployed Engineer.

Inside China, I think there's a better name for the role: AI BP, AI Business Partner.

They're not traditional consultants. They don't hand you a PPT or a proposal. They sure as hell don't hand you some shitty SaaS account. It's one person with a laptop, on-site at the company, working through the workflow line by line with the boss and the employees, and then turning it into an AI-based solution that actually runs.

We live in a bubble most of the time. We assume everyone is already using AI. We assume everyone uses Claude Code, vibe codes, has AI write code, build spreadsheets, organize documents, run automations.

Walk through traditional industries in Shenzhen for a day and you'll see it's nothing like that.

A lot of bosses haven't even used DouBao. A while back I set up DouBao for a boss and he was overjoyed. To us this is a completely ordinary thing. To him it was like a door to a new world opened up, and he wanted to take us out for Moutai. The skills that are completely mundane inside the AI bubble are still rare and valuable in traditional industries.

Another time I was talking to a boss and showing him a product I'd built. He said, you can use AI to write code? I said of course, obviously, everyone uses AI to write code now. But it suddenly hit me: in his entire circle, there might not be a single person who knows how to use AI to write code. He immediately grabbed my hand and said, you have to come help us cut costs and boost efficiency.

Over the next two years, everyone knows a huge chunk of jobs will be replaced by AI. But how does that replacement actually happen?

Is it the bosses who haven't even touched DouBao suddenly learning to vibe code, then organizing their entire company's workflow themselves, setting up their own agents, plugging in their own APIs, deploying themselves? No way.

What actually happens is this: a young person walks into a traditional company with a MacBook Air, sits in the office, maybe sits on the floor, and one by one asks the employees. What's the first thing you do every day? Who does this Excel get sent to? What does this field mean? What does that industry term mean? Why do you copy-paste this every time? Which step of this process is the most tedious? Which is the most error-prone? Which is the hardest to handle?

They write it all down and turn it into tools using AI. Maybe it's an internal system, maybe a Chrome extension, maybe a small utility, maybe an agent, maybe an I-don't-know-what-the-fuck-is-this.

But here's the result. AI stops being a cool thing. The boss realizes that what three people used to do, one person can do now. What used to take a day takes ten minutes. What used to require a senior employee mentoring you to ramp up, a new hire can just do with AI. Stuff that used to need someone constantly nagging, AI now proactively messages on its own. That's it.

So that's what FDE actually is.

I think this is a huge opportunity for ordinary people. Because what traditional industries are short on isn't a stronger foundation model.

A lot of people building startups are fighting against the model itself. Every week they worry: is Claude Code going to ship some update next week that kills my whole product? But think about it. When you're doing FDE, the stronger the model gets, the stronger you get. The cheaper the model gets, the more powerful you become.

FDE asks a lot of you. You have to be willing to meet these bosses. You have to be willing to go on-site. You have to understand what they're saying. You can't mind the dirt, the mess, or the annoyance. Every day starts with Excel files, WeChat screenshots, emails, handwritten receipts, and you turn all of it into an AI workflow.

And you have to be fast. You just had tea with the boss this morning, you need to ship a prototype this afternoon. You just understood something today, this weekend you go heads-down and turn it into system logic.

You don't have to come from the industry. You can know absolutely nothing about it. But you have to be proactive enough to dive in and turn AI into productivity. That's FDE. That's AI BP.

Over the next two years, the last mile of AI deployment is going to depend on this kind of person. Carry your laptop into the room. Let companies actually spend less, make fewer mistakes, hire fewer people. That's it.