9 AI Mindset Principles for Your First Year in the Workforce

Kento Kajitani, CEO of POSTS, lays out nine thinking principles for new graduates and managers in the age of AI.

• Don’t use AI for the full “0→100” journey. Humans own direction-setting (0→1) and final judgment and polish (90→100).
• Don’t outsource your thinking to AI. Form a clear picture of the end result first, then use AI only for the middle work.
• Treat AI as prep work, not cooking. Use it for research and information structuring; the final synthesis is yours.
• Reassess AI tools at least once a month. Midjourney became a different product within a year. Exponential improvement is the baseline.
• AI skill is management skill. The core is the same: articulate the ideal outcome, analyze the problem, define completion criteria, give hypothesis-driven instructions.
• The stronger your own skills, the more you gain from AI. AI is an amplifier — feed it weak input and it amplifies noise.
• Don’t become an “AI sommelier.” Being the person who knows all the tools and news loses value as AI spreads. What matters is connecting AI to business growth and real productivity gains.
• Design and review are the new bottlenecks. Mid-level coding is being replaced by tools like Claude Code, and the displacement of mid-tier engineers is already underway at Japanese startups.

2026-04-16 · Watch on YouTube

Japanese page: 社会人1年目のAIマインドセット9箇条