InsideCursor 中英对照

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Nov 15, 2025

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inside-cursor

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The SF office is the perfect setting for Cursor’s kind of work

旧金山办公室，是最适合 Cursor 的工作场景

To truly understand Cursor’s culture, you have to visit the office in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood, where it is the only startup around. It feels like a college common room/dining hall, and if you didn’t know already, it would be difficult to guess where exactly you are. There’s no Cursor logo outside, no corporate posters on the wall, no one wearing Cursor swag, and very few Cursor stickers on laptops.

要真正理解 Cursor 的文化，你得去他们在旧金山北滩的办公室看看——附近几乎没有别的初创公司。那里像一间大学的公共活动室或食堂，如果不是提前知道，你很难说出自己身处哪家公司。门口没有 Cursor 的 Logo，墙上没有企业宣传画，几乎没人穿着公司周边，笔记本上也鲜少贴 Cursor 贴纸。

Instead, the office mainly features a bunch of people working at desks or huddled in groups of two or three. There are chalkboards instead of whiteboards (company president Oskar Schulz will tell you all about where he sources the best chalk), and the furniture is a hodge-podge procured from a retired techie in the East Bay with a European vintage furniture obsession. The walls are stacked with books—many of them textbooks, and even more with creased spines and other signs of actual use.

相反，你看到的主要是三三两两低头干活的人。办公室用黑板而不是白板（公司总裁 Oskar Schulz 会滔滔不绝地讲他从哪里淘到最好用的粉笔），家具是从东湾一位痴迷欧式复古的退休程序员那里淘来的“拼装流”。墙上堆满了书——不少是教材，更多书脊起褶，带着被反复翻阅的痕迹。

During one of my early visits to the office, a group of three prospective customers from a Japanese bank were visiting. They were dressed in suits and high heels and trying their hardest to be very polite as the 20-something salesperson showed them around the office and offered them a snack from the Jenga tower of protein bars, bags of chips, and containers of pretzels and popcorn stacked precariously on top of one another. It can all feel very chipmunks in trenchcoats. But it is undeniably unpretentious.

我早期去的一次，正好碰上来自一家日本银行的三位潜在客户来访。对方穿着西装、踏着高跟，一边尽力保持客气，一边跟着二十多岁的销售在办公室里转悠。销售热情地从一座“叠叠乐”般摇摇欲坠的小吃塔上，抽出蛋白棒、薯片、椒盐卷饼或爆米花请客。整个画风颇有点“风衣里的花栗鼠”，但确实一点不做作。

Cursor is a largely in-person culture—86% of the company works from SF HQ or its new office in New York. As far as I can tell, if you want someone’s help with something, it’s best if you tap them on the shoulder. Slack messages and meetings are less reliable, and much of the company’s collaborative work occurs in impromptu gatherings around a chalkboard or someone’s desk. There are very few scheduled meetings—the company is very conscious about protecting time for deep work and staying nimble with what happens throughout the day. When I inquired about helpful documents, it was suggested to me that “Cursor has more of a spoken-word culture.”

Cursor 极度强调线下协作——公司 86% 的人都在旧金山总部或纽约新办公室工作。就我观察，如果你需要别人帮忙，最好是走过去拍下肩膀。Slack 和会议都不那么靠得住，很多协作是在黑板旁或某人桌边临时凑起的“小群”。预排的会很少——公司刻意保护深度工作时间，也保持对日间变化的敏捷反应。我问有没有“资料库”可查时，得到的答复是：“Cursor 更偏口述文化。”

Since early September, I’ve been visiting the office every other week. It’s hard to deny how much easier work flows when I’m in person. When I’m at home, I often lament this reality. When I’m in the office, it feels like there is no better way to work than physically alongside your colleagues.

从九月初起，我基本隔周去一趟。不得不承认，线下在场时，工作的流动性好得多。人在家时我常为此感叹；进了办公室，又会觉得没有什么方式比和同事肩并肩更高效。

It can all feel very chipmunks in trenchcoats. But it is undeniably unpretentious.

整体氛围有点像“风衣里的花栗鼠”，但绝不装腔作势。

There is talk about a third office before too long. I suspect some new communication norms will evolve to satisfy an increasingly distributed workforce, but in the meantime, the in-person magic is pretty intoxicating.

公司已经在讨论不久后开第三个办公室。我想随着分布式程度提高，新的沟通规范会自然长出来。但眼下，线下的“魔力”仍让人沉醉。

At 1pm, six days a week, lunch is served by Fausto, the company’s beloved chef, and everyone gathers around the communal tables to enjoy it. The rumor about Fausto is that at one point he tried to quit because it was too stressful to come up with the menu every day for a team that was doubling in size every few weeks. To hold him over while he got used to the pace of things, someone on the Cursor team created an AI menu generator for him to lean on. Now, he’s in Slack with the rest of the team, sharing the new dishes he’s making, enjoying praise for classic favorites, and taking requests for things to try. At Cursor, even the chef is high-agency.

每周六天，下午一点，公司钟爱的厨师 Fausto 会准时开饭，大家围着长桌共进午餐。相传他曾一度想辞职——每隔几周团队就翻倍，让他几乎每天都被“今天做什么”逼疯。为帮他扛过去，Cursor 的同事给他做了一个 AI 菜单生成器。如今他也在 Slack 上，分享新菜、收获大家对经典菜式的夸赞，还会接龙点单。在 Cursor，连大厨都“高能动性”。

The conversation at the lunch and dinner table is mostly about work, broadly defined. People seem to enjoy getting to know each other through the way they think about stuff—Cursor projects they’ve been working on, ideas or work they’re untangling, or musing about the future of the product or industry. I spend a good part of my visits to the office just sitting at the table. I don’t often feel I have much to contribute by way of good ideas, but asking questions is an engaging pursuit. Thirty minutes at the table is a revolving door of interesting ideas as people get up and new people sit down. I felt this way often at Stripe through 2015–2017, but the main difference at Cursor is there are always people I don’t recognize at the table, because everyone’s always inviting their smart friends to “drop by.”

饭桌上的话题大多还是“广义的工作”。大家似乎乐于通过“彼此如何思考问题”来相互了解——手上的 Cursor 项目、正在解的结、对产品与行业未来的遐想。我每回去办公室，都有相当一段时间在饭桌边“蹲点”。我未必总能贡献好点子，但提问本身就很投入。三十分钟里，人来人往，观点像风车一样换着转。2015–2017 年在 Stripe 时我也常有这种感觉，但在 Cursor 的不同之处是，饭桌上总能看到不认识的人——大家总爱邀请聪明的朋友来“串个门”。

When I asked co-founder Sualeh Asif what he’s most concerned about when it comes to company-building, he responded, “People start talking about the weather at meals.” I haven’t seen any evidence he has much to worry about.

我问联合创始人 Sualeh Asif，对于“如何把公司建起来”，他最担心什么。他回答：“大家吃饭时开始聊天气。”到目前为止，我没看到他需要为此担心的迹象。

Cursor’s recruiting machine is on another level

Cursor 的招聘机器，强到离谱

Cursor’s secret to recruiting is to treat the atomic unit of the hiring process as a person, not a job spec. Let me explain.

Cursor 招聘的秘诀在于：把招聘的基本单位当作“人”，而不是“岗位说明”。我来解释一下。

At most companies, the recruiting process looks something like this: identify a hole in the company’s ability to execute on some function, open up a job, source a list of people, interview some of those people, hire one, start them a couple months out.

多数公司是这样招人的：发现执行力上的“缺口”，开一个岗位，从市场上搜一批人，面几位，发一个 offer，几个月后到岗。

At Cursor, the recruiting process looks like this: post the name of someone really, really good in the #hiring-ideas channel in Slack, swarm that person with attention, conduct team interviews (wide range of “process” here), and if the desire is mutual, they start on Monday.

在 Cursor，流程更像这样：在 Slack 的 #hiring-ideas 频道里丢出某个“非常非常好”的人的名字，全员围绕着这个人展开关注，组织团队访谈（“流程”跨度很大），如果双方都有意向，那就周一上班。

The team is growing fast. This time last year, the company was under 20 people; today it’s pushing 250. I probably spend about a quarter of my time recruiting, and that’s celebrated. There’s a constant stream of names flowing through the #hiring-ideas channel. Sourcing doesn’t consist of searching for relevant job titles or companies on LinkedIn and adding names to a spreadsheet for a recruiter to reach out to; it looks more like genuine curiosity about who the best people are.

团队增长极快。去年此时公司不足 20 人，如今直逼 250。我大概有四分之一的时间在做招聘，这在公司里是值得肯定的。#hiring-ideas 频道里始终源源不断地冒出名字。所谓“搜人”，不是在 LinkedIn 上按头衔或公司去捞，再把名字丢进表格让招聘对接；更像是出于真诚好奇：谁是真正最优秀的人。

The team found Eric Zakariasson because he was leading Cursor workshops in Stockholm. Ian Huang was an outlier in customer telemetry because he was coding so much with Cursor into the wee hours of the night. Whenever a potential pool of talent might be opening up, like New Computer shutting down or Meta layoffs, the Cursor team collectively searches for their most talented. Any time someone at Cursor comes across an impressive product release, tweet, or blog post, they drop the creator’s name in the channel accompanied by a “should we hire?”

团队之所以找到 Eric Zakariasson，是因为他在斯德哥尔摩主持 Cursor 的工作坊。Ian Huang 则因客户遥测数据中“深夜用 Cursor 疯狂写代码”的异常而被关注。只要出现潜在的人才“蓄水池”，比如 New Computer 关停或 Meta 裁员，Cursor 的人就会集体去找“里面最出色的人”。谁在外面看到令人惊艳的产品发布、推文或博客，都会把作者名字丢进频道，并配一句“要不要招 ta？”

If there’s consensus that a prospect is good, another Slack channel gets spun up where people strategize on approaching them. Common questions the group will pose include: “What does this person most love working on?”, “What are they best at?”, and “What would be the optimal setup with Cursor?” They then strategize about which exciting challenges Cursor is facing that they can dangle, on the assumption that the best people love a good challenge. Ideas for who to backchannel with are floated with no awareness or permission from the prospect (on this, I have mixed feelings).

一旦大家对某位候选人达成“很强”的共识，就会新开一个 Slack 频道，专门讨论如何接触对方。常见问题包括：“ta 最爱做什么？”“ta 最擅长什么？”“放在 Cursor 最优解是什么？”随后会围绕 Cursor 眼下的硬仗来“投喂”，假设“最好的人就是爱挑战”。有时也会讨论找谁去“背调串线”，通常不会提前告知候选人（对此我心情复杂）。

When I asked co-founder Sualeh what he’s most concerned about when it comes to company-building, he responded, “People start talking about the weather at meals.”

我问联合创始人 Sualeh，关于“造公司”最担心什么，他答：“大家吃饭时开始聊天气。”

Next, someone from Cursor will volunteer or get nominated to be the point person for communicating with the prospect and lead the swarm of outreach. This point person anchors the process, but prospects enjoy the 360-degree attention from several Cursor team members. (Zero shade to recruiters, but from a candidate perspective, something hits very differently about not explicitly talking to one). “Not looking right now? No problem. Let’s just do a little project together,” is a common refrain.

接着会有人自荐或被推选为对外“主联系人”，带队推进。虽然有锚点角色，但候选人通常会同时感受到来自多个 Cursor 成员的 360 度关注。（并非否定招聘同学，但候选人的感受确实与“只和招聘聊”非常不同。）常见话术是：“现在不打算换？没关系，不如先一起做个小项目。”

Another go-to tactic is to suggest “just dropping by HQ some time,” on the accurate assumption that time in the office is often a magical moment for recruits. It’s also a chance for relevant folks at Cursor to evaluate—I mean meet!—them. (As one person described it, the “bam surprise interview loop.”) Whenever I’m in the office, I spot talented operators I have met over the years; some of them play it off as “just meeting a friend for a coffee!”, while some have texted me afterwards to say, “please don’t tell anyone you saw me there.”

另一个常用招数是建议“找个时间来总部坐坐”。这基于一个相当准确的判断：在办公室里那段时间，对候选人常常是“魔法时刻”。也是让 Cursor 相关同事“评估——呃，我是说认识”他们的好机会。（有人把这叫作“啪，惊喜面环”。）我每次在办公室，都能遇见这些年认识的优秀操盘手；有的人装作“只是和朋友喝杯咖啡！”，也有人会事后发消息：“别告诉别人你见过我来。”

Still, despite all the outbound, the acceptance rate at Cursor makes elite colleges look like summer camp. Every leader says that talent is king, but few companies actually commit to it. Cursor does. Choosing not to hire someone when the to-do list of important problems is as long as it is at Cursor is not easy. But as a smart founder friend put it, “they’re pulling the pain forward.” Cursor’s leadership team signs off on every hire, and I suspect that will be the case for a long time.

尽管对外动作频频，Cursor 的录用率依旧让顶级名校看起来像夏令营。嘴上说“人才为王”的领导很多，真正在组织里贯彻的并不多。Cursor 做到了。在重要问题的待办清单又长又急的情况下，选择“不招这个人”并不轻松。但正如一位聪明的创始人朋友所言，“他们在把痛苦往前拉”。Cursor 的每一个录用都要经过领导层逐一签字，我猜很长一段时间都会如此。

Just as everyone sources candidates, everyone closes. Occasionally, someone needs a little more coaxing post-offer. (Reminder that “looking for a job” is a notable non-requirement for being offered a job at Cursor). In this respect, the team is relentless. Ryo Lu, former early designer at Stripe and Notion, and an Apple fanboy, was gifted an early edition Macintosh computer. Lukas Möller impressed the founders with a cold email about his love for coding and appreciation for what the team was building. Despite the founders making a recruiting trip from California to Germany, Lukas declined the offer. But as Oskar told me with a smirk, “‘No’ is often the start of the conversation.” A year later, the founders were on a plane to Germany again, and this time Lukas came back with them to SF. Jordan MacDonald was very happy in her job when Cursor knocked; after six months of casual coffee chats, and impressive people from her network joining the company, she wasn’t budging. During one such coffee chat, the Cursor team learned that Jordan had just moved into a new house. As part of their closing tactics, they contacted her interior designer to inquire about what piece of furniture might seal the deal. An espresso machine was eventually hand-delivered to Jordan’s new home. She started at Cursor in October.

就像“人人都在找人”，在 Cursor，“人人都在收口”。偶尔也会有人在拿到 offer 后还需要劝一劝。（别忘了，在 Cursor，被发 offer 的前提条件里并不包含“正在找工作”。）在这方面，团队不遗余力。比如早期在 Stripe 和 Notion 的设计师、资深果粉 Ryo Lu，收到了一台早期款 Macintosh 电脑。Lukas Möller 因一封表达对编码热爱、对团队愿景钦佩的冷邮件打动了创始人。尽管创始人们专程从加州飞到德国招他，Lukas 还是拒绝了。但正如 Oskar 带笑对我说的：“‘不’通常只是对话的起点。”一年后，创始人们又飞到德国，这次 Lukas 跟他们一起回了旧金山。Jordan MacDonald 被 Cursor 敲门时对原工作很满意；经过六个月松散的咖啡会面，加上她的人脉里不断有人加入 Cursor，她仍不为所动。在其中一次聊天中，Cursor 得知 Jordan 刚搬新家。作为“收口”战术的一部分，他们联系了她的室内设计师，询问哪件家具能“拿下”她。最终一台意式咖啡机被亲手送到 Jordan 新家。她在十月入职 Cursor。

One notable place Cursor is falling short in the recruiting department: women in product and engineering. This is a known bug and an explicit p0 to fix. (If that’s you and you’re nodding your head along as you read, let’s talk.)

当然也有短板：产品与工程团队的女性比例。这是一个已知 bug，并被设为最高优先级去修复。（如果你正看到这里并点头，请联系我。）

Compelling Mission + Hardcore Technical Problems + Winning + Excellent Recruiting = Off-The-Charts Talent Density

强使命 + 硬技术 + 连连告捷 + 顶级招聘 = 爆表的人才密度

Normally, the best talent doesn’t readily accrue to a company so early in its life. But because Cursor has all the magic ingredients, it could hire exceptional people from the outset.

一般而言，最顶尖的人才不会在公司早期就纷至沓来。但因为 Cursor 拥有所有“魔法要素”，他们从一开始就能招到非凡之人。

On the product and engineering side, Cursor is building at the intersection of the most interesting challenges in UX and machine learning. (The work on Cursor 2.0, including its own custom model and a new UI dedicated to agent work flows, is a recent testament). On the go-to-market side, Cursor is one of the fastest growing companies of all time from a revenue perspective—it went from $0 to $100mn ARR without a sales team, and the one that’s since been installed is determined to add another zero before the end of 2025. The #closed-won channel, in which a Slack bot alerts the company to newly closed sales victories, is a near-constant stream of notifications.

在产品与工程端，Cursor 正耕耘于 UX 与机器学习最有趣的交汇处。（最近的 Cursor 2.0 就是明证：自研模型与面向 Agent 工作流的新 UI。）在商业化端，Cursor 是史上营收增速最快的公司之一——在没有销售团队的情况下，从 0 做到 1 亿美元 ARR，如今已搭建销售团队，目标是在 2025 年底前再加一个零。Slack 里的 #closed-won 频道几乎 24 小时在刷“新单已成”。

This is all rolled into a very compelling mission in a world where every phase of the software development lifecycle is about to be rigged up to intelligence. And beyond this, the task of “building software” is quickly expanding beyond software engineers to include designers, product managers, founders, and industry experts. Bring on the TAM!

这一切都指向一个极具吸引力的使命：在软件开发生命周期的每个环节都将被智能重构的世界里，“造软件”的任务正在迅速从工程师扩展到设计、产品、创始人与行业专家。可服务市场空间在飞速膨胀！

Across Cursor there are 50(!) former founders—more than a fifth of the company. Nearly 40% went to either MIT, Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, Berkeley, or Yale, and yet no one talks about where they went to school. For some, Cursor is their first job; for others, they got their start at companies like Figma, Stripe, Segment, Plaid, Notion, Vercel, Dropbox, GitHub, and Uber. A true melting pot.

整个 Cursor 里有 50 位（！）前创始人——占公司总人数的五分之一还多。将近 40% 的人毕业于 MIT、哈佛、哥大、康奈尔、卡梅、斯坦福、伯克利或耶鲁，但几乎没人提学校。有人把 Cursor 作为第一份工作；也有人来自 Figma、Stripe、Segment、Plaid、Notion、Vercel、Dropbox、GitHub、Uber 等公司。真正的大熔炉。

How does this manifest? The best way I can describe it is that everyone here exudes competence, but not in a performative way. Phrased alternatively, there is effectively no obvious incompetence on display at Cursor. People are simply very good at their jobs and confidently operate this way. A seemingly silly but non-trivial example of this is the office staircase you have to take to get to your desk. It’s quite steep, yet has no railing. When I inquired about this oddity, the response was: “People know how to walk up stairs.”

这在日常如何体现？最贴切的说法是：每个人身上都散发着“能”，却毫不表演。换句话说，在 Cursor 几乎看不到“明显的不胜任”。大家就是把事做好，并且自信地那么做。一个看似无厘头却意味深长的例子：通往工位的办公室楼梯很陡，但没有扶手。我问为什么，答曰：“大家都会走楼梯。”

Michael often says he wants Cursor to be a “haven for self-motivated individual contributors.” And so far, it is. In the House of ICs (individual contributors), people generally just make things happen through their own enthusiasm and force of will rather than rely on managers to do their bidding. IC is genuinely the highest-status position at the company. Co-founder Aman Sanger remains a proud IC—my enduring image is of him tucked away in a corner of the office coding, mostly uninterrupted, all day long. There’s a healthy culture of grabbing the work that most energizes (or annoys!) you combined with giving ambitious tasks to one person, regardless of title or org structure or team, and just letting them be owner, full stop.

Michael 常说，他希望把 Cursor 打造成“自驱型个人贡献者的避风港”。到目前为止，做到了。在这座“IC 之家”里，大家靠热情与意志力把事推进，而不是靠管理者发号施令。IC 在公司是真正的“最高地位”。联合创始人 Aman Sanger 依然是一名自豪的 IC——我对他的典型印象，是他整天蜷在办公室一角写代码，几乎不被打扰。这里有一种健康的文化：把最让你兴奋（或难受！）的事抓起来做；把雄心勃勃的任务交给某一个人，不看级别、不看架构与团队，直接让 ta 当“owner”。

One new hire on sales remarked, “At my last company [note: very hot stuff startup], it took 30 days before I was allowed on the phone with a customer. Here it took less than 30 hours.” In another recent example on engineering, enthusiasm started bubbling up over what Cursor could do in the browser. A small group raised their hands to tackle the challenge over a weekend. The team was comprised of Ian Huang, one of Cursor’s most tenured engineers who also happens to be a recent-ish graduate; Andrew Millich, former founder and creator of Notion Mail; Lukas Möller who built most of the Cursor CLI in 10 days; and Baltazar Zuniga, another tenured engineer who is known to “settle decisions in code versus meetings.” In Andrew’s words, “We put everything down, went into full focus and accountability mode, and worked together in the office until it was done. It was one of the most fun experiences I’ve ever had at work in my life.” This kind of thing is happening all over Cursor all the time.

新来的销售同事说：“我上一家（非常火的）创业公司，花了 30 天才被允许给客户打电话。在这儿，不到 30 小时。”工程侧最近也有例子：大家对“Cursor 在浏览器里能做到什么”兴奋起来，一小队人自告奋勇，用了一个周末就开干。队里有 Cursor 资深工程师（其实毕业也不久）的 Ian Huang；Notion Mail 的作者、前创始人 Andrew Millich；在 10 天内写完大半 Cursor CLI 的 Lukas Möller；以及另一位资深工程师 Baltazar Zuniga，以“用代码而不是会议拍板”闻名。用 Andrew 的话说：“我们把别的事都放下，切换到全力聚焦与全责模式，在办公室一起干到搞定。那是我职业生涯里最快乐的经历之一。”类似的事，在 Cursor 几乎天天发生。

This works not only because of the talent density, but also because the ratio of important problems to people is very high. I recall a case of some very frivolous corporate signage in the Stripe bathrooms circa 2018 causing Patrick Collison to promptly inquire about bloat on the learning and development team. As far as I can tell, such bloat doesn’t exist at Cursor.

这之所以行得通，不仅因为人才密度高，更因为“重要问题数量 / 人数”的比值很大。我记得 2018 年前后，Stripe 卫生间里出现了些花里胡哨的企业标语，直接引得 Patrick Collison 询问学习发展团队是否“臃肿”。据我观察，这类臃肿在 Cursor 并不存在。

Kids with old souls

“少年”的老灵魂

When people describe someone in a professional setting as “young,” I usually find this translates to either “somewhat incompetent” or “good at their job but gratingly unprofessional.” Knowing the former was not going to be an issue at Cursor, I was prepared for at least some of the latter.

在职场语境里，人们说谁“很年轻”，往往要么是“有点不胜任”，要么是“业务很强但不够职业”。在 Cursor，我知道前者不会出现，于是做好了面对后者的心理准备。

Despite a young average age, I was pleasantly surprised to find the team instead to be warm, well-dressed, keen on eye contact, clear and respectful in communication, and assiduous about replacing empty toilet paper rolls on the dispenser of the shared bathrooms. I was also surprised to find people so young so often communicate their ideas by reference to Silicon Valley history, world history, pop culture, art, learnings from seemingly unrelated industries, and patterns they’ve observed in the work of others they’ve long admired. The range of references is wide, but what’s clear in every example is that people at Cursor study the world as they move through it, rather than rely exclusively on their own personal experience for all their context and idea-generation (a typical pitfall of “young” people). It makes the team particularly good at finding elegant solutions to many shapes of problems.

尽管整体年龄偏小，但让我惊喜的是，大家友善、穿着得体、善于眼神交流、沟通清晰且相互尊重，甚至会认真把共享洗手间里的空厕纸卷换上新的。更让我诧异的是，年轻的他们表达想法时，经常引用硅谷史、世界史、流行文化、艺术、看似无关行业的经验，以及他们长期欣赏的前辈作品中观察到的模式。引用面很广，但共同点是：Cursor 的人是在行进中学习世界，而不是把个人经历当作全部语境与灵感（这恰是“年轻”的常见陷阱）。这让他们在很多不同形态的问题上，都能找到优雅解法。

To share what they’re observing and learning, many team members create “brain” channels in Slack where they publish their personal musings; there’s no expectation of a response or engagement, but people with good ideas can command quite a following. For the most popular brain channels, the content has little to do with “proof of work” or “managing up,” but rather ideas and reflections. Recent examples include musings on whether “CMSes are an artifact of the pre-AI era,” a deeply considered readout from a slew of customer visits, and a very exacting friction log on a still-nascent Cursor product.

为了分享所见所学，不少同事在 Slack 里建了“brain”频道，发布个人随想；并不指望互动，但好点子自会吸引追随者。最受欢迎的“brain”频道，内容与“晒工作”或“向上管理”关系不大，更像是思想与反思。最近就有：讨论“CMS 是否是前 AI 时代的产物”、对一连串客户拜访的深度复盘、以及一款尚在萌芽阶段的 Cursor 产品的苛刻摩擦日志。

Perhaps most importantly to me, you won’t see much LFGGGGGG, talk of being “cracked,” or overuse of emojis or memes. Recent favorite non-work related messages include an invitation to Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons at the SF Symphony, a picture from respective NY and SF 9pm run clubs, friendly mockery at a bad take on AI in the The New Yorker, an entire channel dedicated to #laundry featuring a weekly “laundry standup” slackbot, debates about how to fold fitted sheets, and a poll about which humanoid robot will first make our beds. No one ever breaks character. By far, the most used reaction emoji is ♥️. No one raises their voices, gets angsty or flustered, or visibly panics when things go sideways. It all feels very…adult.

对我而言更重要的是，你很少会看到“LFGGGGGG”“cracked”之类的口号，或滥用表情与 meme。最近一些我喜欢的“非工作”消息有：邀请去听旧金山交响乐团的维瓦尔第《四季》、纽约与旧金山两地的 9 点夜跑合照、对《纽约客》里一篇糟糕 AI 观点的友好调侃、甚至有一个专门的 #laundry 频道，每周都有“洗衣站会”机器人、大家争论如何叠床套，还有投票讨论哪款人形机器人会先替我们铺床。没人“出戏”。使用频率最高的反应表情是 ♥️。出状况时，也没人飙嗓子、上头或慌乱。整体感觉非常……成年。

Somewhat recently, a mishap caused a relatively gnarly outage. The person responsible for the outage posted in the #general channel in Slack where the entire company convenes: “Sorry folks, I prepared a lot and made this change as safely and coordinated as I could think to do it.” Lots of people piled on with ♥️s. The first reply read, “It was great that we had the revert ready to go quickly! We’ll postmortem but this type of change is inherently risky and we’ll brainstorm ways to do better in the future.”

前阵子一次小事故导致了较严重的中断。相关同事在全员聚集的 #general 频道留言：“抱歉各位，我做了大量准备，也尽量以我能想到的最安全、最协调的方式去改动。”很多人跟了 ♥️。第一条回复写道：“我们的回滚做得很及时，太好了！后面会复盘，但这种改动本身就有风险，之后再想想怎么做得更好。”

Not that people are nonchalant. Everyone takes their work seriously and is incredibly self-reflective. It’s just that when you deeply trust in the proficiency and intent of your colleagues, hiccups or misfires tend not to incite a dramatic angsty swirl like I’ve seen at other startups. In general, no one at Cursor is gossiping about company problems or leadership drama. While the market is very competitive, talk about similar products is very respectful and primarily product-focused rather than shrouded in existential fear.

并不是说大家“无所谓”。相反，每个人都很认真，也极具自省。但当你足够信任同事的能力与动机时，小波折通常不会像我在其他创业公司见到的那样，激起戏剧化的焦虑漩涡。总体上，在 Cursor 很少有人八卦公司问题或领导“宫斗”。即便市场竞争激烈，大家谈到竞品时也以产品为中心，言辞克制，而不是笼罩在“生存焦虑”里。

Many people who visit the office have observed how “calm” the vibe is. Employees laugh when they hear people say this; “It’s the duck under water thing,” one remarked. Team members look calm and sound measured on the surface, but underneath it’s go go go.

很多来访者都说办公室“很平静”。员工们听了会笑：“这是水下踢水的鸭子。”表面上大家平和、言语克制，水面下则是全速推进。

9-9-6 is irrelevant. People just love their work.

与其谈 9-9-6，不如说大家真的热爱手头的工作。

Based on conversations with many Silicon Valley operators, it seems like the main thing people “know” about Cursor is how hard people work. Some cite 9-9-6 (9am–9pm, 6 days a week). This is not reflective of how the company thinks about work. There is no 9-9-6 mandate. There is, however, a meaningful percentage of the team that loves what they do and cares about their work so much that they just work a lot. The pace and volume of work is entirely self-imposed.

根据我与许多硅谷操盘手的交流，外界对 Cursor 的“共识”之一是这里的人很能干活。有人甚至引用 9-9-6（早 9 到晚 9，一周 6 天）。这并不代表公司对“工作”的看法。没有任何 9-9-6 的硬性要求。但确实有相当一部分人热爱自己的工作、在乎到愿意多投入。节奏与时长，基本都是自我驱动。

No one has ever once asked me to work late into the evening or on a weekend. Have I worked late into the evening or on a weekend? You bet! (I’m writing this very sentence on a Saturday while my 10-month-old is asleep upstairs). Have some of my most productive collaboration sessions happened after-hours when Slack, email, and calendars quiet down? Definitely. Many people work like that every week. I work like that in fits and starts when I’m really cranking on something, primarily because I want to but also to impress my impressive colleagues.

从没有人要求我晚上或周末加班。我有没有这么干？当然！（写下这句话时是个周六，我 10 个月大的孩子在楼上睡觉。）我最有效率的一些协作，确实发生在 Slack、邮件与日历都安静下来的下班后。很多同事每周都这么工作。我也会在“上劲儿”的阶段这么做，主要因为我愿意，也因为我想让那些让我佩服的同事看到我的投入。

In all honesty, for much of my first few weeks at Cursor, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Many things that seemed very important immediately made their way onto my to-do list. Extra hours didn’t seem to help on their own. I wasn’t sure whether I was working on the right things, producing good work, delivering enough impact, or who to ask about any of it. A lot of new hires describe some version of this. But once you internalize that this norm is reflective of high default confidence in your abilities (a perk of a rigorous recruiting process!) and you learn how the company operates, the panic transforms into confidence. It’s thrilling to work this way.

老实说，在 Cursor 的头几周我常常“喘不过气”。许多看起来重要的事立刻挤进了待办清单。单靠延长工时并不能解决问题。我也拿不准自己是否在做对的事、是否产出足够好的东西、是否创造足够的影响，甚至不知道该问谁。很多新同事都有类似感受。但一旦你意识到，这种常态其实建立在公司对你能力的高度默认信任之上（严苛招聘的红利！），并逐步熟悉公司的运转方式，焦虑就会转化为自信。以这种方式工作，真的让人兴奋。

I will also say from experience consulting several companies on their corporate culture that pace and work ethic are among the most contagious norms (in both directions): If your colleagues move fast, you do. If your colleagues are responsive on Slack, you are. If your colleagues go home for dinner, you do. If your colleagues come into the office on Saturday, you do. The default setting at Cursor is fast. And most people are happily, not begrudgingly, excited to meet the demand.

我也基于给多家公司做文化咨询的经验补一句：节奏与工作伦理是最具传染性的规范（双向）。同事动作快，你也会快。同事在 Slack 上响应快，你也会快。同事下班回家吃饭，你也会。同事周六进办公室，你也会。Cursor 的默认设置是“快”。而且大家是开心地、而非被迫地去匹配这种期待。

Dogfooding

自我“吃狗粮”

As one very early document on Cursor’s culture noted, “Cursor probably ranks the highest in the world in terms of the average number of hours using the company’s main product per employee per week. The only real contender might be Apple with their Macs and iPhones.” Everyone at Cursor is using Cursor all the time.

正如一份早期的文化文档写的：“就人均每周使用自家核心产品的时长而言，Cursor 可能是世界第一。唯一能掰掰手腕的可能是拿着 Mac 和 iPhone 的苹果。”在 Cursor，人人时时刻刻都在用 Cursor。

As a result, the roadmap is surprisingly bottoms-up. A perfectly good reason to work on something (arguably the best reason) is you personally want a feature to exist. What’s more, Cursor users have lots of ideas for ways to make Cursor better, and frequently post about them on X, Reddit, LinkedIn, and HackerNews, and text and DM employees all the time. Team members say they can barely socialize without someone offering unsolicited product feedback.

因此，产品路线图出奇地“自下而上”。做一件事的充分理由（可能也是最好的理由）就是：你本人希望这个功能存在。更妙的是，Cursor 用户也有一箩筐改进点子，常在 X、Reddit、LinkedIn、HackerNews 上发帖，也常给员工发短信、私信。团队成员笑称几乎没法正常社交，总有人主动给你提产品建议。

Once someone reaches conviction that a feature should be built or updated, they may show it off at the weekly product demos meeting, or they might just start building it. (Sometimes two people end up working on similar things; the version that ships usually incorporates the best ideas from both).

一旦有人对某个功能该做或该改“上头了”，要么在每周产品 demo 上亮出来，要么就直接开干。（有时会出现两拨人做相近东西，最终上线的版本通常融合了双方的好点子。）

Once the feature is ready, they’ll ship it to the internal version of Cursor to see if it gets internal traction, source feedback on how to make the feature better, or watch it descend into obsolescence. Because Cursor team members are Cursor’s ideal users, everyone is looking for product-market fit internally on the features and infrastructure they believe in. Beloved Cursor features like Tab, CmdK, Agent, Bugbot, and Background Agent were all built this way.

功能就绪后，会先发到内部版 Cursor，观察内部拉力，收集如何做得更好的反馈，或者看着它自然“退潮”。由于 Cursor 的员工正是理想用户，大家会先在内部给自己相信的功能与基础设施找“产品市场匹配”。像 Tab、CmdK、Agent、Bugbot、Background Agent 等人气功能，都是这么来的。

One of my favorite Slack channels at Cursor is #braintrust, which includes everyone at the company. People use it to get feedback on what they’re building, often in the form of a vote using emojis. A real example to make this vivid: “cmd k – edit full file – 🟢 = REMOVE and 🔴 = ‘I use this and need it.’” This is in fact a very efficient and engaging way to get people to “pick sides,” and it often sparks productive debate.

我最喜欢的 Slack 频道之一是 #braintrust，全员皆在。大家用它来收集对在建项目的反馈，常常用表情投票。一个真实例子：“cmd k – edit full file – 🟢 = 移除，🔴 = ‘我在用而且需要’。”这种“迫使选边”的方式既高效又有趣，也经常引出有价值的讨论。

The company’s stance is very much that other companies can focus on lowering the floor, while Cursor will focus on raising the ceiling.

公司的立场很明确：别人可以致力于“降低门槛”，而 Cursor 要专注于“抬高上限”。

Another interesting side effect of so much dogfooding and testing is that Cursor is very good at updating default settings and evolving features that aren’t used. Some recent questions posted in the primary hub for product discourse in Slack were: “Do we need this setting?”, “Could we get there in fewer clicks?”, “How can we streamline?”, “Does anyone use? Can we kill?” In my experience, most companies are quite bad at this.

高强度自用与测试的另一个好处是：Cursor 很擅长更新默认设置，淘汰不被使用的功能。Slack 上产品讨论的主阵地里，常见提问包括：“这个设置还需要吗？”“能不能更少点击到达？”“如何进一步简化？”“还有人用吗？能不能干掉？”以我的经验看，多数公司并不擅长这些。

As a result of all this experimentation, the version of Cursor the team uses internally is about three months ahead of the one users see, while the team works out the kinks of new features.

因此，团队内部使用的 Cursor 通常领先外部版本大约三个月，期间会把新功能的各种“毛刺”打磨干净。

It’s also worth mentioning that it’s not just product and engineering folks that use Cursor. The go-to-market team is surprisingly technical, and uses Cursor for website updates, dashboards, and other internal tools. The #built-with-Cursor Slack channel features projects like a pickleball court availability tracker, a team member’s wedding website, Cursor keyboard shortcuts visualization, a silly game in which you feed treats to the office dogs, and Metguessr, a geoguessr but with art objects from The Met’s collection. Once again, this is not a company mandate (like it was to make slides in Figma before Figma Slides existed). People just enjoy tinkering around in Cursor.

还值得一提的是，不只是产研在用 Cursor。商业团队的技术底子也出乎意料地扎实，会用 Cursor 搭网站更新、看板与其他内部工具。#built-with-Cursor 频道里有各种项目：匹克球场地空闲查询器、同事的婚礼网站、Cursor 快捷键可视化、给办公室狗狗喂零食的小游戏、以及 Metguessr——把大都会博物馆馆藏当“地理猜谜”的游戏。这依然不是公司硬性要求（不像当年 Figma Slides 出来前规定“所有演示都用 Figma 做”）。大家就是乐于用 Cursor 折腾。

“Fuzz”

“Fuzz” 灰度暴测

Fuzz is my favorite Cursor ritual. When a big ship is imminent (think a new client release or website update), everyone gets in a room and tries to break it.

“Fuzz” 是我最喜欢的 Cursor 仪式。一旦临近“大型发布”（比如新的客户端版本或网站更新），大家就聚到一处，集体“把它搞崩”。

The call usually begins with a Slack message from the product owner in a public channel that reads “Fuzz session on x happening now in the basement.” While people are sometimes lured with donuts or bagels, the team feels great ownership of preventing a buggy release and is willing to do the grunt work accordingly. As one early “Welcome to Cursor” document articulates, “Take responsibility for bugs. Mistakes happen, but every bug we ship to users is a disappointment. We are asking users to code in Cursor all day, every day, and bugs or performance problems are easy ways to make them switch.”

通常是一条公开频道里的通知拉开序幕：“Fuzz 针对 x，现在在地下室开始。”偶尔会用甜甜圈或贝果做诱饵，但大家对“别把 bug 带给用户”有很强的主人翁意识，也乐于做这种“苦活”。正如一份早期“Welcome to Cursor”文档所写：“对 bug 负责。错误在所难免，但每一个带给用户的 bug 都是一次令人失望。我们邀请用户每天整天都在 Cursor 里写代码，而 bug 或性能问题会轻易让他们转身离开。”

Fuzz begins when a critical mass of developers convenes in a circle as large as the room will permit. While earlycomers grab seats, many people find themselves crosslegged on the floor, on edges of sofas, or on chairs (or arms of chairs) that have been dragged over from desks with laptops on laps. The product owner then sends a link and instructions out for the latest build and instructs the truffle pigs to get to work.

当足够多的开发者围成一圈、把房间塞满时，Fuzz 就开始了。先到的人占上座位，更多人则盘腿坐地、蹭在沙发边、或把椅子（甚至椅子扶手）从工位拖来，笔电放在腿上。产品负责人会发出最新构建的链接与说明，召唤“松露猪”们开工。

Aside from the clack of fingers on keyboards, “fuzz” is silent, as people spend 60 minutes identifying bugs, UI nits, unconsidered edge-cases, or unpolished corners worth fixing and post them in Slack. Occasionally a debate ensues about the most elegant implementation (maybe even some Slack voting). The result of the hour is usually a very, very long list of things to do before the product ships (usually the next day).

除了键盘噼里啪啦，现场几乎无声。大家用 60 分钟找 bug、抠 UI 小茬、挖边界条件、揪不够打磨的角落，并把发现发在 Slack 上。偶尔就“最优实现”展开争论（甚至来一轮投票）。一小时下来，往往收获一份很、很长的发布前修复清单（通常第二天就要发）。

The product team then expresses their deepest gratitude for the time and consideration and settles in for a long night of fixing…often accompanied by the people who identified said fixes in the first place.

随后产品团队会为大家的时间与投入致谢，然后准备迎来一个漫长的修复之夜……往往还能把最初发现问题的人一起拉上。

Constructive friction

建设性的“摩擦”

At Cursor, people poke and prod each other’s work a lot. This can be quite jarring for folks who haven’t operated in that kind of culture before. Top builders know what great products feel like, so people can get very opinionated about how things should work. They’ll liberally offer feedback on what is missing to hit the bar, and extra hands to help get it there.

在 Cursor，大家彼此“戳一戳、抠一抠”作品是家常便饭。没经历过这种文化的人可能会不适应。顶级构建者知道“好产品的手感”，于是对“应该怎样”会很有主见。他们会毫不吝惜地指出距离标准还差什么，并主动出手把它补齐。

Stripe had such a culture; my former boss/colleague/co-founder, Eeke, came up with the term “micro-pessimist, macro-optimist” to describe this way of operating. This also rings true at Cursor. While people can be very critical of execution, they’re also quite optimistic that they’re going to build something consequential, and generally frame things in terms of potential success rather than potential failure.

Stripe 也有类似文化；我之前的老板/同事/合伙人 Eeke 用“微观悲观，宏观乐观”来概括这种做事方式。在 Cursor 也贴切。大家在执行层面很挑剔，但对“能造出重要之物”又相当乐观，讨论往往围绕如何走向成功，而非纠缠失败的可能。

Like most cultural norms, this one starts with the founders. Michael is always encouraging “spicy questions” during company Q&A, where he is in the hot seat. Sualeh is known to DM people the question: “What are you worried about right now?”

和大多数文化一样，这也始于创始人。Michael 在全员 Q&A 时总鼓励大家提“辣问题”，自己坐在“热座”上被拷问。Sualeh 则常常私信问人：“你现在在担心什么？”

This kind of culture can get toxic fast if it’s also coupled with ego, office politics, poor communication, or a propensity for emotional dysregulation. I’ve also encountered many (very talented) people that make poking holes a sport but don’t have any intrinsic desire to fill them. At Cursor, critics are also problem-solvers. The “friction” here works because everyone genuinely wants the best for the product and each other.

这种文化一旦掺杂自我、政治、沟通不良或情绪失调，就会迅速变质。我也见过不少（很有才华的）人把“挑刺”当运动，却对“补洞”毫无兴趣。在 Cursor，批评者也会是解题者。这份“摩擦”之所以有效，是因为大家真心想把产品、把彼此成就好。

Relatedly, I once asked Michael what he wanted the company to feel like. He answered by asking me, “Have you ever seen that Beatles documentary?” (He’s always answering questions with questions).

相关地，我曾问 Michael，他希望公司“像什么感觉”。他反问我：“你看过披头士那部纪录片吗？”（他总是用问题回答问题。）

If you haven’t seen the documentary Get Back the best way to summarize it is: the most famous band of all time locks themselves in a studio with a three-week clock ticking and iterates their way to the record-breaking album “Let It Be.” The film contains electric moments like Paul McCartney, sitting with his bass, half-mumbling nonsense syllables, and then seemingly accidentally stumbling onto the riff and structure of “Get Back.” And also tense moments, like George Harrison snapping at Paul as he attempts to direct a tired band through yet another cut at a song. All the while you can feel the specter of external pressure from fans and studio executives haunting the building, but the boys plod on.

如果你没看过《Get Back》，它大概是这样一部片子：史上最著名的乐队把自己关在录音棚里，三周倒计时，靠不断迭代打磨出打破纪录的专辑《Let It Be》。片中既有电光火石的瞬间，比如保罗·麦卡特尼抱着贝斯，嘴里含糊哼着无意义音节，似乎“偶然”摸到了《Get Back》的旋律与结构；也有紧绷时刻，比如疲惫的乐队被保罗再度要求来一遍，乔治·哈里森终于翻脸。期间你能感到粉丝与唱片公司施加的外部压力在楼里游荡，但他们仍一步一步向前。

The vicissitudes of the creative process are on full display, and what’s so beautiful about the whole thing is we’re reminded that, when it comes to making something wonderful, the magic is in the mundane. Greatness is created through the collision of little sparks, ignited by people at the peak of the craft who care a lot and won’t stop working until it gets there. There’s not much talk or strategy, there’s just feeling your way through it—fingers are on instruments the whole time, playing until it works. He didn’t say it in these words, but this is what I think Michael wants Cursor to feel like. I’d say so far it’s working.

这部片把创作的起伏展露无遗。它最美的地方在于提醒我们：伟大之物并非靠“神来之笔”，而是日常的魔法。那些在各自手艺巅峰、极度在乎结果的人，不停擦出小火花，拼成伟大。少些空谈与策略，多些摸索与手感——手始终放在“乐器”上，直到它奏效。Michael 没把话说得这么文艺，但我觉得他希望 Cursor 带给人的感觉正是如此。到目前为止，我认为他们做到了。

Ceiling-raising as a virtue

把“抬高上限”当美德

Cursor is adamant about its ideal customer profile being the best professional software developers. This is somewhat controversial, because there are many people that do not have the word “developer” in their job title but use and (loudly) love Cursor.

Cursor 非常坚决地把“最优秀的职业软件开发者”定义为理想用户画像。这一点颇具争议，因为许多职衔里没有“开发者”的人也在用、也在（大声地）热爱 Cursor。

Cursor is in no way dismissive of these users or the general ambition to democratize coding. But the company’s stance is very much that other companies can focus on lowering the floor, while Cursor will focus on raising the ceiling.

Cursor 并没有轻视这些用户，也不否认“让更多人会写代码”的宏愿。只是公司的立场很明确：别人可以“降低门槛”，Cursor 要“抬高上限”。

As the saying in product development goes, “You should be careful who your users are, because they are going to pull your product in a particular direction.” Cursor explicitly wants to be pulled in the direction of the people at the peak of their craft. This, they believe, is the approach required to transform the way we build software, vs. make incremental improvements. I admire them for this. “Democratize x” would make for an easy marketing win, but Cursor is willing to prioritize product precision over warm-and-fuzzy marketing.

正如产品圈那句老话：“要小心你选择的用户，他们会把你的产品往某个方向拽。”Cursor 明确选择被“手艺巅峰的人”往前拽。他们相信，唯有如此才能真正改造“造软件”的方式，而不是做些小修小补。对此我颇为钦佩。“让所有人都会 x”很容易换来营销上的掌声，但 Cursor 更愿意把“产品的锋利度”放在“温情营销”之前。

I’ve also observed the virtues of “designing for the ceiling vs. the floor” play out in the engineering interviewing process. Cursor interviews are known to be very difficult for candidates, particularly the coding challenges. When I asked the team about this, they insisted that “it’s hard to show off how good you are on something too easy,” and that they were “willing to accept false negatives to avoid false positives.”

在工程面试上，我也看到了“为上限而设，而非为下限而设”的价值。Cursor 的面试对候选人来说很难，尤其是编码挑战。我问及原因，团队的回答是：“太简单就很难体现‘你到底有多好’。”他们也“宁愿接受漏掉一些好人，也不要错把不合适的人放进来”。

Through my time at Cursor, I’ve found myself wanting to look at more things through the lens of, “What is the ceiling-raising version of this?” It generally leads to much more ambitious thinking.

在 Cursor 的这段时间，我常常会用“这个问题的‘抬高上限版’会怎么做？”来审视更多事情。它通常能把思考带往更有雄心的方向。

The mission is the prize

使命本身，就是奖赏

So what is all of this intensity, focus, and momentum for? One of the more encouraging aspects of Cursor is that the prize of winning is fulfilling the mission.

那么，这一切的强度、专注与动能，是为了什么？在 Cursor 最让人鼓舞的一点是：胜利的“奖品”，就是实现使命本身。

When it comes to Cursor’s aspirations, there’s certainly a gap between what you’d see on cursor.com or read about in the press and what people in the building are talking about. The company’s product story is all about developer productivity. This is a very effective and lucrative stance. But the thing the people at Cursor actually care about is code, and code generation as the fabric of the world.

谈到 Cursor 的抱负，官网与媒体上看到的，与楼里人们谈论的，确实存在“温差”。对外的产品叙事强调“开发者效率”——这既有效又“好卖”。但楼里的人真正挂在心上的，是“代码”，以及“把代码生成作为世界底布”。

It’s a truism, for good reason, that everything runs on software—and not just B2B SaaS companies. The stoplights governing our streets; the analysis underpinning scientific discoveries; the editing tools that sculpt our films, television shows, and music; the medical records that ensure our doctors can provide care in context; the inventory management system that gets groceries to our supermarkets; the flight control systems that make air travel safe; and so on. Until working at Cursor, I don’t think I had fully internalized to what extent progress is bottlenecked on our ability to build excellent software.

“万物运行于软件之上”并非空话，也绝不限于 B2B SaaS。街口红绿灯的调度；科学发现背后的分析；塑形电影、电视与音乐的剪辑工具；帮助医生在语境中诊疗的病历系统；把生鲜送进超市的库存系统；保障航空安全的飞控系统……在 Cursor 工作之前，我从未如此彻底地意识到，“我们能否构建卓越软件”，对“人类能否继续前进”的卡口有多窄。

If you believe, like I do, that what we build is a function of how it feels to build it, what Cursor does has a real shot at meaningfully shaping the future world we experience. What happens when the right tool is put into the hands of people that want to build impactful, enduring software? Actually close the gap between idea and reality. Many companies claim this mission, but it feels more true at Cursor.

如果你和我一样相信：我们建成怎样的世界，取决于“建造过程的手感”；那么 Cursor 的所作所为，确实有机会深刻塑造我们将要经历的未来。当合适的工具放进那些想打造“有影响、可久存的软件”的人手里，会发生什么？构想与现实的鸿沟，真的会被缩短。很多公司都宣称这个使命，但在 Cursor，这件事更让人“信了”。

I think it’s because the thing most of them would do if they could retire tomorrow would be whatever they’re doing now at Cursor.

我想，是因为如果他们明天就能退休，大多数人还是会继续做如今在 Cursor 做的事。

During a walk, I asked one particularly soulful colleague how he thinks about Cursor’s mission. He started talking about how to build useful, reliable, and beautiful software; about needing tools that give builders very precise control at every level of abstraction; about how we have to bridge the language barrier between humans and AI in one tool that feels natural to anyone who wants to build software; and about how building could be more like sculpting and painting. In the past I have experienced this kind of thinking as a bit head-in-the-clouds, and perhaps I have been drinking too much Cursor Kool-Aid, but I feel it now.

有次散步时，我问一位很有“灵魂感”的同事如何理解 Cursor 的使命。他谈到如何构建“有用、可靠、优雅”的软件；谈到我们需要在每一层抽象上都能给予构建者“极致精细控制”的工具；谈到必须在同一款、对所有“想造软件的人”都自然顺手的工具里，打通人与 AI 的语言壁垒；谈到“造东西”可以更像雕塑与绘画。过去我会觉得这些话有点“云里雾里”，也许我在 Cursor 喝了太多“果汁”，但现在我懂了。

With this lens, the company is more of a moonshot. The biggest existential risk to Cursor may very well be that its early commercial success could distract from continuing to take the biggest swings possible.

带着这副镜头看，Cursor 更像一场登月。其最大的生存风险，可能恰恰是早期商业上的巨大成功，会让人偏离“继续挥出最大棒”的轨道。

Michael sends some explicit reminders in this department; at all hands, he’ll repeat things like “growth can hide poor execution.” (It reminds me of one of the most repeated operating principles at Stripe: “We haven’t won yet.”) Not that these reminders seem necessary. While there is acknowledgement and light excitement around the company’s gobsmacking revenue, growth, usage, and sales victories, what really gets people going are developments in the product, healthy performance, reliability, elegant UI, and all the other product virtues the team cares so much about. To the extent people get excited about adoption and revenue, it’s more in the vein of satisfaction that the company’s vision for a better way to code is playing out.

Michael 在这点上会不断提醒；他在全员会上常说“增长会掩盖执行不力”。（让我想起 Stripe 重复最多的原则之一：“我们还没有赢。”）不过这些提醒似乎并非必要。公司惊人的营收、增长、用量与胜单，大家认可、也略有兴奋，但真正让人热血的是产品本身的推进、性能健康、可靠性、优雅 UI，以及团队珍视的其它产品美德。即便有人为采用度与收入兴奋，也更像是“我们的更好编程之道正在奏效”的满足。

One very early employee reflected on the day the company hit $100mn ARR; a bot in the popular #numbers channel in Slack notified the company. People reacted with the typical ♥️ emoji, some added a 💯, “but conversation in the office was business as usual.”

一位极早加入的员工回忆公司达到 1 亿美元 ARR 的那天：Slack 里热门的 #numbers 频道有个机器人发了通知。大家照例点了 ♥️，有人加了个 💯，“而办公室里的对话，一切照旧”。

Perhaps my best evidence that the prize is the mission is that during my fall at Cursor, I overheard zero chatter from employees about getting rich. At Stripe and Figma (and most other startups), this was a favorite lunch table topic among the first few hundred employees at a decacorn. Yet at Cursor, as the valuation goes up and up, I haven’t heard a peep about the second homes people will buy, the great-great-grandchildren that will be put through college, or the time they’ll take off traversing the world. If people have dollar signs in their eyes, they’re not talking about it much. And I think it’s because the thing most of them would do if they could retire tomorrow would be whatever they’re doing now at Cursor.

也许“使命本身就是奖赏”的最好证据是：在 Cursor 的这个秋天里，我一次也没听到员工聊“发财”。在 Stripe、Figma（以及多数创业公司），这是“千亿独角兽前几百号员工”的午餐桌保留话题。但在 Cursor，就算估值一路上扬，我没听到半句关于“第二套房”“重孙上大学”“环游世界长假”的讨论。即便眼里有美元符号，大家也不怎么谈。我想，是因为如果他们明天就能退休，大多数人还是会继续做如今在 Cursor 做的事。

Brie Wolfson is the chief marketing officer of Colossus and Positive Sum.

Brie Wolfson 是 Colossus 与 Positive Sum 的首席市场官。