1 min lesson
What 'no narrow job descriptions' means for research
Rebuild the parts of "What 'no narrow job descriptions' means for research", then say why each one matters.
Step 1 of 2
Cursor is a small, talent-dense, flat team where engineers write copy and answer support tickets. “No narrow job descriptions” is not a slogan, it's how the work gets done and research won't be siloed from it.
Practically, that means you do the whole job yourself. You recruit your own participants, write your own screeners, build your own templates and ship the insight without an ops team handing you a clean panel. The flip side is real autonomy: nobody is gating your questions or your methods.
- Self-recruiting
- You source and screen developer participants yourself - no ops backstop.
- Self-tooling
- You build the guides, surveys and repos as you go, then reuse them.
- Self-direction
- You set the agenda; there's no handed-down playbook to follow.
- Opinionated
- A strong point of view is expected - you propose the question, not just answer it.
The operating principle that follows is speed over perfection. A fast read on five developers that changes a decision this week beats a rigorous twelve-week study that lands after the feature shipped. The skill being tested is not whether you can run the perfect study - it's whether you can scope a good-enough one fast and name the tradeoff out loud.
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Full explanation
The Scrappy Read, End to End
Interactive diagram. Step through it with the Next and Previous controls below, or Tab to a region to read its detail.
Naming the tradeoff is the gate that turns scrappy into rigorous - skip it and a thin study reads as definitive.
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Optional practice