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- 028 AI for Operators
028 AI for Operators
Tamar Nisbett of Character.ai, New AI Operator Jobs, 8 Links
Tom Guthrie
January 07, 2026
Hi there,
Welcome back to AI for Operators. Here’s what we’ve got for you this week:
The Operator: An interview with Tamar Nisbett, Product Monetization & GTM Lead at Character.ai (listen here)
The Essay: Off this Week
[New Section] The Jobs: Senior AI roles with $150k-$275k+ salaries
The Links: 8 links, including the state of Chinese AI, how Notion’s founder thinks AI will transform society, and guides to Claude Code (both practical and opinionated).
The Operator |  |
Tamar leads GTM and monetization strategy across ads, subscriptions, and new products for Character.ai. Previously, she worked in Product Strategy at Netflix.  |  |
Tamar, GTM and Monetization Strategy at Character AI and ex-Netflix strategy, shares how AI-native teams operate and how operators can adopt AI faster. We cover:
Her career pivot to AI-native work: working on GenAI initiatives within Netflix going all in on AI with Character last year
The advantages of smaller, AI-native teams for AI adoption: Character is a small, 60–70-person team with researcher-founders. There’s a big difference between the "inject AI into legacy processes" mindset and “AI from day one”.
Her AI adoption playbook for legacy orgs: start with tech-savvy champions or CEO mandate, but retention hinges on fast, provable productivity gains.
Her daily stack: ChatGPT for drafts and life admin, Claude for work outputs. Her team leans on Claude Code, Cursor, and Linear.
Creatives should adopt AI, not fear it: treat AI as a craft amplifier, with human taste as the true differentiator.
Character’s product: allowing users to create interactive "Scenes" that shift passive viewing to co-authored adventures, which lets fans role-play alongside characters.
A B2B use case for Character? Tamar says no - laser-focused on B2C, prioritizing entertainment over enterprise agents and training bots.
Her playbook for continuous improvement: survey tools (and get hands-on) broadly, ship quick-win prototypes yourself, and stay current with the bigger picture via publications like The Neuron and Stratechery.
The Essay: Off this Week |  |
The Jobs | |
We’re trying out a new section here where we highlight AI-first jobs. Like it? Want more? Let us know!
AI Deployment Strategist - Cerberus Capital Management
Partner with internal investment desks, portfolio companies, and external clients to strategize and drive adoption of AI tools.
Comp: $160k - $200k
AI Outcomes Manager - Glean
Be a forward-deployed AI strategist helping companies get the most out of AI in general and Glean in particular
Comp: $150k - $212k
Head of AI Transformation - Enterprise and Corporate Functions - Guardian Life
Help transform a 165-year-old insurance company by bringing AI efficiencies to its corporate functions
Comp: $155k - $255k
Staff AI Product Owner - Gong
Drive internal AI strategy for this sales software company (raised ~$600m)
Comp: $140k - $192k
The Links |  |
Practical
What will economic outcomes look like as interactions get delegated to agentic AI? New research starts to explore the answers.
Compound Engineering: How Every codes with agents
A guide to Claude Code 2.0 and how to get better at using agents
Perspectives
‘Opus 4.5 is basically AGI’ - Dean Ball
Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis on ‘jagged intelligence’, the scaling wall, and proto-AGI
News
The state of Chinese AI at the end of 2025: an overview
The State of AI from OpenRouter, an analysis of 100 Trillion (yes, really) tokens shows the rise of reasoning models, the shifting open source landscape, and more.
Thanks for reading,
Tom Guthrie