AI Is Eliminating Entry-Level Jobs. Who Trains Tomorrow’s Experts?

[00:00:00] Sehr gut, sehr gut, sehr gut. Sehr gut? Wieso Steuer ist sehr gut. Das sagen ganz viele. Cool, wer sagt das? Stiftung Warentest, Computerbild, Focus Money, Chip, Finanztipp, such dir was aus. Mega, aber das ist doch bestimmt kompliziert. Nö. Einfach Foto von der Lohnsteuerbescheinigung machen und fertig. Klingt sehr gut. Ist sehr gut. Hol dir dein Geld zurück. Mit Wieso Steuer.

[00:00:37] Was ist gut, wer? Ryan, Larry, William, Tim Kupp hier. Wir sind wieder mit einer anderen Episode der BARF. William, wir hatten ein break für ein Woche. Du fühlst dich? Ich bin fühlst dich. Wie geht's dir? Ich bin gut. Ich habe die letzten vier Tage auf der Wasser, die ist gut. Ich kann nicht complain. Es war gut. Es war gut. Es war gut. Es war ein bisschen schwer.

[00:01:03] Ich bin nicht einig, was ich nicht einig, was ich habe. Wir hatten, wir hatten, um, most days, ich denke, wir waren 16 kmh. So, Whitecaps, überall. Ich kann nicht glauben, dass du das schnell auf ein Ich glaube, es ist noch nicht so. Es ist ein bisschen. Oh, no, no, das ist Open Lake. Das ist Open. Das ist in PA. Okay. Wir haben, so, was William's talking about, ist, wir haben eine 20-hosepower limit. Und, ja. So, you don't get, well, my boat doesn't get very fast. I get about 20 to 23 miles an hour. Some boats do,

[00:01:33] because they're smaller, lighter. Right. On Lake George, it's open? Yeah. Yeah, no, it's open. So, you're doing as fast as you can go. But, uh, Whitecaps, it was windy, rainy, cold. But we had a good time. So, you know, what'd you do this weekend? Anything big? Uh, no. No, the kid's, uh, van's out of, uh, school. He's getting ready to go to Sea Base, uh, next week, which is a Boy Scout high adventure camp. It's down in the Keys. And so they yacht, they learn how to

[00:02:02] sail. And then they, they, they live on the boat the whole bit. And so it kind of, yeah, it kind of looks like a vacation. So, uh, he's not, he's not running up a mountain with 70 pounds. I did notice your shirt. The next time you wear that shirt, you need to let me know. And I'll wear a cold 45. Oh, he, I actually had it on. He had a swim test last night and I had it on at a Boy Scout event.

[00:02:29] And only one, no, uh, they do it every year. Scouts do. You have to do a swim test every year. Yeah. So, uh, I had this shirt on last night at the scouting event. I just didn't even think about it. And, uh, one guy, one guy goes, you still, you still drinking that? I said, nah, that was, that was just a throwback. Only one person said anything. In fact, I had one on the way over.

[00:02:54] All right. So we, we got a lot of stuff to talk about today and we got a special guest today. Bring in Nick from Candid Tech. What is up, Nick? What's up? Thanks for having me back. Yeah. And Will, thanks for joining us this time. Yeah. With William this time. Yeah. We, we had Nick on a few weeks ago and we were talking through some stuff and, and William just bailed on us and was like, yeah, Nick's boring. I'm out. I'm done. That was it. Five seconds. But you know.

[00:03:22] It happens. It happens. It happens to the best of us. All right. So Nick, you've never been on a full episode before. You've done segments. You haven't done a full episode. So this is new for you. So here's, here's the deal. We've got, we've got a handful of stories that caught our attention this week. We're going to talk about them, but you got to give us your feedback on them. And if, if, if we don't agree with it, yeah, William may not be very nice. I'm just going to leave. I'm nice. Yeah. I'm used to it.

[00:03:51] It's fine. It's all good. Yeah. Yeah. William will just hang up on you. So I will. Pick us off. What do you got? Well, the first story is yours. Okay. Well, let's do it. So, all right. So I just kicked off. There we go. You know, they kicked me off. There we go. All right. So it's spirit. I'm going to miss, mispronounce this. Experis, Experis, Experis. It's a manpower

[00:04:16] brand. They rebranded around the term human ingenuity. So they're, they're the tech staffing arm of manpower. And so what, what was interesting about this, I'll give you the, I'll give you the, the crux of the story and then we can kind of dig into this thing. So staffing is changing overall, right? But we know that over the last couple of years, staffing has changed. They've, they've been

[00:04:43] getting squeezed for, for years. And now with AI, with automation, direct sourcing is kind of taking a back seat, uh, marketplaces. And, and William, you and I talk about this all the time. Margins are like, they were, they were thin to begin with. Yeah. And they're really slim now. Um, but the challenge is how does a, and this is what the article was about. How does a tech staffing firm,

[00:05:08] whether it's large or small, position themselves in a unique way? And how do they do that? And so experience chose skills, not talent pools. And so we, we know historically, we've talked about talent pools and recruiting and, you know, for the most part, let me just being honest with each other. We just dropped 85 resumes into a folder and said, we got a talent pool. And that's just how it was.

[00:05:35] Um, but now they've moved to, to skills. And so they're built, what they're building is, is a, um, like a, a, a whole brand around what they're calling the human ingenuity. And so they take all the pre-vetted skills and they put them into assessments and all of this stuff. Uh, they put these candidates into, into teams or into pools

[00:06:01] that they can then staff at companies. And so when I say staff at companies, it's different than traditional staffing because they're actually providing that tech, right? So the tech is in the company. These are people that are now able to go into the company and actually implement all of the AI tech and all of the things that they're passing through. Um, which is a little different than a lot of these, these other staffing companies. They're still playing in 2012.

[00:06:26] Yeah. I think two things come to mind. First of all, I think chat GPT was used to create the human ingenuity bit. So my gut tells me that AI was actually helped them through this process. Maybe not, maybe not, uh, uh, ish. I think really they have to kind of bake, bake, they have to base their model on skills because that's what they have to offer. What, what companies really want is that

[00:06:51] skills are table stakes. You've got to have the skills enough to get into the company, to do the job, but really what they want are people that are flexible and, uh, people that are highly adaptable. They could deal with ambiguity, all of that stuff. And that's hard to measure harder measure than it is to do a skills assessment, a technical skills assessment. So, you know, first of all, they're moving in the right direction for sure. They just, it's in an AI world,

[00:07:19] you know, it's, it's, these things are going to have half-lives. So those skills that one kind of has, you can test on once they get on the ground, those skills are going to have, those are, those skills are going to have to evolve. I agree. And I think, I actually think directionally this is correct. And I, yesterday or even, yeah, yesterday I posted on LinkedIn. I think I ruffled some feathers because I said that right now, as a resume, if a resume is the only tool that you have to try to get a new job, if you've been

[00:07:45] impacted by layouts right now, this is the worst time in human history to just have a resume to try and secure a role. Because if every candidate is using AI to create the resume, then it's going into an AI system that you end up looking the same, which is what I hear all the time from our customers. It's like they will cancel each other out. So I think when you get indication of the skills someone has, then you can start making more objective decisions. I do agree with you, Will, that the,

[00:08:11] the ability to adapt and to move quick will be one of the most desirable skills that candidates will have just because of the rapid pace of things are changing. There's, there's ways to do that. But I think the evolution of assessing for adaptability will be really interesting to monitor. I love that. Yeah. All right. So let me read y'all a story from the Economic Times.

[00:08:37] A top performing employee was suspended for violating the company dress code by wearing jeans. Two weeks later, management was scrambling to get him back because they discovered how critical he was to the operation. So the question for both of you is, how many top performers have we pissed off because we were too busy winning policy battles instead of business battles? Brian?

[00:09:02] He got, he got dress coded. He got dress coded. No spaghetti straps, no jeans. I mean, read the handbook people. Let's look at that. That's a stupid, I mean, look, when you get on an airplane, I say when I get on an airplane, I should say I'm wearing shorts and a hoodie. We're no longer wearing slacks and blaze. Some people are, some people are. And I,

[00:09:26] and I can remember very vividly, this is probably 2008 ish, 2007. I sat next to a guy who was wearing slacks and a blazer, you know, the whole thing. And I'm wearing my shorts and a hoodie similar to right now. And, and we had a discussion about it. And he asked, why do I not get dressed on a plane? And why would I? Like, I want to be comfortable. It's a cab. Yeah. Same, same thing with work. Like

[00:09:54] I don't need to, to wear a suit and tie to work. Now I did have a job previous that required you to wear button ups and it's high white or blue. Like they're very, very specific. So I understand that. But here's the deal. If, if you, as an employee, if you chose the job, follow the rules. However,

[00:10:18] on the employer side, it's, it's time to change. I don't know if top talent follows the rules. That's where I struggle, right? Is, is, yeah, it makes sense because logically it's like you accepted a job, you signed the employee handbook, blah, blah, blah. But I don't think high performers or high potentials. I think if they look at that shit and then just go, yeah, I'm going to do what I think is best. And then they just go and do their shit. And they've forgotten about the employee handbook,

[00:10:48] the moment that they read it, or excuse me, the moment that they signed it, they didn't read it. But I, I know what you're saying because it's like, if you're going to, if you've, you've set yourself up, if you've said yes, you've said yes to the whole thing. And I, I just don't know if high performers work that way. I agree. And I, just like you, Ryan, I used to work in a role where I had to wear a suit and tie every day for about 10 years. And I worked close to Google's office in London. And

[00:11:14] I'd see all these people coming out of this office in t-shirts and jeans. You'd see Mark Zuckerberg in t-shirts and jeans. I just wondered why are we going to this office wearing this when you can clearly be highly productive wearing casual clothes. And since then, I made a decision at that point to, to leave that position. I got into a, um, a different, uh, different company where it was more casual. And now my, my general thesis is let people dress how they want to dress. I have no

[00:11:38] issues with things like tattoos, piercings, any of that, but there's, there's obviously, excuse me, there's some context where it may be my, my, uh, my view would change slightly. So if you're going to a customer facing interaction where they are a different dress go to you, it's an investment bank. Yeah, exactly. So in that situation, I can understand it, but if you're just turning up to an office to sit in the office, you're not customer facing, you're just interacting with your colleagues.

[00:12:06] I don't see how jeans wearing jeans could have any impact on someone's ability to wear. A dear friend of mine in business school who's passed away. He loved wearing suits. Like that was his bit. Like he loved, he looked good. First of all, he looked great in them. He could wear a double breasted suit. So he's kind of lean. Like he looked great in suits and he loved wearing suits. So he wore suits to school. Like the class. And I'm like, I'm like, dude, you're a

[00:12:34] little, you're a little dressed up for like these people. I've, I've, I've had that when you were talking about having a discussion with somebody that was in a suit. I'm like, you know, they're looking down at you, right? Oh, absolutely. They are. You're like, sir, why are you not wearing like his hands? That's being from stepbrothers when they turn up. Yeah, they're definitely, they're definitely judging you. I don't know.

[00:13:00] Yeah. And my thought is like, you know, I'm literally sitting next to you, right? In business. Got the same ticket. Got the same ticket, homie. Yeah. Like they didn't treat you any better because you're wearing a fucking Jeff cap. Whatever. All right. So Workday, I got a story about, about Workday here. Um, they, so they recently dropped their, their earnings for the quarter. Uh, and I want to throw this number. I'm not going to go through the whole story because I want to just talk about this. Right. Uh, so Workday AI powered recruiting

[00:13:30] tools supported more than 14 million hiring process processes or touch points in the quarter. That was largely due to, not really. That's a, that's largely due to paradox. Those paradox does high end, uh, excuse me, uh, does high volume. That's a lot of touch points.

[00:13:54] Yeah. I mean, again, think about if you're hiring for Walmart, you're hiring, you know, 200,000 people and you've got, you, you touch them 12 different times during the process. It adds up. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And that's what I'm saying. I don't think that's a bad thing. I don't think that numbers over. No, it's a great thing. I think that's an indicator of where we're, where we thought we were going to be in four years. I think we're there now. Oh yeah. I think,

[00:14:23] we're, we're here now it's moved. I think it does, it does have, you know, and I'll put a few things that kind of went through my mind as I'm reading this. Cause I mean, if I'm, if I'm looking at companies that are actively like leading this way, I'm like, so you got what Workday, you've got SAP success factors, Oracle, eightfold phenom, who's I guess, smart recruiters, um, part of success factors. Yeah. I'm missing a bunch there, but a couple of things that came to my

[00:14:51] mind. And I know you guys are going to have thoughts on this. Does AI help recruiters spend more time with candidates yet? I know will, or that's the goal. Does it improve the quality of hire and does it reduce bias? Does it help us make better hiring decisions? These are like the things that kind of came to my mind because I feel like we can answer these pretty simply. I think most people

[00:15:16] thought this is what would happen in a couple of years. And I think we're personally, I think we're getting there quicker than we thought we were. Why don't you take a whack at it first? Yeah. I think that there's definitely instances where recruiters using AI and now spending more time with the right candidates and less time bogged down in admin, you know, sifting through hundreds of applications that are coming through. Yeah. I, I also think that the AI,

[00:15:43] their deploying has to be the right AI, because if you're just using AI to read through an AI resume that's matched to an AI job description, then there's AI that's ranking those keywords, really it all just becomes null and void because it's all cancelling each other out. But if they're implementing the right AI, then yes, I do think the recruiters are spending more time with the right candidates. And more importantly, actually, well, maybe not more importantly, but equally importantly, hiring managers are spending less time with the wrong candidates as well, because it all

[00:16:10] comes down through the funnel. In terms of, is it making the process more bias free? I think it depends. And I think probably what we'll see happening more is companies wanting to understand how these models have been trained. And right now, most of these tools say the human has the final say, and that's how they've been deployed. But if you look through things like the EU Act, which is the EU AI

[00:16:34] Act, which is coming out soon, they're saying that won't stand as that final. You won't be able to just rely on that as your defense mechanism. So for that reason, I think they'll want to see how these models are trained to make sure there is no inherent bias, because there's been examples of AI taking on bias from the training data. So we'll see how that plays out over time. Do recruiters want to be that decision, that final decision?

[00:16:58] I think the hiring manager is the final decision. Yeah, I think I think probably it's, it's maybe I don't think it matters really if it's the recruiter or the hiring manager to an extent, I think it's got to be a human, it should always be a human in a hiring process, because these are people hiring people. So I personally, if it was me, if I was interviewing for a role, and I was told that AI is taking all the decisions, I wouldn't be comfortable with that. There's so much nuance to a person, I don't think AI is anywhere near that point yet to be able to take those decisions. So,

[00:17:26] you know, I'll always advocate humans first. We live in a crazy time, by the way, in human history, where you have to explicitly say human. But I think for me, it's the three things that you bring up are all the important things. It's if if are we just speeding up crap process? Is that what we're doing here? So on the process side, if the process is wrong, and we're putting an AI on top of it,

[00:17:51] we're just speeding up crap. Okay, so I got a problem with that. So if you redesign your process, and then you lay AI on top of it, make it important, I think there's a value there, check. As it relates to quality of hire, I don't think any 10 people have the same definition of what a quality hire is, or quality of hire. So if we were to line up 100 recruiters, we'd get at least 150

[00:18:19] different definitions of quality of hire. So I think that until that's standardized, even within recruiters and hiring managers, because y'all, you know, we've all done this long enough, recruiters will say, this is a quality, this is really, this slate of candidates, this is all going to be quality. All of a sudden, the hiring manager looks at it and says, I see no quality at all. So, okay, we got to figure that out. So quality of hire.

[00:18:44] And the last thing is, I think there's always going to be bias in hiring, whether or not it's human, whether or not it's AI, whether or not it's a combination of human and AI, there's always going to be some level of bias. It's like trying to get rid of pollution. You can't, you're not getting rid of it. Now, can you lessen it? Yes. Can you reduce it through training and other types of things,

[00:19:08] rewarding good behavior and de-incentivizing bad behavior or whatever? Get rid of bias. I still believe in that utopian idea that, oh yeah, we're just going to wake up one day and like, oh yeah, there's no bias in the system, either by AI or by humans. I think there's just, there's always going to be some level of bias. But also, do you think there's good bias? For example, you could have a bias towards pedigree. So I think some of the subconscious bias humans have, it means like

[00:19:38] university or the degree they've had of where someone's previously worked, or you could have a bias to ability. And I think if the bias shifted more in the direction of ability and skill rather than prior history, maybe that's the right change. If there will always be bias in the process, probably that would be a good shift. I think the thing is how you justify it. How do you justify your bias? And what is a bias if it's

[00:20:05] different than just something you like, like something that feels right, et cetera? Like, I like this. I like the fact that this person, and again, not like me, but I like this objectively. I like the experience. I like the candidate, et cetera. Is that a bias or is that an opinion? If it's an opinion, I think you're okay. I think if you take your opinion and you say,

[00:20:32] we all hire from these five schools in the world. Now I think you've created a bias. You've gone past opinion and you've gotten into a bias, a legitimate hiring bias. And so I think it's how you justify things and how you can actually talk to people about that. Like I have a preference. Well, preference is different than bias. And they are distinct, but so you've got to be able to articulate

[00:21:02] your preference. And I don't think preferences are bad. I mean, we all prefer things. You prefer your house hot or cold. Do you, do you, do you prefer soup or salad? Like there's preferences. I'm biased to salad. See? Yeah. I haven't seen you eat a salad. Anyhow. So like the thing is, is preference is okay if you can justify, if you can talk openly about it. Now there is a line, of course. There is a line.

[00:21:26] There's a line, right? That just is, is socially accepted versus not accepted, right? Race and all of that stuff. But schools and, and, and skills and I'm okay with that. I mean, a lot of law firms do that, right? They only want Harvard. They only want Yale. They only want Princeton. As long as you can talk openly about people that talk openly about that preference, you can't openly

[00:21:51] talk about bias. Like I have a bias that skews towards, uh, only hiring females or only hiring from Michigan state or whatever the bid is. You can't do that because that is literally a bias. Yeah. We did. I mean, years ago we would recruit for far when we were doing pharmaceutical sales. We, I mean, it was, it was known, it was told to us, it was explicitly told to us, right? We are

[00:22:16] going to recruit athletes male for this. And this is what we want. And, and it, it, it wasn't a question of what sport, we knew the sport, we knew the schools and this is absolutely, absolutely, absolutely illegal, but yes. Yeah. But this is, this was in like probably back in like, oh, four or five. Like, this is what we were told to do. And we did it as a young recruiter. I'm like, sure,

[00:22:41] this is what we do. I thought we were just going out and sourcing these people because they were a great fit because the case, the underlying logic, the underlying logic was right. They're competitive. They know what it takes to get up early and work. And you know, like they've got a work ethic. If you're a D one athlete in the U S you've got to have work ethic. Yeah. No, no, no one's going to give you a scholarship to, uh, to do that. So like the, the underlying stuff was good, how they applied it.

[00:23:12] Well, I mean, to exclude women. Yeah. We only hired male. It's like, okay. Certain positions were male, certain were, were female. And it just depended on, on where it was. And it was very, very specific. Yeah. And it was what we did. Yeah. So let me give you a story here. You ready? No one said yes, but let's go. A filmmaker sitting in a coffee shop overheard a man manager publicly fire an employee, not in a conference room, not on zoom,

[00:23:40] not privately at a table in the middle of a coffee shop with customers all around. The manager reportedly handled over separation paperwork while strangers watched the whole thing unfold. This was on news week. So this is not the onion, uh, in case people were wondering, this is actually a true story. So what's the worst place you've ever seen a work conversation happened? Ryan, I'll start with you. Worst place.

[00:24:09] I heard a work conversation happen. Like this isn't a real story. I mean, you can see how this could be made up. Nope. Go to usually. I don't, I don't, I don't think I've ever heard. Yeah. Like I don't have a really have a story. I mean, I know. I mean, I, I was embarrassed once by my manager, but that was my fault because I was being a young whippersnapper, you know, I came in, I was late. My shirt, I, I literally, this is God's

[00:24:37] honest truth. I had to iron my shirt to get, you know, put it on. It was wrinkled and I was late. And he says, ask me why I was late. And I told him, wasn't being a smart ass. I said, I had to iron my shirt and that wasn't good. And he let me have it. It was in the lobby. Employees were there. Customers were there. I didn't get fired, but I learned right away. Okay. Don't joke at work, but I wasn't joking. Like I legitimately had to iron my shirt. Um, but I never heard that's also an

[00:25:06] indicator of a bad, bad manager because it's public. Most people know that it's public praise and private criticism. Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I've never, I've never been in that lucky enough to be in that situation where I've seen something unfold that don't flip your phone out moments. I've never had that. Yeah. Nick, what do you got? It didn't happen to me personally, but I've heard this from a close friend of mine. I love stories like this to start with, you know, I have a friend, I have a friend. This one, this is actually, this happened quite recently.

[00:25:36] So the executive team of a company went to me to discuss their strategy and make some plans and for some reason, the CEO liked to have Gemini recording a transcript of the call so he could document everything afterwards. So he created a Google meet link and had it in his calendar. At the same time as that meeting, there was a company wide standup that was supposed to happen. Oh, you're not going to, you're not going to stand up.

[00:26:02] It was still in the calendar, but everyone had been told, don't worry about attending. So he opened up the wrong link. They had the meeting where they discussed lots of private things that would affect a lot of people in the business. They ended that meeting. And the second you end a call that has Gemini on it, it sends the full transcript and summary to everyone who was

[00:26:26] supposed to be on that call. So the whole company saw very confidential subjects that were discussed. And I think that's probably the worst form for that to happen. All right, guys, here we go. It is time for the wheel. We got the wheel. I updated the wheel. So it's a little more bland, but it just has dollars. There's a dollar, a dollar. Someone's going to win a dollar. There is a dollar right there.

[00:26:55] That's so wrong. It's caked in between a 150 and a 75. All right. So we're playing Andy Pitiluga. He's from CrowdStrike. We pulled his name out earlier. Andy Pitiluga from CrowdStrike. All right, we're going to spin this thing, the candy wheel from Candid Tech. Nick is with Candid Tech. Nick, tell us about Candid Tech before we spin the wheel. Give us like the 15 second pitch.

[00:27:21] We are skill based assessment platform. We'll help companies figure out who can do the job before they get the job. There we go. You got seven seconds left. Anything else? That's right. Five seconds. All right, here we go. Andy Pitiluga. We're going to spin it. Don't be a dollar. It's coming on a dollar. Don't be a dollar. Please. One dollar, baby. No, I'm kidding. I'm guessing 150. Oh, 150. There we go. 150. I gave it a little bump.

[00:27:51] All right, 150. Andy Pitiluga. Good for him. CrowdStrike. You can do something with 150. That's good. You can do something with 150. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, you can buy some things with 100. What else we got on there? I thought we had a 200 on there, no? Well, we'll put a 200 on there. Should we do like a 500? Do like a 400? I think getting rid of the dollar is an absolute must. That's almost it.

[00:28:21] The dollar creates tension. I think you need to do it. Yeah, yeah, it does. It does create tension. It does create tension. It's like the World of Fortune, right? Like they put the bankrupt in between the two millions. Yeah, you're fair. I just wouldn't email them if they won a dollar. I would just act like it didn't happen. Like I'm not going to email you for a dollar. Sorry. We'll just spin it again, buddy. Now, do we have some research? Yeah, yeah. We got to research.

[00:28:48] So, Nick, your first time on the show, you're bringing the research. What do we got? All right. It's interesting. So, this is a report from Gartner that came out in the last week. The headline, TLDR, is that, you know, no surprise, AI is going to break down millions of careers. This is what one of their analysts said. They surveyed over 110 HR leaders. What's interesting, though, is they've said that AI is actually going to create more jobs than it replaces. But what it will replace is the lower level junior positions.

[00:29:16] And the report, to summarize, is really saying if there's no more junior people in roles because AI has replaced those tasks, the natural evolution usually is that the seniors train the juniors. But if the juniors don't exist, who will the senior people be 10 years from now? I mean, it goes on to talk about how skills, similar to what you were sharing earlier in the first story, will become the biggest indication.

[00:29:40] But I'd love to hear from you what you think of this evolution in how jobs are going to shift where you won't have the junior people cutting their teeth, getting their initial experience, and being taught by the more senior people.

[00:29:53] So a little while back, William, you might remember, we talked about a story where there were the kids coming out of college and high school weren't able to get entry-level roles because the mid-level, like the three- to five-year employees, were out of work and needed roles. And so they came down and took entry-level roles because they had bills to pay.

[00:30:18] Therefore, the entering workforce wasn't able to actually get these jobs. And so that's really interesting on the report. And here's what I'd say. I think entry-level doesn't go away. I think entry-level evolves into whatever that first step is after AI has done what was previously the entry-level role. And everybody has to evolve and skill up and shift up a little bit to cover that.

[00:30:48] I think in that – was it 10 years or something like that? Yeah. So in that time frame, is it enough time to – I think it's more than enough time to upskill what we need because at that point, I'm guessing, the boomers who are still hanging on, they're either going to be dead or they're really going to actually be retired. Right? I mean – It depends on the – there's two things that are – kind of comes to mind. One is the economy. Yeah.

[00:31:17] And if we were in a booming economy, we would redefine the word entry-level to basically mean we need you to manage AI. So manage AI. And then now the other middle-level people are managing people that manage AI and going through that. But because you've got kind of a struggling economy, it's easy to fire that first layer and then replace some of those things with the task with AI.

[00:31:47] But again, I think, you know, we turn with – and this is just economy 101. One, it's just – it's going to get to a point where we're booming and people are going to need – they're going to have to hire because they're going to need people to manage all the AI. And so I think that that's probably some of the things that they're talking about is it will create more jobs long-term. Right now, short-term, it's painful because of the economy.

[00:32:14] And it's like, well, we can replace all these skills that are kind of low-level, low-value skills with AI, like scheduling for staffing firms. Why would we ever have a human being do that? That could just be tech. That could be AI. Okay. Will we see the return of a scheduler in staffing? No, of course not. That's gone forever. But could you see a person being hired to manage a gentic AI that's doing all the scheduling for all of the positions? Yeah.

[00:32:44] I can see that. I mean, you have an executive admin, right, in EA, managing calendars and meetings. Right. They didn't go away because it's already on the calendar. And I get it. It's different. But it's kind of similar in that respect. And, look, just because we have an automated scheduler scheduling meetings, there's still – and I get it. We can still do the follow-up. We can still do all that stuff automated. But that doesn't always capture everything. That's right.

[00:33:13] Nor does it convert from meeting to interview to, you know, sale or conversion, whatever industry you're in. So I don't think it goes well. Even if you're hiring people, entry-level people to go through and make sure that that quality is there and making sure that the tech is doing what it's supposed to. So you can kind of see, again, in a booming economy, in a hiring economy, you can see people being hired to make sure that the AI is just doing what it's supposed to.

[00:33:42] That's – I mean, I do see what Gartner is trying to say. I do understand it. It's also a little cotton candy because it's what people want to hear. You know what I'm saying? Like they're not saying anything that's truly depressing. They're basically saying, no, no, in the future, there's going to be more jobs.

[00:34:02] Well, what's interesting, though, if you pay it out – so from who they surveyed, 40% of those companies had already eliminated what they're calling obsolete jobs, which traditionally are more entry-level positions. So let's just pay that out. If more companies start doing that, five years from now, who are the senior people in those companies? So actually what it's saying is AI could create the first job shortage.

[00:34:27] It could be self-inflicted because we've used AI so heavily to automate at the more junior entry level. Who do you then have to fill up those positions five, ten years from now? Oh, that's cool. I think what will be interesting if you watch it over time – and we're seeing it happening with our customers at the moment – but experience will not be a proxy for skill. And that will reshape how people think about talent because experience has always been the proxy. Tenure, experience, there's been a career ladder.

[00:34:55] I don't think we have that ladder anymore with AI. So that would be the interesting shit. I'll tell you what I'm keeping my eye on is AI that replaces senior executives. Like I had this dream last night. Why don't we hire AI to be our politicians? Like why do we have human beings being our politicians? Like why? You'll probably get the same results. But like they can't be bought by PACs.

[00:35:25] They can't be bought by – like in our situation in the United States, they can't be bought by lobbyists. They can be trained. Yeah, but money doesn't mean anything to them. There's no – you know what I'm saying? Like that doesn't drive them as it does a human. Yeah, but training would be the new currency on that, and they find a way to break through. I don't think so. I really don't think so. I think because if the goal is to represent the people, that's the goal, then they would represent the people.

[00:35:56] And it wouldn't have all of the disease that comes with it. So you want to go from replacing jobs to being run. I want to have a president that's an AI bot. Yeah. You know, I don't want to get too sci-fi, but my worry is that AI will have the same survival instinct humans have. And actually, I don't think that having humans on Earth is the best thing for AI. So my worry is their policies will not be in our best interest. In this dystopian novel.

[00:36:27] I'll leave it here as we wrap up. Nick, have you ever seen Subservience? No. You need to watch Subservience. Tonight. William made me watch it the other night. Tonight. He put it on. I watched it when we were away, and it's good. Just watch it. It's a film? It's a series? No, no. It's a movie. It's a film. Yeah. It's on Netflix. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We won't talk about it here just yet, but I'll tell you what.

[00:36:56] You watch it, and the next time you come on, we'll do a movie review. We'll do a review up front for everybody. You know what? I'll make you a recommendation as well. We can give feedback. My recommendation, if you haven't seen it, Severance. Oh, yeah. I've seen the whole series. I have not seen that. I love it because it's so dark. It plays to my strengths, and it's kind of a story of Rupert Murdoch without being a story about Rupert Murdoch, if you will. So, Nick, you watch Observience. Yes. We'll start on Severance.

[00:37:26] Yeah, Severance. Because he already knows it. And for the audience, we will see you next time.