Is the AI Layoff Apocalypse Overblown?

Speaker A: We keep hearing about this more and more, but many, many companies have been recently doing layoffs and we're calling it the AI SaaS apocalypse, um, because layoffs are happening and usually it gets pinned on AI. Now there's a number of reasons why these layoffs are actually happening. Lots of times they overhied, lots of times their company's just not doing well financially. So there's, there's a multitude of reasons why these happen. But AI is the best, uh, is the best reason to kind of, or the best thing to pin it on, it feels like. But so how much truth is there in that? What is happening in the market? Kicking this over to you, Connor, what are your thoughts on this?

Speaker B: You know, this is a conversation. I love this conversation because I think it's, it, it impacts everybody. And this AI job apocalypse and is it going to, you know, is it a thing? And Andrew Ng on, on, uh, you know, from Stanford is like, this is ridiculous. It's a total myth. And then you had, you know, Dario Amade saying that's going to take 25% of the, you know, workforce. And then Mustafa Suleiman, who I think probably, you know, would probably take back these words, but he was sort of saying like, in 18 months it's going to replace half of white collar work, which is of course ridiculous. And then there's like the backlash. Right? Which is, by the way, I think those companies are now walking those comments back a lot, including Sam Altman, just because the IPO coming up and people, yeah, they don't, they don't need to sort of say like, hey guys, good news, you know, everybody's going to be out of a job. I don't think that that's great, great news for anybody. But then, you know, David Solomon, CEO of Goldman Sachs, had a big thing in the New York, New York Times. I remember it was like a couple of weeks ago or something like that saying like, I, uh, you know, this is, uh, you know, it's never going to happen. It's, you know, it's, it's overblown. And then A, ah, 16Z says the same thing, like, this is never going to happen. And I guess Jaden, the conversation I wanted to have on, on this was everybody sort of no matter what side you're on, right? There's a whole lot of, oh, you know, Jeevon's paradox where it's just going to be, you know, more and more and you know, uh, you know, it's not the lump of labor. That's the, that's a fallacy or uh, technology has never done this. Electricity created way more jobs, all that kind of stuff. And Jaden, the only thing I kind of want to get into for, for this episode in this conversation and would love to hear your thoughts on it is like my thought on this is just. I, I don't. I think we're just having the wrong conversation around this. And again, I might be wrong because we all might be wrong, but I just feel like we keep having this conversation about technology, right? Which is like this is what technology has done in the past. And, and don't get me wrong, like obviously AI. I just feel like there's two AIs, right? There's AI that's built into product and AI now. You know, when you use Canva or you use your iPhone or you use whatever. Yes. AI just makes things work better. You know, you can background remove instead of just, you know, instead of like doing crazy things in Photoshop, all that sort of stuff. But then the other AI is the thing that I, that, that we do with our company with AI mindset, which is like, you know, you sort of like try to shift people, people's behavior at scale for 10, 20, 30,000 people at a time. And the idea behind that is this is actually like a new way of thinking. AI is a new way of thinking. And I think that the problem with these arguments about the, the AI job apocalypse and looking to the past is that they are all focused on what technology has done in the past and the historical president of precedent of technology. And I just don't think that this mimics technology. I think what it does is it mimics humanity. It mimics sort of like what people can do and it gets better and better and better. And we've seen from obviously the last three years, it continues to get better and better and better. I mean, like, you know, the CEO of Citadel is saying like, hey, yeah, I was like really anti for forever and now, you know, you know, I woke up on, on Friday and I was watching it do PhD level work. He's not talking about a faster algorithm for Citadel. He's talking about this thing that's doing the work that other people are doing, the tasks that other people are doing at a PhD level, uh, and doing it in hours instead of days. That is not a technology that is replicating what people do. And every time we're talking about like, oh, it's fine or this is going to be fine, man, I don't know because I mean, that's where we are today in 2026. And we've just watched from November to today, Claude opus go from 4.5 to 4.6 to 4.7 to 4.8 very fast. And we're seeing all this, it's all speeding up. And I guess my, my point on this is that I just don't. I think this is much more akin to sort of like an alien species landing on the Earth and doing the work of, of people. Now we can say like, oh, but it can't discern. I agree. But ah, are we so sure that in five years it's not going to. I mean, are we so sure that this is not actually, we're saying like, well, right now it just takes this. Are we sure that this is just, it's going to like level out right now? So I'm just thinking that when we talk about how this is going to impact jobs at scale, obviously companies want this to replace people, whatever they, whatever they say. I mean, I think that in the perfect world they're saying like, hey, we'd love to keep our people and have them doing 10x. Yeah, but there was also cost involved here. Uh, and then we sort of like, see like, and it's costing so much, all that sort of stuff. Put all that aside for a second, just. And Jaden, this is where I want to throw it over to you. Just think about what AI does, right? It, it imitates humans and how humans work and whether when people are working virtually, they are working virtually, they're not like in a place like lifting things up and moving things around. They're doing, they're doing knowledge work. And that's why I'm thinking like, yeah, maybe for the next year it's going to kind of like replicate how it would, you know, know impact, you know, technology in the same way we can use all these old analogies. Uh, but in like three, four years, are we so sure this isn't going to be able to do what humans do anyway? I just kind of wanted to throw that out there because I think it's all over the news and I'm just worried that we're having the wrong conversation.

Speaker A: 100%. I think there's a really important point that people don't talk about enough, which is in my opinion. Well, actually, I think this is reality, but of course my opinion is what I think the reality is. Whatever, okay, AI is not going to destroy careers. I think it's just going to just, quote unquote, destroy tasks. A lot of times we're like, oh my gosh, AI can do what a lawyer does xyz. Well, who cares what a lawyer does today? Like they're. The tasks they do, the things they spend their time on can be in flux. What they represent is, I'm going to represent you in front of the law. I'm going to help you achieve XYZ case. Who cares if they're drafting every inch of the report, if they're doing every inch of the research? If there's something that can do it better and cheaper, we should use what's better and cheaper. And I think so anyways. I just think a lot of people, um, what, what I don't like is when they're like, oh my gosh, like all of a sudden that the AI can take the order at the drive through. And I mean, you know, we, we have all sorts of funny things about that, but it's like you still need people running the systems, you still need people working in the company. Like, the company isn't just going to be run by, by robots in the future. Just because certain elements can be done, just tasks can be done. I don't think that that means that careers are going to be over. So that's one thought I've had. And then maybe one more, um, interesting thought, which I will pitch this over to you. This is a, this is a conversational piece because I haven't thought really well through this. Um, but the other thing that I've been thinking about a lot is because AI essentially comes in and it equalizes. It feels like a big equalizer, right? You had people that made a lot of money with very high salaries and I know it's okay, so whatever. So like doctors, lawyers, dentists, software engineers. A lot of people, probably a lot of you people are listening to this podcast and maybe you won't like this theory, but, um, I'm just gonna pitch it out anyways. You've spent a lot of time and energy and money on education and resources and training to become an expert in a certain domain. But AI can do a lot of the knowledge work of that domain and it feels like it levels the playing field for people that were, maybe didn't have such high, uh, jobs or salaries or careers. And if I'm being honest, I could go to someone that maybe they're like, look, I just work at Walmart and I'm, I'm a teller at Walmart and I love my job and it's awesome. But I also have always dreamed about making an app, or I've always dreamed about building a thing and they can go and build that thing now. And I just think that just because they didn't have this big fancy, shiny career or salary, AI is coming in and it's enabling everyone to get some really incredible results. You can figure, like, for an example is I recently, uh, have like my accounting firm that helps, um, do work for, for a bunch of my different companies. And they were sending me over a bill and I was like, oh. Like, uh. And I was like, oh, I thought we already filed taxes, what's this bill for? And I was looking at it and I was like, oh, I was just realizing, I don't know, I didn't realize this already. They obviously, they go in every month and they categorize all the expenses for all the different companies. And I was just sitting there thinking about it. I'm like, okay, whatever, pay the bill. But I was like, I'm like, this cannot be that hard. So I log into my QuickBooks, I tell Claude code or Claude coworker, I'm like, hey, go categorize all my expenses. And like, by the way, if you don't know what expense, like, uh, what category and expense goes in, just search the company and figure it out and do it. Goes and does it in like five minutes. I'm like, okay. So I go to my accountant firm, like, hey, love everything you guys do. I don't need the category expense work anymore, but like, keep doing whatever you're doing. They can take on more clients, they can file more taxes. I mean, push back on me because I know nobody likes to hear this, but I just think there is a lot of good where people are going to be enabled that weren't able to afford, afford things or do things before and more people will be able to do them. If you're working, if you're willing to put in work, if you're willing to hustle, you can. And that's not just in like, oh, uh, start a business or whatever for business owners. That is in your career. You can grow your career faster. Maybe someone has 10 years more experience. And if you're the person with 10 more years experience, I know you don't like to hear this, so that's why this is like a catch 22. But maybe there's someone with 10 years more experience. But you have the AI tools to level up your career and to grow to that place that you want to go faster. If you have the ambition to. AI is the ultimate incredible tool for ambitious people.

Speaker B: There's no question about that. I mean, like, I think for startups and things, uh, it's just incredible. I mean, like, the amount that we do. And I know what you do with AI box and what we do with AI mindset, like, it's just we can do the work of three times the amount of people. It's unbelievable because, like, we're all leaning in. I think that where, um, you know, it gets tricky is if you're in a system already, so if you're a part of a big company, it's tricky. And so. And the way that we think about this a lot is like, I think we were talking about this on a recent, on a recent podcast, but it was something like, everybody's heard the whole, like, you know, AI isn't going to take your job, but somebody using AI is going to take your job. And I'm like, are they? I don't know. I'm not so convinced of that. And the reason that I'm not totally convinced of that is that first, um, of all, I think you're right. I think that, you know, as agents get better and more reliable, I think that I actually will take a lot of tasks. And if your job is just like, one task, and then your job may be a little bit at risk. I don't know how else to say it. And however, I think discernment is, um, sort of still the, the ultimate human skill, I absolutely don't think we're there. I also think that AI slop is getting more and more to the fact that. To the point where, I think, generally speaking, it's the dead Internet. Like, it's. We're going to just, like, have so much slop that good work is actually going to stand out, I hope. But I also realized, sort of like, from working with, like, you know, larger, larger organizations. Is that so. So to give you a sense, like, we work with this biopharma company, right? This Fortune 100 company that's like. It's like 35,000 people, and we're sort of like, training all of them. And this idea that they're sort of saying, like, well, how do we think about hr? Right? How do we think about, like, hiring and all that kind of stuff? And what, what, what our company says is, like, first of all, you need to sort of like, pull back every job description right now. I, um, don't mean that literally, but, like, that job description is not going to be the same job description. And you're going to hire somebody that in 18 months, you wish you had hired different skills. Uh, I'm telling you right now, however, on the Other side, people are like, yeah, we just need to hire people who know AI. I'm like, that's not true either. Because again, you know, the example I use is like, you know, if you have, uh, an eight year old daughter running a lemonade stand and you're like, I wonder how we could sort of like, you know, do more. You're not going to hire the same person that Country Time Lemonade is hiring, right? Because you just don't have the processes in place. And so I think that more and more, if people can sort of like figure out how to change a process inside their organization, just a small one, that really stands out. If you can two things. If you can elevate your team and if you can change a process just slightly inside your organization, that's the kind of stuff that stands out. Not just whether you know AI or not, not just whether, like, hey, I did my work so much faster. They don't care. They don't care that you did your work fast. It just doesn't stand out enough. You have to change your process. You have to elevate people around you. That's where I think, sort of like when we start talking about how this is going to impact jobs, that's what I think. That's the armor that people can in theory put on.

Speaker A: I love that. Because the impact of AI is scalable. And if you're sitting there as a one man army inside of your organization and you're like, I'm just crushing it, like I'm just doing so good, well, that doesn't insulate you from external factors of your entire department or your entire team. Level everyone up around you. And if your team is all of a sudden the rock stars, that is just insulation that the company can't let that go. They need to keep that. And so, um, I love that advice and I think that's, that's probably what I would wrap this up on. There's a lot of exciting stuff happening. Ambitious people are going to be rewarded for putting in the extra work now because your extra work can be 10x and ambitious people that are people or uh, that are team players leveling up, the team around them are going to be the true winners in this next phase of what we're going to see rolled out. All right, guys, thank you so much for tuning into the podcast. If you enjoyed the episode, the number one thing that Connor and I would be so deeply appreciative is if you could leave a rating and review. Guys, we are at 173 reviews on Apple podcasts. If you haven't reviewed it already there. But you listen to the show. We are so close to 200. That is the. That's the big number we're pushing towards. Big goal. We'd be absolutely thrilled. Thanks so much for tuning in. We'll catch you guys all in the next episode.