The 2026 Recruiting Reckoning & AI Predictions

Narrator: M Today we're dropping an episode from Metaview's 10X Recruiting podcast on 2026 predictions on recruiting's AI evolution.

Host: This is 10X Recruiting, a podcast from Metaview. Let's get after it. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to Another episode of 10X Recruiting, brought to you by Metaview. So style. We have had a bunch of people ping us and say, guys, like, we want a, uh, 2026 predictions episode. So you ask, you receive silent. I've been talking about this for a couple of weeks now, Silas. Yours better be good. Mine are terrific. And I think we should do this in, like, the order of most contrarian to least contrarian. What are your. What are your thoughts on that?

Silas: For me, I've got a few that are, like, quite m. More to do. The recruiting market as. Or like the talent market, I would say, as a whole, and then some that are quite AI specific. So I wanted to mix them up a bit in between. I need to think. Maybe I need to think through that. What's most contrari. Listen, I'm just going to do it in the order that I was planning to do it, okay? I don't care what you said. Stop complicating it.

Host: All right, well, silence may not be interesting to begin with, so, uh, we should prepare for that. Uh, well, Sil, let's get into this thing, man. Let's start. What is your first prediction for 2026?

Silas: Prediction number one. And I think very relevant to, frankly, uh, maybe some people have appeared on this pod and, uh, I know a bunch of people who listen to the podcast. Uh, listen, I think it's time to be in the game. Um, we're all figuring out how work gets done. I think there's some incredible talent. Talent, uh, within vc, uh, platform teams, and I think a lot of them are going to figure out how to get back in the game. And they're going to join AI companies mainly as operators, and I think there'll be a big exodus. I don't think this is just talent, to be clear. I think there's a lot of operators who are sort of in some ways, on the sidelines in various ways, and they're going to want to get in the game because this is the gold rush. Not just because, I mean, companies are going to make a ton of money. I mean that too. But also just because it's like, what a time to be alive. How can you not be like, in that? The most exciting thing in the world is to figure out how we're going to work with AI. So like get in the game and figure out how to work with AI by joining one of these AI companies. I think a lot of the best people are going to be thinking that.

Host: So are you. So it's just specifically to like our audience. Are you saying that you think you're going to. We're going to see a wave of VC talent partners leave their VC job and go in house and work at AI companies? Yeah.

Silas: VC talent partner exodus is what I've called this prediction. Yeah.

Host: Uh, how do I, how do I feel about that?

Silas: Well, not how do you feel? What do you think? Do you think it's going to happen?

Host: Well, I mean, style, like some of these VCs pay insanely well, have huge brands. I think maybe what I would say to it is I do think vc, the era of VC talent partners just giving advice is over. Like they, they do need to actually be doing the work. And I think we've seen that over the course. They call it like the last 12, 24 months. All of my friends are actually like doing real recruiting. Like Audacious has always done it that way. Some VC firms have always done it that way, but the bigger ones have pivoted hard.

Silas: Yeah.

Host: Specifically for early stage companies and early stage investments. So I think that's certainly happening and already happening. Do I think they're going to go in house? Um, I think, I think we'll see some of it for sure. Like it's just some of the, the opportunity to get rich is like so obvious at some of these companies. And so I think it's going to be hard to pass that up. But you know, life's about trade offs. I say this all the time and I've done some like personal reflection on this of like, would I go in house at this stage of my life and the answer is no. And there isn't. Well, there is an amount of money, but it's way more than what anyone would pay. Um, for me to trade off time with my kids and choosing my schedule and like, you know, being at dinner every night and not having to check slack and when you're in house. You know, a wise person once told me when they put a VP or AC in front of your name, they own you. And that's different when you're, you know, in a talent partner role or doing boutique exec search.

Silas: Okay, so this, should we just call this episode things that may or may not happen next year?

Host: Well, I just disagree with you. So, uh. All right, let me give you mine. So my, my first Prediction.

Silas: Sorry. Sorry to interrupt. None before we get. I guess. I guess. Of course, I did not mean. I think every single person is going to. I think. I think. I think I'm. So I basically agree with what you're saying, which is, I think, um, notwithstanding some of those things, I think there's a world where like, um, the advantages of being in House were not so clear versus actually being a talent. But now I think there are really clear advantages in terms of, you know, your advice is not going to be valuable in 10 years time unless you are part of actually figuring out how this is happening, you know. So, like, you know, I m. Guess it frankly relates to stage of career for the. For a person. Like if you're, if you're in that stage of life, it's like the time that there'll be a lot of people who decide they need to get. Need to get in the game.

Host: Yeah, I think. Yeah, I think that's right. All right, let me give you mine. So my first one is AI becomes the de facto first screen for Inbound, and candidates will love it. So everybody knows Inbound's a mess. Like with any company that has a brand. Uh, I can't tell you, like, everybody who I talk to is like, I don't check my buckets. I mean, this is going back to when I was at Google in 2012. It was the joke. We ended up hiring like a team offshore. They couldn't get through everything. AI will help, but the era of the resume as the only thing that we ask for when we have a big brand as a company should be over. It doesn't make any sense. Like how. Yeah, I could tell some things based off of the resume, but why not ask for another piece of information while also explaining to the candidate why this is good for them and why they will stick out and why the inbound, uh, bucket of the past is no longer the future. And so you should do this. I think people are going to start getting hired this way, and I think it's going to make candidates more likely to be okay with AI introduced that early and getting them even more comfortable with AI assessing them in other ways throughout the interview process.

Silas: Yeah, I think you can totally frame things as, uh, like you're collaborating with the AI to make it clear who you are, like who you are and what you're about. Essentially. It's not even like there's an assessment occurring and whether the AI is part of that is very connected. It doesn't have to be. It doesn't have to be the case though it may well be, but doesn't have to be. So. Yeah, totally agree. I think there's a world in. Probably not by the end of this year, but the generation that's coming up now will sort of this idea that the sort of the whole way we would take in applicants was based on something that was essentially connected to the fact this used to be a piece of paper. It had to, it had to used to actually be a piece of paper you'd give someone that would just be like what it was like. So we'd had all these years where we'd try and almost just keep it almost like as a piece of paper when you could have all this rich media about someone instead. That seems crazy. So. Yeah, I agree. I think the timings will be interesting on it. I think behavioral change obviously is incredibly tough. But uh, but we got some things cooking on that front and I uh, think uh, there's exciting things afoot. I agree. You're talking about um, you said screen. Can you just explain to me what you mean by the sort of. When you say screen, what do you mean?

Host: I think it's going to be different. Well, it will be different for different companies and different roles. So I'll give an example. Um, I'll start with a basic example. Is like Chipotle is actually already doing this right now for line workers, like literally right now the application process, because they're using a new company that's doing this. It's just texting and they're assessing like how they respond and like you know, the communication, all that stuff on text. The next level up I think for tech for the majority of our audience is going to be SDRs. So like New grad, um, given the unemployment numbers for new grads and uh, you know most companies aren't hiring them but some are like why would you go to campus and waste your resources that way? Like it's such a crazy thing for a company to do when instead you can just institute more friction. And so an example of this would be like yeah, submit your resume. In addition to that, here is a link that takes you to a one way dynamic AI based interview. And it's going to be like five to 10 minutes. And what we're going to assess there, especially for like sales folks is their ability to communicate, um, uh, how well they get across their point, how succinctly get across their points. Those sorts of things I think AI can handle today, but nobody's doing it.

Silas: I think the contrarian thing about what you said is probably not that this will happen. It's probably that people will love it. Right. So let's dive into that in a second. Um, the only thing I would disagree with what you just said there though is AI is capable of doing it today. Yes. But I think a lot of these things, as with everything, when you're truly automating a human process, it's like the last 2% that is the hardest. And actually people like get held back if it can't complete that last 2%. And we're hearing that a lot, um, where, you know, actually so many candidates that are spoken, you're getting way more, way more. Like if you just think of, um, the amount of video media you're getting through your recruiting process, what you're describing is a situation where you get way more video that someone or something, some form of intelligence has to review. Right. Because right now it's a piece of paper. You're saying we're going to be some video. And actually the amount of times that the clarity on what the AI should recommend you do with this candidate, it might only be some low double percentage of times where they flag, hey, I'm not sure what to do on this one. Someone should review. But in absolute terms, it's creating a lot more work for the people because they have to then go and watch that video and pass the judgment. Um, and so actually given you basically, yes, in a way you're increasing the friction for the. But you're reducing the friction of like essentially having to review how many conversations you have to review. And so people having to spend more time than they were before reviewing videos. So that's what we've heard so far. So I think the question is, can you get to the point where the economics really do make sense and the AI's ability to conduct a high quality interview or ask the right questions dynamically and gauge and assess the responses are such that you don't need this like overinvestment in human in the loop.

Host: Yeah, so totally agree. And this is why I think New Grad specifically is like where you start because there's going to be a ton of inbound anyways. Also you can like make more mistakes there. They're also like more AI native. So they're going to be used to like the experimentation in this topic. But with that process, like I, you know, again, if you equate it to going on campus, which we used to do, and it drove me crazy even back in the, you know, 2015, 2016 era of like, why are we going on on campus. This doesn't make any sense. And so if you can, especially if companies are still doing that, which some are, you can remove that piece of the process and then basically just skip the recruiter screen. Because AI in my mind is going to stack, rank these candidates. And so you're going to go to the first five. Like, is what's going to happen here. And ideally we're going to make a hire out of that. So I do think it's going to dramatically reduce the time spent from recruiting and interview teams and make it a better candidate experience. Um, so that's. I think you're right. That's probably the most contrarian part, is like when people actually get hired from inbound. Cause right now the joke amongst candidates is like, it goes into the black box. No one sees my resume. Okay, what's number two for you?

Silas: Okay, if that is your most contrarian one, then I do actually have some contrarian ones. And, uh, we're gonna, um. Okay, where should we go? I will say I'm gonna flip up my order. We make significant strides. Like the sort of. The full version of this is the ATS becomes invisible. And what I mean by that is it's not my job to play with an ats, it's an AI agent's job to go and fill that shit in. Okay. And so I don't interact with the ats. My AI agents do. Uh, and so this idea, this, uh, sort of almost sort of idea, frankly, that certain members of the recruiting team live inside this ATS and do all this work and move this thing around here, change this process. That's not like people are not going to do that. You're going to spend much more time out there in the world actually doing the work, as opposed to sort of setting up the system to do the work. And so I think increasingly, um, yeah, the ATS becomes invisible is my, uh, second contrarian prediction.

Host: Okay, so this is where I hard disagree. This is happening in 2026.

Silas: We might be pushing it in 2026, but we'll see how far we can get.

Host: I see what you see. That's really interesting. I hadn't thought about that, but you're totally right of just like how much bullshit is just like moving a candidate from stage to stage. Like metaview should be listening during the, uh, the weekly sync and then just do that after and say, look good.

Narrator: Look.

Host: Right? So like that just happened, but there's still a lot that's associated with that follow up. And so one, one of mine, that's Upcoming is. I'll talk about this. But like, say we say, uh, okay, yeah, Sile, we want to move forward to an on site interview. It's not like, oh, automated, like send an email. Like you got to get on the phone, you got to build the relationship.

Silas: Exactly.

Host: Yeah, but like, that's, that's where I don't think you're removing that much work.

Silas: It's. I'm not saying, I'm not saying that is removing that much work, to be honest. I'm just saying that the, uh, it's just, uh, it's, um, it's not. That's the work about work. You know what I mean? So people are going to do the work, which is calling the candidate and keeping them warm and keeping them engaged and yeah, I'm going to be, you know, obsessing over my talk track for that. And maybe having that one extra minute with the hiring manager to clarify what is. What does he or she think I should be, you know, focusing on. On that call? I'll do that for sure. I just won't have to, uh, make sure it's logged, you know, because that's, that's just.

Host: Okay, I like it. All right, that makes sense. And I'm aligned. Like, the work about work is, is dying for sure. And AI is going to help kill them. Got it.

Narrator: Hey, everyone. We'll be right back in a moment after a word from our sponsors. Hey, everyone. So if you haven't had a chance to subscribe yet, Nolan recently teamed up with the good folks at Mediview to bring recruiters and talent leaders a truly great podcast tailored to them. Instead of fluff and buzzwords, they bring you real in the trenches stories from the world's best operators. Instead of the same recycled opinions on LinkedIn, you'll hear Nolan's signature contrarian thinking and debate. Instead of theory, you'll hear actionable tactics and real metrics. Check out the 10x recruiting podcast today to hear from leaders who build elite talent machines at companies like Vercel, Coinbase and uber. Search for 10X Recruiting on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

Host: Just subscribe. All right, I have a 2A and 2B. So, okay, so 2A is 90% of sourcing will be automated by the end of year 2026. So I used to spend 20 to 40% of my week literally just like looking for the right candidate on Lita. Like that was a huge chunk of of my week. Obviously. Like, we've launched a tool like metab tool on this is so gangster. And this is part of the reason, like I have conviction on this. I don't think I'm ever going to go to zero. Like maybe I can see it, but I still, like, I don't know, like, this is probably like the Waymo analogy of like if my Tesla or Waymo can drive me everywhere, will I never drive? Like, I'm probably going to drive sometimes. Um, so I see like a huge portion of that being automated by the end of the year. As AI and tech gets better now to be is outreach, automation will be an unmitigated disaster. Okay, so everyone thinks sourcing and outreach are the same thing and they're not. They are entirely two different things. Being able to find someone based off of a spec that I got uh, from a hiring manager on LinkedIn is completely different than getting that person to get on a call with me. And I think the amount of AI slop we are going to see from outreach is going to reach unprecedented levels. It's already bad. I think it's going to get way worse in 26. Which means there is significant alpha for intentional custom thoughtful messages to candidates.

Silas: Love it. Uh, the reason I'm just, I'm trying to find a message from someone who messaged me basically similar, a similar sort of thought. I just want to be extremely frank with you. I've spent tens of thousands of dollars with company name, company name, like sourcing company sourcing tool names, uh, and other natural language search tools. I don't know how you did it. Seriously, you guys out engineered every single one of those players. It's absurdly good. Uh, the future, um, in the future the source is eliminated and you focus on elite candidate experience with outreach and follow up. And the thing that I thought was really interesting about that is he exactly what you described. And this was sort of. I learned this through him's message actually. Uh, you know, he had, he has them separate in his mind. He sees his ability to do this elite outreach. He is very AI forward. He is very like, cut the shit. This is going to replace a lot of my work. He's not like, he's, he's not got it. He's not coping by saying, hey, outreach is like, he's, I'm not saying he's definitely right, but the fact is in his head he's like, no. One of the things I need to be really great at is getting people on calls and doing great outreach. And that's actually what I want to spend time focusing on. And metaview is going to help me get there. So he's like, very, very aligned with, uh, very aligned with you. I, um, don't think that, um. Yeah, I basically agree, like we've seen this with the sales. Sales, right. Where these AI SDRs absolutely sort of spam people to shit and you can get some initial spike in people, but you sort of scorch the earth and you can ruin a reputation. I don't know, I wonder whether we've. I definitely know met if you have learned that lesson on that. Um, so, yeah, but, but I can imagine people loving the idea you can press one button and a million emails get sent to people and almost, uh, you know, see where you go from there. And that wouldn't.

Host: Every early stage founder style. Every. Every early stage founder who just raised money, who hasn't really built a team before, is going to be like, oh my God, I can just press a button and it sources and does the outreach on my behalf. Like, it sounds so good. Until you've actually like been in the arena and doing that and seeing how it pisses people off or even like being thoughtful about your own inbox and how stupid the outreach I get is. It's so bad. So I think it's going to get worse.

Silas: And yes, and you get sample, um, you'll get like a sort of sample bias in the people who reply. Right. Because if it is bad outreach, actually only maybe not the best candidates reply. And so you think, oh, this is all terrible. So you sort of like actually get into a bit of a doom loop if it goes wrong. Basically. Did you ever do like any form of online dating?

Host: Literally never. I've never even seen an online app. Uh, I met my wife, uh, when I was in high school.

Silas: Okay, cool. Well, I've heard that some people, when they used to do this, obviously you have like this sort of swipe right, swipe left concept in some of these apps. And like, there were some people that would adopt the strategy of, well, I'm just going to swipe right on every single person. So basically I'm gonna say yes to every single person that I come across on this dating app and then I'll just wait to see who replies and then from their reply I'll decide whether I am indeed interested in them. But like, let me just get the pull down to the people who I know are interested. Uh, that's sort of what could be the problem with outreach is if you have a big button that says basically swipe right on everyone on the planet who matches this JD in the most basic way and then go from There and you just got this big cluster of uh, uh, fake matches as it were. Uh, uh, I can imagine that happening. You're right.

Host: But you nailed it on the selection bias, right? Which is like I think actually really good talent. Like they roll their eyes at it and then I do in Superhuman I go command K Marcus, Spam and then never like never hear from you again. So I don't know. I, I do think there's an aspect here which I didn't put in my predictions, but has been coming up in conversations with friends. We just talked to John Bischke earlier this week that uh, that pot will launch soon. But, but John's prediction is like the candidates agent is going to talk to the, the company's agent and I'm still like working like my brain hasn't fully connected the synapses of what that looks like. Like I need to see it in order to believe it. But I can kind of squint and be like, yeah, like for really good talent, like how good you build your AI agent may be like uh, a signal in the hiring process.

Silas: I think it's inevitable but it's little by little and it's one of those things you'll look back on in the future. Uh, and it will sort of like slowly, slowly realize that actually things have fundamentally shifted. I think really as I've sort of hammered on a bunch of times, it's obviously really good to have an analogy of this as a human. Some people have executive assistants and you sort of, sometimes you tag in your human executive assistant to go and handle certain emails with you, do the scheduling. Someone's got a question about whatever my dietary requirements before I go to this meeting. My EA knows my diet, so she'll answer. And so you know, piece by piece it's a, all the, all the person on the other side wants is the information so they can get on and decide. And so I think you can get into these very low stakes exchanges of information and every human on the planet will not have to spend time on that low stakes. And then gradually you'll just get these higher stakes more sort of um, specific uh, things that you trust the AI to do. And, but, but so, but I don't think that's a 2026. Holy shit. Look back on the year and it's totally changed. I think it's just like minor sort of changes. I actually think that was one of my, I didn't want to sort of spend too long on it. But your point around the screening? Um, I think that's A really interesting world for um, essentially AI avatars within the recruiting process, like personified AI agents is um, maybe it's not the screen because that's when you're starting to develop the relationship. Maybe it's some of the other state, maybe it's the in between. Maybe it's you know, um, when you sort of have a question as a candidate during the process and instead of waiting for the recruiter to get back to you in 24 hours, you can just have like a high bandwidth conversation with an AI. And that's, that's totally benef. That's like totally win, win right? Recruiter didn't have to spend time managing their inbox and answering those questions. Candidate got the information they needed right away. It's like not even debatable that that's better. So I think that might be the areas that you get. Um, it's not as juicy a prize to be honest, but it's, it's so beneficial to both parties and I think that's really interesting. The other thing I'd say is if you see these companies like Sierra AI or a lot of these um, companies that are helping you build uh, other like more customer support bots or even like Even these virtual SDRs, they expect their customers to spend two to four to six weeks maybe training that avatar to be able to represent the brand appropriately. I think that's probably the pain frankly that some people might have to go through is when they turn up and say, great, let's get an advertiser to do this thing without appropriate training and context to do it the way that you want it, it will do it worse than your team, uh, and it will do worse and at scale, but a much larger scale. And so there's like more of the worst thing. So I think that's what maybe, hopefully people don't have to touch the stove on that one and learn that too much the hard way. Which I think is why starting with some of the like lower, lower, less junior, more junior roles make sense. But I still think there's a risk there that you, it's really worth it to invest the time in training these things and I think as need to figure out what that means.

Host: I also think it's just a great experiment, you know what I mean? It's like you're going to learn so much from just like running that experiment that like you're crazy if you're hiring new guys and not doing it. Like just the amount of learning you and your team are going to get from like Opening up Pandora's box on that, I think is going to be beneficial for everybody.

Silas: So the prediction is, uh, there will be a backlash against human data extraction. What, um, I mean by that is there are these really high growth companies and the big foundational labs are sort of paying for this, that are, ah, essentially paying people to, uh, do, uh, human reinforcement learning for the model. So essentially labeling data like, hey, listen, we're looking for an accountant. We're going to pay you tons of money, tons of money per hour to essentially train our AI how to be an accountant. And that's happening across every job you can imagine. Um, and I think they'll end up being a backlash against this. I think it's sort of like a prisoner's dilemma situation, uh, which is, hey, if we give the AIs all of our sort of expertise, then they'll do more and more of our work. Um, now I think I obviously am optimistic about this and that'll be a good thing because if the machines can do it better than us, we can focus on other things that machines can't do. And that's the way things are going to go. But I do think that there will be some backlash, and whether that's regulatory backlash against extracting data, like paying people to give. Paying one accountant to give the knowledge of all the accountants on the planet to an AI so that all those accountants no longer can do that thing. Like, there's an interesting moral quandary there. And I think there'll be some form of backlash, either regulatory or just like in terms of protests and this sort of thing.

Host: Yeah, okay, so super interesting because yesterday I'm going to Vegas next week and I was like, looking up places to golf. And I'm like, you know, best places to golf, which I still Google search, um, which kind of makes me a boomer. Anyways, the first website, crushing it now,

Silas: man, that's like Gemini's. Gemini's.

Host: Yeah, right. So maybe I'm. Maybe I'm back. Uh, anyway, so I go in there and like, I go and try and copy and paste. Like it was like the third question. Oh, interesting. Copy and paste. And it's like, you cannot copy on this website. And I think the reason why is exactly what you're saying is like the, the author of the website knows that AI is scraping and they're like, nope, no, no longer, you can't. So I literally couldn't copy. I had to go in and like type it in into my tab. Uh, I never experienced that before.

Silas: Screenshot it.

Narrator: The.

Silas: You Got character recognition. These AIs come on now.

Host: One core. Anyway, so, uh, anyways long. Okay, so, so that's where I agree with you. I fundamentally disagree with the prediction though because for people to band together they have to like realize it's happening. And I think they're going to realize it's happening when it's too late.

Silas: I guess my prediction is people will realize. And like, I think I'm not a sort of a detractor of this practice, just to be clear. I'm just saying I think these companies are getting quite large and they're sort of sitting a little bit under the radar. They're not really telling the world this is exactly what we do. Uh, and there's a reason for that. And at some point people are going to sort of the truth will out, you know.

Host: Okay, so that's interesting. So I'll give you, uh, I guess this is kind of contrarian. Um, my next one is very related to that, which is I think the next era of social unrest comes from white collar tech workers.

Silas: Social unrest. You think they got that in them? Oh my God.

Host: Well, um, let me tell you. Yes. And why, uh, why is because the salaries that tech, uh, companies have given out historically have recalibrated the expectations of a gigantic populace. And now as companies have anyway, it's not just AI. Right. Like so it's not because of AI, but it's like, you know, a couple things. Right. In 2022, obviously like ChatGPT came out and companies got leaner. Right. Both things were true. Interest rates got higher. Companies have like, you know, fewer headcount. All that everyone knows. But there just is objectively more leverage when you're applying AI in the ways that we do every day. And so you don't need as many people to do the same things. Now, will companies have more or less heads? I think it's objectively less. I've been saying this for a couple years now and I think we're finally starting to see it in the data. But what's going to, the second order of that is, is that you're going to have this huge subset of people who have added value to companies that no longer, and they can no longer add value in the same way and they've been recalibrated to these extremely high salaries.

Silas: Yeah.

Host: And equity offers and benefits and all this stuff. And now they're going to feel rug pulled.

Silas: I don't, I don't, I can't figure out the way I think it's going to. If, if that's going to be. So. So basically what is literally happening most frequently now, I would say is people are uh, um, doing less like graduate hiring and like, you know, and literally if they're sort of like having to sort of frankly like re.

Host: Re.

Silas: Maybe like cut a team, cut part of a team, they tend to be keeping the more tenured people, um, which obviously makes sense in a bunch of ways because they're more experienced in this way, but they are like, you can be an exception to this, but as a rule they'll be less AI native. So I think there's this really interesting. There's something also interesting going on in terms of well, will the comp go down? Because it seems to be people are concentrating on almost retaining and keeping the most senior, most highly paid talent, um, and hoping that they figure out how to orchestrate the AI. Um, so that's, That's. I don't know. It's not happening now I guess, is what I'm saying.

Host: Well, okay, so. So my next prediction, we'll talk about what you're talking about, which by the way, silent. I have not shared predictions beforehand. Um, but what I'm specifically saying is, is that headcount is shrinking at companies. I'm uh, not talking about comp. I will talk. I'll talk about comp later. But with headcount shrinking, meaning those people. High earner. High earners historically now zero. And so when they go back into the market and they're looking for similar jobs and now because like their skillset is no longer valuable inside of tech companies, they have to go to another segment of the economy to where they're going to get repriced to market in a very brutal way.

Silas: And you think it'll cause un. Yeah. What type of unrest do you have in mind?

Host: I mean we've already seen it like Mandami was just, you know, elected in New York. And I think a big part of the reason why is like these jobs are no longer as they're. They're not proliferated in the same way as they were for the last decade. They're so much harder to get. And I think there's like a, uh, there is economic frustration and I think we're going to start to see it manifest a lot more. So I think you're going to start to see like more of those types of candidates, um, getting elected. I think you're going to see um, people get really upset with like what tech companies are doing in their neighborhoods. So like. No, we're not going to give tax breaks anymore for you to open an office here because like it's a data center. You know, there you, you employ 25 people and you're going to take all of our power. So I think those are the sorts of things that we're going to start.

Silas: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's. I don't know if you have this but I'm sure you do like in the US but in some cases when you have um, like state owned land that they want to build, um let's say apartments on top of uh, you sometimes get a scenario where you have as the builder, as the private builder of that apartment block. You have to sort of commit some of it to a library for the local part of it has to be a school. You have to also contribute to the school being built or the library being built or things like I wonder if we'll end up with a lot of that on data centers as well. Like okay, you're going to build a data center. This is for AI you have to sort of do this thing that's for the general people's good. Um, or perceived to be for the general people's good. Maybe that will be. And that will only happen when people force it obviously. So you need the sort of. Whether it's unrest or whether it's just democracy in action. I don't know. Um. But yeah. Interesting.

Host: Yeah. What's your next one?

Silas: Um, okay. Um. I think we will start to see the emergence of job titles that are agent managers. So I E. You are a manager, you are on the management track uh, of like within levelings within a company. You have no human, human forms of intelligence that you manage. You purely have artificial intelligence that you manage. Um, um. I think that's going to be a very like this is the decade of agentic AI Uh to get the most out of it, you need to put embed it into your organization and orchestrate it. And there are some people who are better at that than others. And those people are going to be agent managers. It's going to be a high status management role.

Host: I like it. And you know if we just go back to sourcing, right, which was one of my projections earlier, I could totally see one person in charge of agentic sourcing, right. Because like you got to calibrate the agent, uh, you got to make sure that it's like getting all the right inputs. Uh, you got to be searching for new software that's. Or new agents rather that are. That are launching. And so you're kind of like the, you're kind of like the captain of like one of those ships. I can totally see that. I like that one.

Silas: And like just as like, I mean if you ask any people manager or any uh, anyone who has an opinion on people managers, like what's the number one most important skill? I think fighting it to be number one would be like communication. How good are you at communicating? You know what separates you might be a mid ic but you could be an elite manager. And the thing will make you elite is communication. You could be an elite IC and end up as a mid manager because you're not great at that communication. And it's very similar with AI agents. Like literally that ability to understand where an agent has gone wrong. Communicate to it in frankly a very like um, uh, usually quite a human way, but sort of it's almost like a new emerging skill obviously how to communicate to uh, AI agents, um, and build up sort of almost like what's akin to rapport. So you sort of get each other over time. Um, I just think that's going to be a real job. And again some people will be better than others. Sourcing is a great example. Like I imagine a world. One of the things that's lacking in a lot of agentic products at the moment, including Metaview to be to be fair, um, is almost like perf, perf review of these agents. Like hey, this agent is out there sourcing for people. Has it found m good ones or not and where's it going wrong and do I need to get in there and coach it? And it's like, hey, you keep on getting this wrong on this thing. Let's add this to your sort of bit of context. You never get that wrong again. Okay? And that is literally again the analogy with how you manage humans is very strong. That is literally what people will do at the moment. We don't have enough of the almost the heads up display. And of course perf when you do it with humans is terrible, right? You talk to them like once every half a year or something or this sort of thing. Whereas if you literally have like a fire hose of insight you're getting about how this agent is performing all the time and we can work out how to help you visualize that and understand what to do to improve how it's performing then you know, you can obviously make it super effective. So I think that's going to be a really cool, cool job of the future and I think we'll start to see it this year.

Host: That's really well said. I really like that. That's super well said. And to be more, uh, poignant on it, 2025 was the year of just like agents. 2026. What you're saying is it will be the year of agent performance. Like, you're actually going to get value from this thing. Uh, because like Most agents in 2025 are dog. And no one really says that. They're like, oh my. They're all, they're all forward casting.

Silas: I think, I think, I'd say they, I think it's just unpredictable. I think that's what I think. I think. And your ability to exercise control and make it so that it's going to do a good job for you is like, is, it's, it's sort of like a little bit whimsical. Like, how do you figure it out? And sometimes it works. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree with that. But I still think there's like some pretty magical things some of these agents have done. Like, you know, obviously my team uses coding agents like all the time, every day. Uh, and it's not because it's, and they're not, they're not dog shit.

Host: That's, that's, that's very, very well said. Which is like, especially for like, coding is a great one. Even sourcing right now with what you guys are doing is like real value. For the most part. It's been all hype. I think next year will be about performance and substance.

Silas: There's one, one thing that's quite interesting right now, um, with we see it in our data and even like I, I, I've, I've started sourcing a lot more since we launched our agent because it's a much more fluid way to do it. Um, is you sort of can get, sometimes you might have like a, uh, you've been working on this, you've been having this conversation with it to find people. It's not going the way you want it to. You just start a new one and sort of start, start again. That's like the best, the best way to sort of like is to just sort of start again on it. So I think it's quite interesting to think, how is that going to persist? That you just think, fuck it, throw that away, I'm going to start again. Like new, almost like new context window and let's start again. Or do you start us to almost think of, hey, this agent who I've got working on my AE searches, I'm like invested in making this a success and when it doesn't work out, I'm going to address that. And make it because it still has a lot of context that you built up over time that you want to maintain. Um, so it's going to be interesting to see how that that literally like almost the analogy develops over time.

Host: Yeah, I like it. All right, my next one, 2025 was the year of $100 million offers for researchers. 2026 will be the year to where crazy things happen for non technical talc. So we've already seen like, you know, I, I'm, I'm basically piggyback. I was thinking about this and then the growth by design news happened. So for those that don't know, Growth by Design was acquired by Cursor, Aqua hired. Whatever happened, uh, I don't know how much. All I know is that like, I know Adam, love Adam. For him to disrupt his lifestyle that he had, which was dope, to go work at Cursor full time had to have been pretty lucrative. And so I think what's going. And that's like, you know, very respectful. Nothing but positive things to say about that whole team. But like, really what happened there is like they're acquiring Adam and Mike. And the reason why they did that is because there's no one else like those two guys on the planet. Now those guys are not designing anything that has to do with the LLM. And I think you're going to start to see that in other functions of like this notion that, uh. Oh, well, this is like our, this is our cap on comp or like. No, you're going to start to see creative again with the very top of the food chain. Kelly, uh, my podcast host on HR heretics talks about back in the day at Yahoo, they used to give away like jeeps as part of the sign on bonus. Which when I say it out loud sounds like from another. Like, it feels like Jurassic park of like, that's like another world.

Silas: Yeah.

Host: But I can see it happening again. I really can. Because how do you get people off the sideline to come do the thing that they're so uniquely good at? And it's not just build the model, because one thing is building them. Then we got to go sell it to people. Then we got to go grow it, then we got to go build the rest of the team. And so when you start to think about it, you could start to see the. The New York Yankees are like making me throw up right now. The Los Angeles Dodgers of tech companies. And it's not just like, we need a great pitcher and a catcher. We need every, we need elite at every position. On the field.

Silas: Yeah.

Host: And those people have extreme agency today. And so how are you going to rip them out? Yeah, I think you're going to start crazy shit.

Silas: Yeah, I think that's like the same theme as my point on the VC talent partner exodus, to be honest. Um, maybe know the market sort of better and where, where those people are coming from. But, yeah, I think it's like the same. Same gist. Um, I think. Yes. But it's purely because I think the next two to four years are just an absolute race. We are determining who the platform generational companies of the future are over the next two to four years. And the prize is so big that not having the best person in every position, to use the baseball analogy, is like, it's not worth. You might just. Don't take the risk. Do not take the risk. We've given you, you know, a billion dollars, frankly. You know, you only need to break off a little bit of that, uh, to really change some very, very talented people's lives. So. Yeah, I, I see that for sure. I wonder whether part of this is like, um, like, who is like, actually the, the real brains behind like, uh, the winning Formula one team. Right. It's obviously not the driver. Right. The driver is just the person who has to like, make sure this thing lives up to its potential. This car, that other, uh, Red Bull.

Host: I know exactly. It's Helmet, Marco. Red Bull.

Silas: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like far smarter people have put all this energy in. I mean, if you obviously think about. And through the fullness of time, you know, cars never used to be a thing. Right? There's just an incredibly. Like these inventors essentially, who create these amazing vehicles and they're just like, it's so. But the highest paid person, of course, is the driver because they're like, well, we, this, we put so much effort in now. We've invested so much in, you know, building this machine. In the case of like, AI, that's like training this model. We invested billions and billions of billions. Can we really afford to have a VP of sales who isn't like, absolutely the best we can have given all of this cost we've sunk into it. And so I think you just. That's one thing. That's one reason that drives those really high, I think, um, like comp. For non technical people. Uh, and then the other thing I think is just culture, I think, like having a company where everyone knows if you end up resenting the people who are getting so much money and if there's not some bringing up of everyone else as well. If there's not a rising tide for the other people within that organization, you can also have a um, negative culture. I don't think that's driving it to be honest. But I think at least ah,

Host: it

Silas: will exist if you don't also compensate

Host: other people really well, that's really interesting to think about it that way. I would actually take it a step further, which is Netflix talked about this in the early 2000s of We Are building a sports team. I now think that is now widely shared amongst a number of mega large companies. And when you build a sports team, um, it's just basically like you're performing or you're not. And I don't give a shit how much money we paid you. We will execute you in the middle of the night if you're not meeting expectations.

Silas: They won't do that. But yeah, they'll uh.

Host: That's what's uh, happened. That's what. Dude, that's Brandon iuk. Like I don't give a shit how much money we gave you and, and sunk cost. You know I talk about this all the time with, with my wife and my kids because I feel like the best people on planet are the best business people on planet earth do not have sunk cost. And so it's like I don't.

Silas: They don't have the size or they don't have sunk cost.

Host: So what I mean is, is like we went and spent a ton of money to get the absolute best person. So that's my prediction. And then the second part of the prediction is going to be like we will move on unbelievably quickly. We don't have this like the sunk cost of like oh well we gave them that money. Uh, like no, like that's going away as well. Is like nope, we will rip you out and bring in someone else because we know we can do it now because now we're no longer afraid to spend the money.

Silas: Yeah, I think uh, obviously with the hundred million dollar comp, uh packages for the researchers, I think that was even. I don't know if it came from Zuck the line, but I think a lot of people in the industry were describing it in the words of like, percentage of like percentage of market cap is like, is negligible. So like it would be irresponsible not to have 10 of these people, 20, 100 of these people. There's a, there's apparently only 150. I guess that's interesting thing. Like the researchers, if you speak to, if you listen to um, uh, like these AI researchers, they'll basically tell you there's like 150 to 200 people. Everyone knows their names within industry. Like who are the people that you want who are going to make the next breakthrough or whatever it might be. And so it's a very finite list I guess. I wonder if it's as well understood that would be the thing that holds it back I think. I don't think it's as well understood who are uh, like literally what is the list of the best people at these other things? I think maybe it's more opinionated there. Um, so maybe I don't think it'll go as far but I definitely know the stakes are high and when the stakes are high, obviously you'll see that come through in comparison.

Narrator: Yeah.

Host: Ah, which was fun. You got any more?

Silas: I got one more. It's more A.I. um, sort of specific than recruiting. But um, I think you will really start to see the foundation labs. So you know, OpenAI Anthropic, um, obviously Google already do this what I'm about to say but OpenAI Anthropic really move deeper into applications. So if you think About Right now OpenAI has one really popular app on the consumer side. One a popular application, ChatGPT. Sora is like emerging, it's getting more popular. That is their game. They're going to go all in on trying to build that consumer application marketplace. But like suite, um, and I think the sort of the space for Anthropic is to do that on the business side. So I think it's going to be really interesting to see like what parts of the business application layer do they really start to start to play in. Um, so yeah, I think there'll be like very significant moves into the application layer by those players.

Host: You know I've been hearing other people say that and ah, for whatever reason when you just.

Silas: That is a completely, completely new thought. But we had it from me, yeah.

Host: What I was saying, what I was about to say was it. It finally the analogy clicked in my brain for Google. Like Google think about all the apps now you have in your G Suite, right From Gmail to Docs to, to sheets to presentations. For whatever reason I hadn't thought about it the same way for LLMs. Like people keep saying I'm like okay, yeah like I heard about the pulse thing. Like oh, it kind of seems like, kind of seems like a party trick right now. But like obviously like by like no, no no, they're going to build apps because they have this One, they have, you know, two. Well they have one piece which is the LLM which is unique to like them and then the other piece is, is they have unique data on you because you're just vomiting your entire life into this thing all day long. And so like, yeah, my imagination probably isn't good enough to think about like what apps are going to be the killer. That's why I'm not a product person, turns out. Uh, but obviously like if Google did it for the G suite and it's like part of my everyday. I'm looking at my Google Doc right now.

Silas: Google hasn't done great in enterprise, uh, overall but like Gmail is like pretty cool.

Host: It's a huge business. Google enterprise, huge business.

Silas: Yeah. Um, but uh, really what that was was the technology advancement there was before that point you wouldn't have email in your browser. It was just they had managed to render and manage your inbox using JavaScript on the browser. Uh, it's very similar to Figma. Like actually doing all this very intensive work in the browser was like the innovation there. Um, but sort of from a form factor perspective it was the same. Um, some people talk about Gmail almost like an invention. It's like, well it looks very similar to what it used to be. It's just on the browser. So I don't know about that but whatever. The point is that was what was the sort of exciting thing was there the difference with AI and the reason it's riskier is because I would expect them to take a very different approach to the application. I wouldn't expect it to be, hey, we've now done a version of that. I guess ChatGPT has done it with the OpenAI have done it with the browser and it looks roughly similar to other browsers, uh, although with some obviously cool features. But I just wonder whether it's more going to be baked into the interaction you have with the AI. Um, and again a little bit more invisible. Like hey, if I'm having this conversation with Claude and clearly the output is I'm going to email one of my team, do I just fire, like how do I just instruct the agent to go and do it? And again it's a little bit invisible. But the point is that is now my application for emailing my team. It's just that handles it for me and puts it in front of me and this sort of thing.

Host: Yeah, like watching Slack channels and watching emails, like making recommendations to you on how it can help. Like I can start to imagine some of those things. But, like, where it goes, I mean, it's. I think it is going to be wild in 26. That's all I got silent. So. So if you're listening to this, if you've made it this far, first of all, unbelievable. Second of all, it's the longest episode we've ever done. Um, second of all, please disagree with us. Like, I would love to hear where people, uh, agree or not agree. And then the next piece is like, what. What are we missing? What do you guys think is going to happen in 2026? Because that's what I'm really interested in hearing is like, all right, we all got different opinions on where the world is going. We're in the middle of a platform shift right now, which is the biggest in humanity. So I want to hear what you guys have to think. But honestly, s. What a 2025, man. What a blast. Yeah.

Silas: Great year. Best year of my life.

Narrator: Wow.

Host: Me too. I love it. All right, guys, we'll talk to you soon. HR Heretics is a podcast from Turpentine, the network behind Econ 102, Moment of Zen and Turpentine VC. Subscribe five stars. Share it on Apple, YouTube, Spotify, anywhere you get your podcasts. All the things.