The K-Shaped Future of Work

In this episode, hosts Neil and Eric break down the K-shaped future of software engineering, marketing, and white-collar work in the age of AI. They explain why senior talent is winning while junior roles struggle, how AI creates seven or eight out of ten outputs, and why taste, speed, and bias to action now separate winners from losers. The conversation covers remote versus in-office culture, AI content overload, the coming slop apocalypse, and why human judgment still matters. This is a must-listen for founders, marketers, engineers, and creators navigating AI-driven change. Key Takeaways • AI rewards senior talent and high agency • Seven out of ten is the new baseline • Taste and speed create unfair advantage Chapters (00:00) K-shaped future explained (00:24) Seniors vs juniors hiring (01:00) AI seven to ten gap (02:22) Team A vs Team B engineers (03:28) Why P&G avoids remote deals (05:39) Marketing agencies and AI (06:10) AI search citation shift (07:10) Slop apocalypse debate (12:23) OpenAI vs Anthropic usage (16:57) Bias to action wins

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:44Speaker 00

  In the blue, this is senior software engineering hiring, okay? Are you following?

• 0:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:49Speaker 00

  And then red is junior engineering hiring, okay? So juniors are going down, seniors are going up. And so when someone says the K-shaped future of this, the way this is, this article starts off, developers are cooked. If machines can code this well right now, what's even the point of engineering? But we're seeing the same things for marketing across the board right now, if all this can be done. So my whole thing right now is I'm just gonna, I think, to motivate people to get off their butts, I'm just gonna be making videos of me doing these tasks in 20 minutes or so. And if I can get it seven or eight, like, wake up. Wake up, guys.

• 1:23Speaker 01

  But the hard part is, is they just have to understand that seven or eight isn't good enough for customer work or even your own work.

• 1:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:30Speaker 01

  Because everyone's using AI and everyone's creating seven or eights. You have to figure out how to get to 10.

• 1:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:35Speaker 01

  And what this does, and Eric's not saying you should settle on the seven or eight, it's you take the seven or eight, and then you go spend your time to make it that 10.

• 1:44Speaker 00

  That's what we call taste.

• 1:45Speaker 01

  Yes. And that seven or eight that AI did helped you save a lot of hours, so you should be able to get to 10 much faster.

• 1:52Speaker 00

  Yep. And here's the kicker here. So he says, look, consider two teams, right? So engineering is not being, it's being displaced but not replaced, okay? So you have teammate, and you've worked with engineers like this before, okay? So teammate. Teammate cares about impact, not activity. They handle ambiguous problems without paralysis. They understand the product, business, and the Data, not just the code base. They design high leverage systems and actively reduces complexity. That highly reduces complexity. They adopt new tools quickly and apply them with taste. They obsess over the user experience and they find creative solutions to hard problems. Versus Team B, Neil, for engineering, okay? Team B, they build, they build before understanding the problem. They fixate on performative code quality. They bike shed details instead of making users happy. They complain about headcount and stretches timelines.

• 2:36Speaker 00

  They add process when things feel chaotic. And they debate libraries and design patterns as a form of procrastination. And so Team B is gonna have trouble in the future. Whereas Team A, the ones that have the high agency piece that we're talking about, the taste and just the ability to get things done quickly, those are the ones that are going to win.

• 2:51Speaker 01

  I agree with you.

• 2:53Speaker 00

  Yep. All right. You pick one. We have about nine minutes left.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  Let's talk about what to do about the AI.

• 3:01Speaker 00

  Oh, wait, wait, Neil, you like this one. Before we do this, Slapocalypse, Slapocalypse.

• 3:05Speaker 01

  Okay, thank you.

• 3:06Speaker 00

  So, so Procter and Gamble, I, I, I was talking to someone recently. I don't know if we talked about this, but I think he, oh, he's going through a process right now. So he's selling his e-comm company, okay? So Procter and Gamble is trying to buy his e-comm company. And so he's talking to Procter and Gamble. He's like, you know, he's talking to his founder, he's like, you know, at Procter and Gamble, they, they own what, what brands that the Procter and Gamble have? Remember?

• 3:30Speaker 01

  Dude, they have so many brands. Diaper brands like Pampers, Gillette.

• 3:35Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 3:35Speaker 01

  Toothbrush, I think Oral, Oral B.

• 3:39Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  Is Procter and Gamble.

• 3:42Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  Uh, I'm blinking on brands, but let's see. Okay, Olay, Pantene, Tide, Downy.

• 3:49Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 3:50Speaker 01

  Charmin.

• 3:51Speaker 00

  Great.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  Braun, Vicks, Crest.

• 3:54Speaker 00

  Okay, so a ton of brands, right? So guys, the owners of Crest, Tide, Downy, Procter and Gamble, they told a founder who they're in the process of buying their company right now, that like, what we've learned over the years is we don't buy remote companies. And the founder is like, why don't you buy remote companies? They're like, we've tried buying so many of these remote companies, meaning that the culture is remote, it's remote work. And it doesn't work because when we buy them, there's no real culture, right? Versus when we buy the in-office companies, those are the only ones that work for us. So they're, they're saying, hey, from an M and A standpoint, that's, this is not for everyone necessarily, but at least from what we've seen, the, the remote ones never work. And I think that's an interesting discussion point because you bought, you know, handful of companies these past years, right? And so, but you, most.

• 4:38Speaker 00

  Most in-office, like what's the percentage of in-office versus remote? And what are the differences that you've seen?

• 4:44Speaker 01

  So.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  I, the, the biggest thing that I learned when in-office versus remote, it's easier to bring people up to speed when it's in-person versus remote. By far, I would say that's the biggest advantage because there's way more knowledge transfer that happens when people are next to you.

• 5:02Speaker 00

  Which is interesting. So you say, you say that, watch, Neil. So when you say there's way more knowledge transfer, doesn't that just mean the knowledge transfer in general is a lot faster?

• 5:09Speaker 01

  Yes. And you're, you're seeing that.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  The thing that's valuable about in-person is knowledge transfer from seasoned execs who have been doing this for a long time. It transfers to younger people way quicker than ever.

• 5:23Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm. Yep. I'll tell you, I, we just had a new senior brand manager for my YouTube start, right? And the way I'm like, I'm talking to him every day. But man, if we're in the office, I, we'd be probably accelerating like four times faster or so. But I'm just like, I'm like not letting my grip off. I'm like, no, you're gonna learn all these things. I'm bringing you with me. I'm gonna make you great with AI as well. I'm gonna make you great in content. I just, um, but I just think it's interesting that, that that was an insight from Procter and Gamble because they buy a lot of companies.

• 5:46Speaker 01

  They buy a lot of companies. So they like everything that's in-person versus non-in-person.

• 5:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, they've learned to no longer buy remote companies. Just doesn't work for them. Yeah.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I, I wouldn't say that you can't build a remote company because there's a lot of successful remote companies that are worth a lot of money. It's more so you have to figure out the culture of your own company and works for you guys. And sometimes when you bring in something that's very different than what you guys are used to, it's just a disaster.

• 6:11Speaker 00

  Yep. Um, before we move to the AI slotpocalypse, um, so this one's a quick one, but 85% of AI search results come from third-party sites. So originally, everyone's talking about making these listicles and publishing on their sites, right? But it's not hard for these LLMs to quickly figure out, oh, they're just publishing on their own site. So, um, this was published from Air Ops and he's like, we've analyzed thousands of AI search results across hundreds of brands. The content on your website accounts for roughly 15% of why you get mentioned or cited in AI responses. The other 85% comes from everywhere else. So partner sites, news articles, third-party roundups, Reddit threads, whatever. A lot of this, guys, is, uh, guest blog posting. You know, a good chunk of it's guest blog posting back in the day, so.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  Uh huh. And Eric and I call this, remember we talked about this like six months ago being like the problem with chat GPT's algorithm? Is they, you can pull a listicle on your own website and get cited and eventually this is gonna go away cuz it's like the old way of spamming Google and stuff like that. I get it's different, but it's similar to how easy it was and we're like, this isn't gonna last.

• 7:10Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's too easy to game and when it's too easy, then you know, it is what it is. So um, this AI slotpocalypse piece. So this is from Ally Miller. So this was a disagreement between Andre Karpathy, so this strong AI scientist and also this guy Boris, who actually is the creator of Claude Code. Okay, so they actually were disagreeing about this. So um, they were just saying, look, um,

• 7:35Speaker 00

  when the cost of generating anything at any quality level plummets and there is a, there's still market leverage for attention, generators will take advantage of it. It's why one company is cranking out hundreds of reels slash TikToks per day. It's why another is cranking out 3,000 podcasts per week. Code might improve, but the content and social and research worlds are rougher waters. I too predict a slotpocalypse this year. One that Mosseri, I think that's the CEO of Instagram, I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that right, and Presser and Ek, Daniel Ek from Spotify will be thinking about daily. The smart generators are already thinking about second order impacts. Examples for content creators. If everything is AI generated, maybe I should only post human things. If everything is AI generated, maybe I should have a separate community that's off socials.

• 8:18Speaker 00

  If everything is AI generated, maybe I should host more in-person events. And then if everything is AI generated, maybe I should make a social media app that is only for AI bots, right? So there's a lot of this AI if, if, if situations. The big question for me is less on quality because it will get there, right? So we talked about like, what was it? It's already a seven or eight out of 10 for these like advanced copyrighting and I think you and I have fairly high standards. So a lot of people's probably eight or nine, if I'm being honest.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  Some people is probably even tens. They're like, wow, this is great because they couldn't write the copy.

• 8:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think we're particularly hard when it comes to copy, right, on psychology. But the big question for Ali at least is less on quality because it will get there. I'm thinking about whether people continue to engage, whether people will continue to engage with AI-generated content. Whether they build affinity for AI creators and at what level compared to humans and whether they rebel against it and at what speed. So that's the coming Slapocalypse and I think you and I can both agree that there's marketers especially, we're going to take advantage of Slapocalypse.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  We are, but I believe this world is changing where people are fed up with AI content. A lot of the younger generation are stopping to use TikTok and platforms like that because they're overwhelmed with the AI content. And we're seeing it and it's just becoming really ridiculous. And one, a lot of what's created is just fake. Two, people are just fed up with it. So much so, if you look at Sora, no one talks about Sora and it's not doing that well anymore.

• 9:39Speaker 00

  You know who uses Sora? My entire building, the people who work in the building, right? They're like, I was, I was talking to one of the guys who's, um, one of the food runners. And um, I was like, what are you looking at on your phone? Because I hear all these noises, right? He's like, check this out dude. And he's like doing the Sora and he's like, the picture is like of another employee that works in the building. And they're like doing Soras, like making fun of each other. I'm like, so you, you actually use Sora too? He's like, oh my God, it's so big, blah, blah, blah. So I think you and I are just out of touch.

• 10:02Speaker 01

  No, have you seen the recent articles on Sora?

• 10:05Speaker 00

  It's probably the usage is down.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Usage is down a lot.

• 10:07Speaker 00

  I used it for like a day and that was it.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's, uh, there was a big financial site that just wrote about Sora.

• 10:13Speaker 00

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• 10:48Speaker 01

  Sora usage down. Uh, where is it?

• 10:54Speaker 01

  Okay, as of Jan 20, this is from AI overviews. As of Jan 2026, the usage for OpenAI's store app has experienced a significant decline following a strong initial launch with reports of a 45% drop in monthly activist stalls in January 2026 compared to the previous month. It's a massive drop.

• 11:14Speaker 00

  Did you see the graph where it shows Anthropic is clearly overtaking just OpenAI? Oh, Ramp published something. Okay, so Ramp published, they showed the spend per company.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, let's go back. Ramp is a credit card company that shows you where, Ramp is a credit card company that, where corporations can get a card, just like they get a Visa card or Amex card, and allows them to spend money, you know, for their corporations.

• 11:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I'm sure, and thank you for that. Okay, so this guy, Aura, so this, this is actually really good. You'll, you'll like this. So Ramp, he launched this vendor section where he shows vendor spend, right? Check this out. I'm gonna pull up, um, let's pull up SEO and AEO intelligence. So this, because they can see spend for companies, right? So you can see over time, SEMrush, they were up here like Q1 of 2024, and then they're kind of going down on SERP API because all these people are building on top of it, is going up, and then Profound's up here and they're doing a good chunk, right? And you can see market share, like SERP API is going up 10% adoption rate. SEMrush was 73% on these SEO tools, and then Ahrefs is 23%. I actually haven't, this is pretty cool.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  This is pretty cool.

• 12:18Speaker 00

  Right, for sure, I'll send it to you after. I knew I'll take a look at it. But they actually showed the difference between, check this out. So when you look at, oh my God, stop trying to sell me stuff. Okay, so when you look at generative AI, I think that's the one we'll click, generative AI. Okay, so, oh my God, look at this. Who is this before? This is OpenAI. Look at this. Q1 2024 is like 90%, right?

• 12:42Speaker 01

  Also, keep in mind the market's increased as well. So you can't just look at the bar meaning someone dropped in revenue. Eric's not trying to say that.

• 12:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, fair point. So we're like, we're just, I mean, you know, market, this is just market share over time. You can see adoption year over year as well. But then you see who comes in here. You see Anthropic starts to really jump in here, and it's going to continue to increase. And so our, our point of saying all this is that, I think, when we're talking about OpenAI, I find myself using the Claude app and Claude code a lot more, and I find myself using ChatGPT a lot less now. I don't know about you. I don't know how, you're using Gemini quite a bit, it seems like.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  I use Gemini quite a bit. I use Chat GPT for health, probably like for uh three minutes, no more, ten minutes a day.

• 13:28Speaker 00

  For your health?

• 13:28Speaker 01

  For my health. I think it's amazing.

• 13:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  It tracks all my food to eat. My kids have this new thing. They started it in late December. Uh, I don't know if I ever told you, or did I tell you? No, I know I told Mike. So my kids in public, I'm a pretty skinny person overall, will start pulling up my shirt and be like, look at this belly, so cute. And then they put little fuzzies in my belly button.

• 13:50Speaker 00

  That's funny. What's a fuzzy?

• 13:51Speaker 01

  Like a fuzzy like cotton or like a little like lint or whatever it is. And they started, they went from doing it at home. I'm like, what the heck? So my daughter started doing it first. I'm like, where the heck did you learn this from? So then my son starts doing it because he's copying her. She's older. So then, you know, it started snowballing from there and I keep telling him to stop. And I'm not one to like hit my kids or anything like that. Like I'm not going to put them in a timeout for saying, hey, look at your belly and like poking at it and stuff. Um, and I'm pretty skinny. Like if I wore a shirt, you would see nothing. I can pinch an inch. So it's not really a belly. Um, so then they started doing it in public and I got fed up with it. I'm like, okay, I'm going to lose this pinch of inch.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  So I started keeping track of claw, not uh through Chat GPT, my daily calorie deficit. Because it's the easiest way to burn uh fat. No one would know this more than anyone else. Is that correct? So then I, from December twenty ninth to what is today? Jan thirtieth, because I was so fed up with it. I've dropped, uh, I went from one thirty one to one twenty six point four.

• 14:56Speaker 00

  Isn't it funny? All the time you spent losing weight instead of disciplining your kids?

• 15:00Speaker 01

  I, I tried trying to convince them. I couldn't do it. So it's just easier. I'm like, you know what? Forget this. I'm just going to get rid of my pinch inch. I probably have like another two pounds. So another two weeks and I'm done.

• 15:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, okay.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  And then after I will not use Chat GPT.

• 15:13Speaker 00

  And then they'll find something else to get you. But, okay, the last thing we'll end off with here on the Slapocalypse piece is, you know, I think this is, you know, we're going to see a lot more of this. I think people like these conversations, right? And I get a lot of good comments on this podcast, but I think in-person events too. I think um people. Making content saying this is one hundred percent human generated. I think that's gonna do well. I think people making content in different languages. So I think this lotpocalypse, I think a lot of people are gonna take advantage of it. But I do think to Neil's point, a lot of people are fed up with it. And that's a good thing. I think it's good for people to be, and go outside, right? Go touch grass or something, right?

• 15:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 15:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:45Speaker 01

  Yes. People need to live normal lives and interact with other humans. That's the way to do well in today's world in business or anything. I think people are like forgetting this interaction. I saw something from Marc Andreessen, which was a really good interview. It was published somewhere on the internet.

• 16:02Speaker 00

  Lenny's podcast?

• 16:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's talking about how developers believe they can do product and

• 16:06Speaker 00

  Oh yeah, the Mexican standoff.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, Mexican standoff. And how product designers think they can do development and the other features as well. And I think he's very spot on, but you still need in an organization, the people who are exceptional at development, or the people who are exceptional at design. Because AI isn't there fully yet. And even if you think, okay, AI is gonna be there and it's gonna write everyone's copy. Or AI is gonna do everyone's development. Well, if you can't figure out how to do it better than what everyone else is using and stand out, you're gonna fail. And I'm better at giving example for marketing than I am for development, because I'm not a developer. But in marketing, if AI is writing everyone's website copy and boosting conversion rates,

• 16:49Speaker 01

  that'll be the new norm. It won't convert as well because everyone sees highly optimized copy. You then have to go and figure out how to pivot and make your conversions better than everyone else. An example that everyone can relate to is if you look at ads before. Ads before were purely, or majority of companies would strive for Super Bowl quality ads. Would you agree with that? That's what people really want it.

• 17:13Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  Now, if you look at today's advertising on the social web, and even sometimes on TV, you're starting to see a lot more lo-fi stuff. Why? Because it converts better and people are tired of the over polished stuff. And I think that's what's gonna happen in AI, in which you're gonna have all these people using it for the same thing. You're still gonna need humans that are the best in class at what they do. You combine them with AI, you're gonna crush your competitors.

• 17:37Speaker 00

  All I'm gonna say to end it is as long as you have a bias to action and you're curious, you will crush everyone around you. That's all I'm gonna say. And we would like to hire you. So both of our companies are hiring people like you. So let us know and show us your bias to action by showing us some examples first. Just don't give us a random reach out, please.

• 17:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, don't send us an email being like, you're doing this wrong. We want to know how we can do it better and show me a real example.

• 18:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, or like, just like if you want editing work, like do like one test edit, okay? It makes you stand out faster.

• 18:08Speaker 01

  But before we go, dude, does it irritate you? Because for me, I get so many editing emails on a weekly basis and none of them ever show any examples.

• 18:16Speaker 00

  None.

• 18:17Speaker 01

  And if they do show example, it's example of some random other account. And it's like, you could have used AI and showed me an editing example of my own stuff.

• 18:24Speaker 00

  If you just go the extra mile, you're gonna run circles around everyone. That's all we'll say and we would love to work with you. All right, bye.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  Take care.