Why AI Won't Kill Jobs

Neil and Eric break down why the AI job apocalypse narrative is wrong, using fresh data on software engineering demand, AI-powered productivity, product manager hiring trends, and the rise of “AI-pill” talent. They discuss how AI is increasing output instead of replacing workers, why companies still need top engineers and marketers, and how AI is reshaping business efficiency, hiring, and organizational structure. They also debate bloated corporations, eBay’s spending problem, and why technology historically creates more opportunity than destruction. Key Takeaways: ⬛️ AI-powered workers are becoming 100x more productive ⬛️ Software engineering and PM jobs are rising again ⬛️ AI is increasing workloads, not eliminating teams Chapters: (00:00) AI Job Apocalypse Is Wrong (00:42) Software Engineer Demand Rising (01:07) The Rise of AI-Pill Engineers (02:02) AI’s Impact on Marketing Teams (03:49) One-Person Product Teams (04:47) Software Jobs Growing Again (05:32) AI Wage Growth Trends (05:47) Why Technology Creates More Jobs (08:55) Work, Family, and Productivity (12:38) AI as an Equalizer (13:13) Product Manager Hiring Rebound (14:57) AI Adoption in Marketing (15:49) GameStop vs eBay Debate (18:15) Why Big Companies Are Bloated (21:11) The Problem With Growth at All Costs

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:45Speaker 00

  So let me just show you this, Neil. So we like charts, right? So check this out. So narrative violations abound. Demand for software engineers is actually rising, okay? That's number one. Number two, software devs are rising as a share of new jobs. That's number two. Number three is AI-exposed industries are seeing above-trend wage growth. And then open PM jobs, so product manager jobs, haven't been higher since 2022. Okay, check this out. So demand for software engineers is rising. So you look at this from 2025, this is like, I don't know, June 2025 inflection in software hiring. So it was going down, indeed, job postings for software engineers. And then all of a sudden, boom, it shoots up, this dark blue one over here. But overall, indeed, job postings are still trending downwards.

• 1:30Speaker 00

  So what does that tell you, Neil? Let's start with this one first. Shows that people need more engineers because they want to keep using Claude and all these other solutions to make their companies more efficient, better, and grow faster. Yep. So my take on this is if you have AI-pilled engineers, they're doing more ultimately. So everyone's talking about this concept of token maxing, which we'll get to in a second. But the reality is now your engineers are truly, people used to talk about 10x engineers. Now we're talking about 100x engineers, we're talking about 1,000x engineers. You can just do a lot more with one individual who's powered by this app. Here's a caveat, though, Neil. So we have some engineers in Eastern Europe.

• 2:10Speaker 00

  Talking recently, one of them, I was like, hey, um, do you know other engineers that are like you that are super AI pilled? Cause we'd like to have more people like you. We need more engineers, right? And he's like, oh, no, no, no. You wouldn't want people like us. I'm like, why? He's like, no, no, no. I'm like, what do you mean? No. And he's like, he's like, because they believe that you should still write code by hand. I was like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. We can't have that. So yes, demand for software engineering is rising if they're AI pilled.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  Yes. Uh, and it's not just even software jobs. We're seeing, at least on our end, we haven't seen for most roles, at least in marketing, where AI has been causing more layoffs. We've been actually seeing the usage of AI increase in marketing. So for example, I was giving a lecture.

• 2:58Speaker 00

  Um, lecture?

• 3:00Speaker 01

  Lecture or a speech. Uh, it was at a university, though. That's why I was saying lecture.

• 3:04Speaker 00

  Uh.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  Uh, to around three hundred people. That was yesterday. And during that lecture, almost majority of the people were, and this was in Spain, but majority of the people in there work for global brands, right? So they were just, you know, think of a big, large corporation that's publicly traded. They were working in their Spain office. And I was asking how many of them in the room use Claude? More than half. There was roughly sixty percent that said that they use Claude. And when I asked them, how many of your marketing departments have gone smaller? No one really raised their hand. I think there's maybe one or two, but it was a small amount. And it was for more reasons related to business performance than actual, uh, more business performance than actual, like, because of AI.

• 3:50Speaker 01

  And then when I dove into it even more with them, and I asked, what has AI done to your marketing? You want to know what the number one thing everyone said that it's caused with humans and workers?

• 4:01Speaker 00

  What?

• 4:02Speaker 01

  It's caused them to have to work more. So they've all found that AI has not reduced headcount. It did not reduce the amount of hours they're working. It's actually causing more work.

• 4:13Speaker 00

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• 4:48Speaker 01

  Not that, yes, it is making them more efficient in marketing and in other roles, but it's also causing them to have to do new tasks and new work, and that's adding up.

• 4:58Speaker 00

  Yep. So one thing that we'll come to as well, I was just looking at Coinbase cut, I think 14% of staff or something like that, and they're just trying to reimagine the organization, right? So the org chart, I think they want to have less and less layers, but Brian Armstrong, the CEO and then co-founder of Coinbase, introduced this concept known as the one-person product team, right? Or the one-person teams, because the one-person now can do so much more. I just look at a lot of the things that I shipped on my own this week where I just didn't want to wait. And like, that is happening now, right? So I think the demand for not just software engineers, to Neil's point, I think it's demand for AI-pilled talent is continuing to rise, and it's going to continue to rise because these people can do so much more. I think the key thing, which we'll talk about maybe later, is how you go about making

• 5:42Speaker 00

  sure that you create the conditions where they can continue to do good work and do more, but you don't want them to burn out. That, I've mentioned this on a couple of times the last few episodes, my number one concern right now by the AI, from the AI people, AI-pilled people, is that they might burn out. So that's something that we're talking about. Now, software devs are a larger share of new jobs. So jobs created overall, software devs versus overall. So this is cited from Morgan Stanley Research, AlphaWise. So software developer is in the blue over here, and then in the gold, you have percentage of US created jobs, which are software developers. So that's going up. I mean, it's still, you know, we see it rising from a low of maybe 1.5% to a high of, this looks like 2.5% or so.

• 6:24Speaker 00

  And then on the, by the way, you see software developer jobs on the left side. So that's in the thousands. And so it's, it's kind of, it went to a low of like, I don't know, this is like twenty two thousand to a high of thirty five thousand or so, or I guess this is like thirty seven thousand. Okay. Next one over here. Above trend wage growth for system design and AI exposed industries. So computer systems design and related services, higher AI exposure. So that's all moving, you know, up and to the right. This is, you can see the dotted line over here. This is chat GPT.

• 6:54Speaker 00

  I think this is interesting. Again, I think we're just going to see more and more abundance. Technology has always created more. People are like, oh, you know, someone was like leaving a stupid comment on my Instagram. It's like, well, you know, this time it's different. It's like, oh, you mean it's different than the agriculture, the, when we moved to industrial age, when we moved away from agriculture, where it was like ninety, what, eight percent of people were in agriculture and then it moved to two percent? Like, oh, we've never experienced a shift like this before. Like, what are you talking about, man? Technology changes everything. And I'll just ask you a question, Neil. Would you rather be the king of the world five hundred years ago? Or would you rather be who you are right now?

• 7:28Speaker 01

  I'd rather, I'm gonna go with I'd rather be who I am right now, because when you said five hundred years ago, I was thinking about it. I'm like, wait, they probably didn't even have toilets.

• 7:39Speaker 00

  Exactly, exactly. Let me break it down for you a little more, Neil, because I've somehow.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  Oh, wait, no toilet paper?

• 7:46Speaker 00

  No, no, no. You don't get that. Let me tell you what you do get. Let's, so Neil, I did some research on this, right? If you live in a castle, let me tell you how it works, okay? If you live in a castle, when you take a poo poo, okay, when you're like, it goes all the way into a pit. It's like an outhouse, okay? And then it smells and it comes all the way up. Okay. Not only that, you have, everybody has like a bunch of diseases and things. You don't have air conditioner, no air conditioner, no toilet paper, no toilet, okay? No cellphone, no internet, no nothing, okay? And you just sit on your throne all day. So you'd rather be the king of the world or who you are today? Exactly. Technology has made our lives better and that will never stop.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  But if I had to bet, I think most people would choose the king from five hundred years ago.

• 8:23Speaker 00

  You know why, Neil? Because most people, you just need to think about it a little more. That's all I'm saying.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  No, and, and when you answered it right away, my first inclination was like, who wouldn't want to be a king? And then I started thinking about it. I'm like, ah, five hundred years ago is a very different time. You're missing out on too many things that makes life easier, like no microwave. You know, like, think about food options, the variety of food we get right now. You wouldn't get all those varieties of food five hundred years ago.

• 8:50Speaker 00

  No DoorDash, no Uber Eats, right? No, no flight, okay? No, nothing.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  No, no, but you're a king. Someone will get you all that stuff. But yes, you would have to go to places on a horse, right? It's just like, there is no car.

• 9:03Speaker 00

  That technology wasn't around. You didn't, you weren't the benefactor of that technology because it didn't exist. You know what I just thought about, Neil? You're going on a vacation soon, so you say there's bad internet. Why don't you bring a Starlink with you? I actually have one in my closet.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  Ah, I have Starlink as well. I've thought about that.

• 9:20Speaker 00

  Okay, there you go. But you don't want to, if you don't want to game it, that's good. Okay, anyway.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  I don't want to game it because my kids want to spend time with me where I'm not working that much. I can't take a whole week off or 10 days or however many days are booked. But, um, you know, I was talking to my wife and she's like, still work. Just try not to work for more than like three, four hours a day. And I'm like, I think that's very reasonable.

• 9:41Speaker 00

  That's so generous. That's good. That's three to four hours. When I was just traveling in Mexico last week, I was working three, four hours a day. It's great. And then, and then, um, the, the girlfriend was like, oh, uh, do you, do you feel like you're bored or whatever? I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. You need to take more time, you take more time. Okay, it's good. Anyway, I have this chart up and then we can.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  But before we go to the chart, did I ever tell you how much time my wife requires me to converse with her on a daily basis? Like, give her attention, like, how much time?

• 10:10Speaker 00

  No, 30 minutes?

• 10:12Speaker 01

  10 minutes a day. She's like, look, just try to interact with me for 10 minutes a day. And she's like, I'm happy with that. She's like, I know you're busy working, but she doesn't expect much. So I was like, all right, kids expect a lot more, so I had to do quite a bit more with them. My wife, 10 minutes, she's happy.

• 10:26Speaker 00

  How long with the kids?

• 10:28Speaker 01

  Uh, there is no set time. I try to, when I'm, when I'm in LA, if you notice, I don't ever do dinners with anyone, very, very rarely. I try to do dinners with my kids, no phones at the dinner table. Um, I'm willing to sit there for 30, 40 minutes. My kids probably last 15, 20 minutes. Uh, and then I'd probably do like some puzzles or other things like that or whatever games they want. I don't do that daily, but I try to whenever they want. Um, and it's more so me not doing it as much as they actually want. They would take it every day, but sometimes I'm busy. And when I am in LA, I try to pick them up or take them to school. If not do both uh on a daily basis. So that gives me thirty to forty minutes each way with them.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  Where there's nothing and we're just talking and see how their day goes. Usually if I ask them at the beginning, they're gonna give me random responses and and please excuse my language. But I'm like, oh, who'd you play with today? They'll be like poo poo pee pee, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, right? But then after like five minutes, they'll really have start having deep conversations. Like my son the other day, he has a bag that you that he takes to school. And I was like, William, when you leave the car, it's your responsibility to take your bag. He's like, what do I do? I'm like, it's your responsibility. You need to learn to handle your possessions and take care of them and be responsible. And he's like, no, it's your responsibility. He's like, I only have to carry the bag because you're forcing me to go to school.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  If you didn't force me to go to school, I wouldn't have to take the bag with me. So in theory, it is your responsibility. And I was like, okay, he didn't use the word theory, but I was like, all right.

• 12:05Speaker 00

  Do you do you feel like he's smarter than you at your age? Uh, uh, no, sorry, at his, uh, when you're the same age, do you think he's smarter than you?

• 12:11Speaker 01

  He's four, turning five. He knows the square roots of numbers in his head and he can do multiplication of double digit numbers. He can do a double versus single in his head. He can't do double and double in his head. He can do division in his head from a double digit to a single. But yeah, for a lot of stuff, addition, subtraction is easy for him. Uh, yeah, he is more gifted, but I I had to, I I'll also give this caveat. I think a lot of people in this world, including you and I, have more potential than where we're at right now. The difference is, and and this is a sad reality. I'm able to give my kids some of the best education there is in the world.

• 12:53Speaker 01

  A lot of the people who applied to my kids' schools actually come from China. And they had to put on the website like you need to actually live here. And it's very competitive from applicants from China for the school. I'm in Los Angeles because one of the best academic schools for elementary in the whole world. And because I'm able to provide those kinds of things for them and spend the money and get them private chess tutors and jujitsu tutors and baseball tutors and all this kind of stuff like one on one. They're able to learn and consume information way more than I ever was or even you are. And some of it, you could say is genetics, but I think a lot of it is the surroundings that you and I will be able to give the future generations.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  And I wish, you know, more of the world could experience that somehow, right? But there's only so much you and I can do from donating and stuff like that because we don't have enough to figure out how to get the whole world onto that kind of stuff.

• 13:46Speaker 00

  So let's tie this into how this applies to people as well, right? And so I see AI as a big equalizer as well. So, so here's the thing, Neil, I would say at age four, the reason I ask that question is age four, your son, because the things you're talking about, I'm like for sure smarter than you at that age or smarter than me, right? But because they were provided with the opportunity and also there's this amazing technology that will help equalize things, AI tutors and things like that as well, right? So I think things are going like, I know there's negative sentiment in America. But again, when you look at other countries, when they think about this stuff, very positive sentiment. So let me just pull up this, this other chart over here and we can move on. So if you look at the open roles of product managers since 2022, look, in 2023, it was 4,000.

• 14:27Speaker 00

  It was like, oh my God, like, look, it went from 10,000, dropped all the way to 4,000 in this time period. It was like, oh, we're not going to need product managers anymore, right? So it drops down and then what's happening is it's continued to rise from the low. It's risen 79%, okay? This is from Lenny's newsletter and I think this is really important because Neil. I think really AI-pilled product managers, we're actually looking for them right now. Actually, one actually reached out to me yesterday. He worked at Uber before. I think he worked at another one of these Silicon Valley startups and he's been like a head of growth. But if you're good at product, you have taste and you're super AI-pilled. The way I see it right now is you're able to combine a lot of the elements around design, development and product. And so I think those people are able to do a lot more with less, right? And so that's why this is going up.

• 15:12Speaker 00

  So again, a lot of narrative violations over here. And then Andreessen Horowitz wrote that the whole AI job apocalypse is a complete fantasy. I think we're going to see some turnover in some areas, but especially in a lot of AI-enabled industries. I don't think we're going to see that happen. So let's move on from this. Quick break. If you're doing AI SEO or content marketing in general, you know what the problem is. The problem is you're spending hours writing yourself or you're paying agencies lots and lots of money. And you're getting AI slop that sounds just like everyone else. That's why we built Clickflow. Clickflow creates production-grade content that actually sounds like you. Plus it helps you with other areas such as building internal links, creating FAQs and more. One customer even reported saving 90-plus hours a month just by using Clickflow. You can get a 14-day free trial just by going to clickflow.com.

• 15:57Speaker 00

  No more AI slop, just production-grade content that drives traffic and conversions. Back to the show.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, and we have some charts coming out in a few weeks. We did a survey and a study. And what we're finding is in marketing departments at least, the adoption. And when I say of AI, I'm not talking about people just using ChatGPT. I'm talking about them using like Claude Co-Work, Claude Code, et cetera. In marketing has drastically increased. And what we're also seeing is not only are organizations consuming AI, at least in marketing. They're not really firing and they're actually spending more money and marketing as an organization in total. Because A, people are getting more done and they're paying for a lot of AI tokens.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  And I believe what we're going to actually see is not AI causing a big cut in human capital, at least in marketing. But it's actually going to cause a big increase in spend due to the fact that we had to pay for all these. Tokens.

• 16:56Speaker 00

  Dude, okay, so let's go to token maxing in a second, but so let's hold that thread for a moment. But because you just mentioned the people thing, I'm gonna take the other side of this one for this topic over here. Okay, I'll take the other side. So let's talk about the economics of GameStop, 11.5 billion dollar company, buying eBay 48 billion dollar company, because you saw this on CNBC and Neil, because I know you watch CNBC. Um, I'm maybe you were traveling, so maybe you didn't see it, but the CNBC anchors were like, hey, so how do you, how do you make the math work? Like you're 11 billion dollar company. And then it was like a really awkward, like five minute interaction where it's like, look at the website. Look at the website. Just look at the website, right? He's like, yo, it's gonna be half debt. Um, half cash, and that's what we're gonna do. Did you see that interaction?

• 17:40Speaker 01

  Uh huh. But it's not gonna end up happening because GameStop can, they can't afford to buy him. And eBay is not gonna wanna take a lot of GameStop shares.

• 17:49Speaker 00

  Okay, so here's what I'll say. GameStop CEO says eBay needs way fewer people. So I saw this interaction over here. I'm gonna share my screen. Okay, so hopefully you can, uh, let me know if you can hear the audio as well, Neil. So here we go. This is from TVPN. All right. Do you see this?

• 18:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:03Speaker 00

  Okay, so this is the, this is Ryan Cohen from the CEO of GameStop, and then these are the two hosts over here.

• 18:08Speaker 02

  The reality is, uh, most of that marketing spend isn't making money, but everyone's trying to protect their jobs. And there's kickbacks, there's all kinds of perverse incentives. And so I'm running the business like a family business, you know, it's, it's really not that complicated. And you look at eBay spending two and a half billion bucks to grow 1 million users, 2 billion in cost cuts between sales and marketing and corporate overhead. It's not a lot, uh, and it's not something that's gonna take a few years. Like it's something that is gonna happen fast, fast, fast, because I'm putting leverage on this thing. And I don't wanna run a leveraged business, so I'm not gonna run it hot. I'm gonna pay down the leverage and I'm gonna increase earnings.

• 18:54Speaker 02

  They're spending five and a half billion dollars on operating expenses on 11 billion dollar business that has no inventory and is asset light. So it just, there's 11 and a half thousand employees and it doesn't make sense. It doesn't, you don't need, I could run that business, I could run that business from my house. Like it's eBay, it looks the same as it did in 1995.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  What he's saying is true, and it's not just eBay. Most large organizations are bloated. And they don't need as many people. They don't need to spend as much. And even if you look at Coinbase, yes, Coinbase laid off a lot of people, but crypto is not booming as it was once was like a year, a year and a half ago, or whatever that timeframe was, right? When Solana was in the 200s and Bitcoin was at all time highs. So Coinbase is probably not doing as well financially. And I'm just making this assumption. I haven't seen their earnings, but based on their stock price, I'm pretty sure I'm correct on that one. So when you look at it, a lot of these companies don't need as many people. It's just like Block

• 20:01Speaker 01

  and Jack Dorsey. Oh, we're laying off 40% because they know your company hasn't been growing. So you're spending all this money for people to grow the business, but they're not growing yet. The staff you need to maintain the business is a much smaller portion of people. eBay is spending a ton of money to grow, and he even said that the numbers, $2.5 billion to only add a million more users. That's not worth it. You're better off just saving the money, not growing as much. And whatever your growth rate is, it is, but make it much more of a cash cow. And I'm guessing that's what his plans are. Does that mean he can run that out of his home? No. Do I think that he believes he can run that out of his home? No, but he's just trying to make a point. And yes, it is exaggeration,

• 20:45Speaker 01

  but you can probably run that business with a few thousand employees. Worst case scenario, I think you can cut half. And I haven't dived into the numbers, but that would just be my rough guess. Best case scenario, you can probably get down to 1,000, 2,000 employees max.

• 20:59Speaker 00

  And here's what I'll say about eBay. So I think when you become larger and larger, a lot of bureaucracy comes and starts to become inefficient. This is again, we go back to the previous chart. You're still going to need the super AI pill people. You want those people on your team. I think it like some of the examples you gave me, like there's a lot of people, they take forever to respond. There's a lot of assistants. There's an assistant's assistant, and then they're flying around in jets. They're on vacation all the time and all this stuff. That tends to happen when you add more and more layers. You get to, you get further away from the truth. And so I think his thesis is strong. I don't know if he's going to be able To pick up, uh, if he's able to pick up eBay, amazing. Um, yesterday, what's funny, Neil is he was actually, uh, he was on X. He's like, he just started buying stuff on eBay and selling stuff. And then they banned him. He like shared it to Twitter that he, he got, he got banned, right?

• 21:42Speaker 00

  So I think he's great at driving attention for this. I think there's something to be learned. I think there's a great business lesson from this as well. I don't know if he's going to get it similar to you, Neil. Um, but I think his thesis is strong and somebody should try to pick it up and then, you know, do what he's talking about. Uh, and I think what's going to happen is, you know, those other people, um, that unfortunately get cut, I think they're eventually going to reskill themselves hopefully and then find something else to do. Um, and I think there's going to be, you know, more, more balance there. Um, but I think that first and foremost, when you run a business, it's about taking care of the business first and foremost. It's not about having an assistant and assistants assistants and having all these private jets and taking all these vacations and things like that. That gets away from the main point of the business.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, but the, the, the point he made about marketing, I think is something that I hope sinks in for a lot of you guys who are listening right now. You shouldn't spend to grow at all cost. That is a very terrible model. Yes, you can spend on things like branding. If you genuinely believe they're going to have a payback, they're going to pay dividends in the future. And if it's a long payback period, that's okay. But spending foolishly year after year after year, especially in an older company like eBay, spending 2.5 on sales and marketing billion, 2.5 billion a year on sales and marketing and adding a million new users based on the data that he's sharing. That's crazy. That doesn't make sense. But that being said, yeah, we'll talk to you guys later. Bye.