Latest / The Learning Corner by Precursor / Episode #81: Does Your Boss Have AI Brain?, Career Bets That Compound, Too Much Is Happening Too Fast

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Episode #81: Does Your Boss Have AI Brain?, Career Bets That Compound, Too Much Is Happening Too Fast · The Learning Corner by Precursor

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You want the cocktail party safety of a job that's easy to reference, that's high status,
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that people will recognize, but you also want the adventure of a startup.
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One of those things is the more powerful force.
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And just be honest, I tell people, do you wanna be in a startup, or do you wanna be the kind of
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person who'd wanna be in a startup?
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It's the week of May 25.
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Welcome to the Learning Corner, a Precursor Ventures podcast.
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Welcome to the Learning Corner by Precursor.
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I'm Mia Farnam, and I'm joined by RGP and managing partner, Charles Hudson, where we'll
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be talking through the articles and Goodreads that caught our team's attention over the past
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week.
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We're definitely in much better digs than we usually are.
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Our friends over at AngelList opened up the doors to their recording studio at AngelList
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Studio right around the corner from us, right in the heart of Jackson Square.
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AngelList builds software for investors to back world changing startups, and we are so proud to
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have them as a portfolio company and precursor.
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Our first piece this week is from Rachel Carton Substack titled, Does Your Boss Have AI Brain?
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Rachel spent weeks talking to marketers about what it's actually like to work for leadership
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that is fully AI obsessed.
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The core problem she services is not that companies are using AI, but that almost none of
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them have a real strategy for how.
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With a recent Gallup poll finding that while 44% of employees say their organization has
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begun integrating AI, only 22% say leadership has communicated a clear plan for doing so.
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The result is that the fun, judgment heavy parts of the job, the brainstorming, the
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writing clever copy, are the exact things getting handed to AI first.
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While the tedious work stays with the team, one quote that stuck with me was from a marketer
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who said, it sometimes feels like their job is just training their replacement because the
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meeting notes and campaign data their bosses are feeding into AI tools today is the exact
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context that internal agents are being built to act on tomorrow.
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Rachel closes with a quote, unless organizations develop clear strategies, AI in
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the workplace becomes a bull in a china shop with those who never even wanted it tasked with
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cleaning up the mess.
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This piece focused on AI within the marketing world Yeah.
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Which, for me, I feel like is a space where creativity reigns above all, and judgment and
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taste, all those things are at the forefront.
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One quote to me stood out, so much of good marketing is instincts.
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Seeing the signs before anyone else, translating a spark into a smart campaign,
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knowing the line between brilliance and brash.
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With AI, we're watching decision makers run big ideas through a machine that finds the median.
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We've talked a lot about the importance of upskilling across different industries Yep.
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And knowing, you know, how much effort to be placed to showcase to your boss that you're
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taking hold of these tools.
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But one question I kept on coming back to is, are there just full industries that really
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should just know their place of how much benefit and value they're gonna extract from
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these tools and then leave the rest of it for where true judgment and taste really bleeds
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through?
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I read that article and was like, this is so sad.
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If someone told me just run it through AI, be like, well, why do you need me?
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Why don't you just run it through AI?
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Right.
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I'll go do something else.
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And at the funny moment, like and the person gave it a meme and was like, is this funny?
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Bad.
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So bad.
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Usually when I read these things, I'm like, have I seen something like this before?
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And the closest analogy I can think of is when website AB testing started.
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Everyone was like, oh, we're just gonna AB test everything.
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And there's a lot of internet memes and old jokes about all AB testing pretty much ends up
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in the same place in adult content.
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Because you end up figuring out what people click on and it's Right.
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It's not the most inspiring stuff.
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And I think there was an era where it was like, well, all you have to do is AB test stuff, and
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let the winner of the AB test, this whole like data driven, we just like test, test, What we
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learned in that era is two things.
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One, tests are pretty good at eliminating obviously bad things, but maybe not helping you
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discover good things.
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And second, what you test and what you put into the top of funnel is maybe as important as the
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testing methodology.
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And so I think this idea that like, oh, you no longer need judgment or taste.
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We're just gonna throw a bunch of stuff against the wall and see what sticks.
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It's not a very inspired way to do marketing.
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I also don't think it's a very successful way to do marketing.
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And I suspect the same thing will happen in AI, is that there will be a lot of median, boring,
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not slop, more like milquetoast content that gets produced that's neither inspiring nor
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terrible, and will do nothing for your brand from a copy standpoint.
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And the people who can think outside of the box, who can be creative, will get rewarded.
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And look at my inbox, and I get all these emails.
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Precursor Ventures, commitment to invest in like AI spam Right.
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Next.
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Based on your previous investments in x y z companies, and your focus on AI spam next, it
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doesn't help.
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It really doesn't help.
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I also feel like that manager who's probably telling their subordinate, run this to AI, is
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maybe getting the same message from their boss, is maybe getting the same message from their
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boss, is getting the message from the CEO, who's getting the message from the board.
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And so at some point, somebody has to say enough.
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Here's how we're gonna use these things to make ourselves better, and here's the things we're
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not gonna ask AI to do.
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I like how the article focuses on the fact that we, right now, in this market are constantly
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talking about these are the specific jobs that are gonna be eliminated with AI.
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Yeah.
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This piece focuses on, well, what about the people who currently have to live in these jobs
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today?
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Like, what is it like?
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What are the recommendations for people if their boss is this person who has AI brain,
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who's really constantly just demoralizing them by saying everything must hit Claude before it
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hits me.
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Someone had a good point in the article too.
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It's sort of like, well, if that's the case, I'm like, why do you exist as a leader?
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The realist answer is not leave your job and go find something different.
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I think people today more than ever are just, wanna hold on and and preserve what I can.
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But how can you live in that environment and push back in a way that feels appropriate?
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I think people are gonna just start lying.
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Oh.
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We put it on a copilot page.
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We make it look like it went through copilot.
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I'm like, I think at some people point me, we're just gonna start lying, Bill.
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Yeah.
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I put it to Cloud.
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Okay.
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This is great.
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Cloud must really help.
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Uh-huh.
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Just kidding.
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I did it myself.
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I don't think you can do overt resistance.
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I don't think you can say, I'm not gonna use this.
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You'll probably get fired.
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But I think people are gonna find subversive ways to, like, comply with AI mandates to still
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feel like a human who has value.
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And I think we have hit this point where, at least in, like, the tech industry, it is low
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brow to just say that I passed something through Claude.
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I just took the output.
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That's not acceptable within tech.
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But in other industries, I don't think that they've gotten there as quickly of being like,
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these are the levels of what's acceptable and what looks good.
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And that does come from leadership.
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Rachel, she makes a point that I think it's lost in a lot of the broader job displacement
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conversation, which for marketing, feedback and approvals have always been frustrating.
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That's just inherently part of the job.
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But at least when there is this mutual understanding that your manager was actually
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taking the time to review your
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work.
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Mhmm.
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And that feedback came back from that experience no matter how broken down it felt.
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It feels like maybe the real cultural loss here could be that the humans potentially are not
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part of that review process at all, especially for a place, again, like marketing.
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Do you think that companies are underestimating how much of employee trust and satisfaction and
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growth comes through that experience of just being able to have to run to another person,
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walk things through, and present them in that manner.
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I do.
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And I think people are just really focused on efficiency.
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And it's interesting.
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I use Claude a lot when I write things sometimes, and I'll ask for ways this could be
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improved.
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Or I'll say, this is the point I'm trying to make.
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Does this come through clearly?
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The same way I would ask a human editor.
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But also, in the same way I might have a human editor who says, you should change this.
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I might say, no.
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I actually like it the way that it's written.
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This sounds more like me, and this is the way I wanna communicate this point.
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And other times, I give the feedback and I'm just like, wow, that is you are right.
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I didn't really make that point as clumsy as I thought I had upon reflection.
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But to your point, I would never just like, okay, wrote this thing, I ran it through, is
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this good?
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It also wants to agree with you.
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That's right.
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Sick infancy is real.
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And so I just think we're going to make a lot of mistakes because this is one of those
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technologies that looks so powerful and perfect out of the box.
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A lot of people are gonna say, just take the output and deal with it.
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I hope we get past that very soon.
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Well, next piece is Mkharnadir's sub sack title, The Career Bets That Compound and the
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Ones That Don't.
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Opens with a clarifying framework.
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Most people think of a career as a series of jobs with titles and pay packages.
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But the better way to see it is an accumulation of four kinds of capital, including skill,
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network, reputation, and optionality.
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He outlines six bets that compound.
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Going deep on one specific thing, joining a company at the right stage before it wins,
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building one durable network through actual work, maintaining a public presence around a
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specific area of expertise, earning legible reputational wins, and investing in mentors who
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become peers over time.
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On the flip side, he is equally pointing out six bets that look like they're compounding but
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aren't.
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Things like title chasing, brand chasing, comp driven lateral moves, optimizing decisions for
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the wrong audiences, and generalist drift, and conference networking over real collaboration.
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Peace closes with what he calls the ten year question, a simple forcing function that asks
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you to project yourself forward and ask which version of the next move makes more sense to
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you who's looking back.
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I mean, I I brought this piece up and wanted to talk about this beat because something that's
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coming up a lot in conversations with people in my age group, in SF in New York City, this
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feeling of, especially if you're in tech right now, you work at one of the big companies.
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You're like, how is it that I am in this ecosystem and so close to all of the
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opportunity, but I didn't get a piece of it?
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And the conversation that then spirals of like, had I only learned about OpenAI five years ago
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and channeled the right people and made that switch.
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Had I only done x, y, and z?
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Had I only like, had I not done investment banking or consulting and gone to a startup
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right out of college, then I would have been in a different situation.
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And I feel like that conversation is happening a lot.
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I think it's happening for founders as well.
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Was having a conversation with a great founder yesterday who was just like, you could do this
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all day with yourself.
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Constantly looking around and being like, have I made this move or presented in this way?
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I'd be in a different spot.
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All this advice is really helpful, but how much of it do you feel like it's actually
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actionable?
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Like, you can actually truly plan this out and make all these specific steps in the hopes of
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reaching this perfect place ten years from now?
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I think my big takeaway from the article is it'd be great if life worked that way.
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I always tell people, ironically, it will all make sense when you tell it in reverse because
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you'll be at the endpoint.
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And then everything will make sense, but it might not make sense in the moment.
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But I have a lot of these conversations with people, and I like this framework because I've
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used a version of it, but it's less organized.
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But I usually ask people like, what are you optimizing for here?
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And usually I tell them, do you want certainty or do you want an adventure?
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And I don't mean an adventure like a fun adventure.
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An adventure is like a risky journey.
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So sometimes people are like, well, you know, I want the freedom and autonomy of a startup, but
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I want the pay package and job security of being at a safe company.
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A lot of people would like that.
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That is not a combination that really exists.
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So which of those two things is most important to you?
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And oftentimes, when I find people trying to make a career trade off or decision, you just
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ask them, like, what else are you considering?
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Well, I'm looking at Amazon, Adobe, and Google.
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So you wanna be at a big tech company.
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You should just pick the one of those companies where you think you will be the most successful
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and where you'll have the best experience because that will create the best reputation
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and the best, like, track record because functionally, all big tech companies are kind
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of the same.
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If someone tells me, hey.
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I'm thinking about a three person startup and Microsoft, I'd say, well, you're not clear in
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your mind about what you want because you can't be equally interested in those two things
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because they're literally the opposite.
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And so sometimes I meet people where I'm you want the cocktail party safety of a job that's
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easy to reference, that's high status, that people will recognize, but you also want the
11:23
adventure of a startup.
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One of those things is the more powerful force.
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And just be honest, I tell people, do you want to be in a startup or do you want to be the
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kind of person who'd want to be in a startup?
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Right.
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I meet a lot of people who want to be the kind of person who'd want to be in a startup.
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I think this is a good framework, and I oftentimes do meet people, particularly in high
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prestige places, who are thinking, well, how's it gonna look if I do ThingX?
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Well, it depends how ThingX turns out.
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I had a bunch of friends who left Goldman in 2002 or 2003 to go to Google, and they weren't
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thrilled about it because Google was the one place that was hiring, and we were still on the
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back end of the .com bus.
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And it ended up being a transformative professional experience for them.
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Made a lot of money, they met a lot of people.
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And I think about my own career, and there are jobs I had where I'm like, wow, I didn't know
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at the time the network I built at that company ended up being hugely valuable.
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For example, my first real startup job, I took it because I'm like, I just wanna be exposed to
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more risk.
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I wanna be in a team where there's not five levels.
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And I joined a BD team where it was me and one other guy, it was me and the VP.
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That was our team, and he's like, this is it.
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There's no cavalry.
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Like, and
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you have to feed and it was some of the most impactful growth experiences I had in my
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career.
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But it's not a company that most people would recognize if I mentioned it.
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And I think so many times, particularly MBAs, graduates I meet, or people who've mostly
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succeeded in life, I want network capital, and I wanna build a reputation, and wanna be great
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at this function, and I wanna make a lot of I'm like, wow.
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These are a lot of compound goals.
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Hope you can get these all in one job, but maybe pick one.
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Also, think one thing that wasn't discussed as deeply in the article was just the value of
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sometimes just being patient
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Mhmm.
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And just time being the thing on your side.
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I have found in a majority of cases, it's the people who've just stayed and been patient,
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wrote it out in the highs and lows.
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It's paid off, but it's certainly not a sexy story to say.
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And how crazy is that?
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Like, in today's world, it's just like not cool to say, I've been at the same job for fifteen
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years.
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I mean, two things I'll say is, I left Google in late o seven, and I was hanging out with
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someone I used to work with, and he joked, he's like, do know how much money would we have made
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if we just stayed at Google for the last thing?
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I'm like, a lot.
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I've never done Yeah.
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Math a a lot.
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But that isn't what I was optimizing for.
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Right.
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I wanted a life that was different.
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And I'm very happy with the choices I've made.
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I think the other thing that that does really track me up is I had a bunch of friends going
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back to Google who were at Google, and they were there for their requisite time, and they
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saw Facebook.
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And like, well, this is pretty clearly most likely the next Google.
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So they all went over early, well before the world knew, but after insiders.
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Yeah.
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And then they were there and then some of them went to Quora and some of them went to
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Pinterest and some of them went to Twitter.
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I do have a set of people who are like in this ring of information where they know like, hey,
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I'm gonna treat this like a portfolio.
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I'm gonna spend three to four years vest most of my options at these companies.
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And while I'm there, I'm gonna keep my eyes out for what I think will be the next lily pad that
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looks like the thing when I joined it.
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And those people are really they move in little packs and groups.
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Yeah.
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And you see them moving through companies.
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I would probably go on a limb and say those people aren't optimizing for success.
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They probably just love the challenge of finding what's the next thing and helping build
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that.
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And when I ask those people, they're like, it was cool being at Twitter when we launched the
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retweet.
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And it was cool being at Google when this thing happened.
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It was cool being at and it's more the experiences of the people.
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Because at some point, they don't have enough money.
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And at some point, it's like, I just wanna be a part of these iconic companies in important
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moments.
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I helped work on, like, v one of x, y, and z, and it's it is a special experience.
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Also, these people grind.
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It's not like I think when people describe these stories, they're like, and then I was
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there.
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They were probably working around the clock Mhmm.
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Five months at a time.
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And so when I think people paint out this version of what they wanted their career to
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look like, I think they forget that a lot of it comes with sacrifice in one.
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You can't have it all in every single way.
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Yeah.
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I mean, for me, probably this one of the single most helpful things that happened in my life in
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this dimension was when I was a sophomore in college at Stanford, and we heard from a bunch
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of very successful professors about their entire career.
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And they were the ones who were like, this will all make sense at the end of the day.
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And they told us, oh, I graduated, and I was looking for a job, and I did this.
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And instead of telling it backwards, they told it Yes.
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Forward, but you knew the end.
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And they were pretty honest.
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I took this job.
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I didn't realize how important, or I met this person when the time I didn't realize it was
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gonna be.
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It'd be nice if these things were linear and deterministic.
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I think you should make informed choices.
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That's how always tell people.
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Just know what you're expecting to get out of the next thing you do.
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One last piece here that I felt like I had a little bit of pushback on, so I'm curious about
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your perspective.
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You said basically, generalist drift is a non compounding bet.
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So saying that if you're a generalist, that will always be something that's lower tier than
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being hyper specialized.
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I think that's changed right now in this era.
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I was just in a conversation with somebody who works at one of our portfolio companies, does
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really well.
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And we were talking about how generalists who can move the ball and understand where to go
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upskilled with AI, you can execute in ways that is very rare, and that's just, like, such a
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good skill to have.
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Didn't know if you feel similarly or if you have perspective.
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I do think we're reentering a world.
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I used to draw this picture for people.
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All startups can usually benefit from a generalist really early because there's a bunch
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of these jobs that don't require a full time person but are meaningful.
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Someone's gotta set up the HR system, and someone's gotta set up the ticketing system,
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and someone's gotta be the first product manager until you have a full product manager.
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Then someone's gotta work with the bookkeeper to close the books.
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There's all of these jobs that exist for a moment in time where if you're good at process
16:46
or problem solving, and then at some point, you get specialists, and then the specialists get
16:50
rigid, you're like, God, I need another generalist person here.
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Mhmm.
16:52
Like, work on special projects, or work on new initiatives, or start something new.
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And there's this wave pattern of whether you need generalists.
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I think we're about to go through a major generalist way because I think generalists are
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gonna be far more empowered than ever.
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And I think the risk of being specialized right now is that AI might make the value of
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specialty knowledge far less special.
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I will say that if you're a hyperspecialist, one of one, you'll never be replaceable because
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what models can never pick up on is how you think and process information through your own
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lived experiences.
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But it is interesting to kind of think about the rise of the generalist.
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When I was coming up in college, I think people were, like, pick a specialization and, like,
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figure it out.
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And if you don't have one, probably lie and just say that you do because, god forbid,
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you're this person floating around with nothing but a good attitude.
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Our last piece is from The Atlantic written by Charlie Warzall titled Too Much Is Happening
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Too Fast.
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He makes a case that it is not just the technology itself making people uneasy, but the
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pace of the conversation around it, a relentless whipsaw of breakthroughs, reversals,
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apocalyptic framing that he calls AI malaise.
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He points to a Gallup poll showing only 18% of Gen Z feels hopeful about AI.
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It's a 9% drop in a single year and notes that the industry's own messaging is a big part of
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the problem with executives warning that everything will change while offering really no
18:09
coherent positive vision of what actually comes next.
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A line that stuck out the most to me was his observation that the most common feeling about
18:17
AI right now is somatic.
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It's a low grade of difficult to place anxiety from loud people constantly suggesting that the
18:25
near future will look very little like the present.
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This framing that's being actively produced by inside the industry is obviously not just a
18:35
response to the technology itself.
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It's just the conversation that's swirling.
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I live in it a lot.
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We obviously talk about it on this podcast all the time.
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But we do live in SF in New York City.
18:45
Yeah.
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So I wondered how much of the, not panic, but constant is the appropriate level if you had
18:52
just taken yourself out of these markets and placed yourself somewhere else that feels a
18:56
little bit more middle of the ground.
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I keep thinking about, like, Ashley from Coalition's piece.
19:00
We have a marketing problem on
19:01
our end.
19:02
Yes.
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Every time I hear people talk to AI, it's super powerful.
19:05
It's gonna wipe out all these jobs.
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And no one has anything uplifting.
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If you're on the capital side, this is great.
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I'm gonna get so much more work out of the people who work for me.
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There'll be fewer of them.
19:15
They'll be more productive.
19:16
I'll make more profit.
19:16
It's a very ownership oriented view.
19:19
Yeah.
19:19
If you're the bottom, you're like, oh, all of that's gonna happen
19:21
to me.
19:22
To me.
19:22
And no one's telling me what's in it for me.
19:25
I think these data center protests, whether they're about electricity or this whole water
19:29
thing, or just in general people being like, I don't want more of this.
19:32
Protesting this data center in my backyard is one way to kinda stop this from happening even
19:38
though I know it just means they're gonna build the data center somewhere else.
19:42
I don't think most of the things I read about AI offer a lot to people who aren't already
19:47
winning.
19:47
If you're the owner of a company or you're a VC or like, well, portfolio companies are gonna
19:52
make a lot more money.
19:52
These are good things, but like, they're gonna make more money by hiring fewer people and
19:56
swapping humans for GPUs.
19:58
And I find it really interesting because I live mostly in a world of AI enthusiasts.
20:01
Like, why don't other people why?
20:03
I'm so excited.
20:04
It's great.
20:04
I have five agents doing these things where I was like, people see this and they're like,
20:07
that's the sound of my job going away Yeah.
20:10
With no real sense what will replace it.
20:12
Don't worry.
20:13
Technology is creative destruction.
20:14
It always creates new jobs.
20:15
People like, well, what are the new jobs?
20:17
Tell me what they are.
20:18
Yes.
20:18
I'd like to prepare myself for them.
20:19
Right.
20:19
Everyone's like, well, we don't know what those are yet.
20:21
Well, this is the problem.
20:22
That's a great point.
20:23
I think when people rebut with there will be new jobs.
20:25
Great.
20:26
But like, when?
20:26
Am I gonna live with a five year gap between no job and the new jobs?
20:30
And am I in line to get the new job?
20:32
Or is it just people with different skills?
20:34
That part has not been flushed out at all.
20:36
And I have a lot of friends whose kids did really well in high school, go to top elite
20:40
colleges, started studying computer science four years ago, and they're like, did my kid
20:44
make a mistake?
20:45
Maybe in this mini instant right now, it feels like it.
20:49
I don't think we're gonna need fewer people
20:51
Yeah.
20:52
Writing software going forward.
20:54
I think more people will write software.
20:56
Fewer of them will be trained computer scientists.
20:58
We haven't yet figured out exactly what to do, and I think this is something I've been
21:02
thinking about a lot.
21:02
Even if AI doesn't destroy jobs, it's gonna create displacement.
21:06
It's gonna mean like, hey, if you were a customer support rep, you might find a new job
21:11
post AI, but there's gonna be a journey to go through to find to either reskill yourself,
21:16
find a new industry.
21:17
And for people, those transitions aren't seamless.
21:20
And to your point, people have to live through that transition.
21:22
It can be traumatic.
21:24
I think it's just this bridge that doesn't exist yet that I think people are looking for.
21:27
What's the off ramp life raft that exists for me when you've made all the right choices?
21:32
I do think that for the folks who went through college in the past couple years and were
21:36
software engineers, it does allow you to kind of be like, wait, do I actually wanna do this
21:39
role?
21:40
Because if I'm gonna emerge out and stay in this role, have to be the best and be really
21:43
good.
21:44
And it gives that something that I actually am passionate about doing, or should I start
21:47
looking elsewhere and exploring those opportunities.
21:49
And I think it is one of my I don't know.
21:51
Not to get on my education soapbox.
21:53
But it's your podcast.
21:54
At a hand.
21:55
Well, our podcast.
21:56
The one thing I do worry about is this sits to me the downside of careerism in higher
22:01
education, is if you orient all of your studies and goals towards the job you wanna get, And
22:07
and you have very little connection to the work or subject matter other than its economic value
22:13
as a first job out of school.
22:14
If that first job doesn't materialize, then you're like, what did I just do?
22:18
And I think this is part of the undercurrent of this conversation we're having about higher ed
22:23
is people are just it wasn't worth it.
22:24
I'm like, well, it's because you made it a pre professional transactional experience focused
22:30
on studying things that would help you get a job out of school.
22:33
If you'd instead said, I came here to do some personal exploration, learn a broad set of
22:37
skills in sciences, technology, arts, communications, I wanna have a breadth of
22:44
experiences, I wanna come out a better person than I came in.
22:47
Yeah.
22:48
Maybe you'd feel differently.
22:49
And I think part of what you're seeing is like, it used to be go into economics or, you know,
22:53
do finance or do consulting or do computer science.
22:56
These are safe, stable jobs.
22:58
Schools reoriented their curriculum around these pre professional careers, and now they
23:02
can't deliver because, like, the labor market changed.
23:04
And I think it's I hope it causes people to reflect on this balance between getting the
23:09
skills that will help make you employable, but also learning the things that will make you a
23:13
better human and citizen.
23:14
I wonder if colleges will start to figure out what's a format that works to almost replicate
23:19
what a gap year looks like, but at their school.
23:21
Take a bite of everything.
23:22
And I know people say that, oh, the core is like that, your your first year.
23:25
And I'm like, it's not, though, because you have to pick an adviser month four, and you're
23:29
like, I guess it's business.
23:31
What if it's not?
23:31
And you have a whole year to explore that.
23:33
In some schools, you applied directly into a school.
23:35
Yeah.
23:35
So I do think most things have to get really broken before they get fixed in
23:38
a month.
23:39
And I think higher education might be reaching one of those points where the model becomes so
23:43
unsustainable, and parents will want something different for their children.
23:47
And there will be new models that emerge, I hope.
23:49
My last question here is in the article he describes, like, the jagged frontier of AI,
23:54
where AI is gonna be really unexpectedly great at some things and horrifically bad at others,
23:58
and people are gonna have to live through that to basically figure out where they net out.
24:02
I think for a lot of people, AI feels so intangible, especially if you don't live in the
24:05
geographies that we live in.
24:07
Do you think that the potential of some of these larger companies going public will allow
24:11
people to get a little bit closer to what they are because you get to own a piece of it?
24:15
I don't know.
24:15
I mean, I feel like a lot of people I know who are very anti UBI are suddenly like, maybe the
24:20
answer is we have to take some of the profits from AI and distribute them back to the people
24:24
who are displaced.
24:25
Wow.
24:25
That's quite the about face.
24:26
I don't know if that's the right thing to do or not.
24:28
I do think what it seems to me is the people who are benefiting from AI right now and are
24:34
optimistic, you gotta have faith.
24:36
This is all gonna work out and it's going to be good for you.
24:39
I can't tell you exactly how, but this is a good thing.
24:42
And most people are like, well, if you can't tell me how, why should I believe you?
24:46
I know why you're telling me this because you're making boatloads
24:48
of Right.
24:48
Right.
24:49
Right.
24:49
Off of this.
24:50
So of course you wanna see it continue, but what's in it for me?
24:53
There's a really good interview on Platformer that just came out today with Boris from VOD,
24:57
who's one of my favorite followers on Threads, talking about, hey, like, the reality is many
25:01
more people are gonna write software, but we'll probably have fewer computer scientists and,
25:05
like, software development as a job.
25:07
Yeah.
25:08
We'll probably go away in the same way that we have many in the and now do they the person in
25:12
in the article uses we have many more people who make a living off of the photos that they
25:16
take with their phone who are not professional photographers.
25:19
Yes.
25:20
And it's very possible that part of being a white collar professional going forward will be
25:25
having some facility in building and writing software to help In you do your the same way
25:30
that you have to know Excel and PowerPoint.
25:32
You have to know it more to be a banker or a consultant than you do but, like, everybody's
25:35
expected to know how to use those tools.
25:37
And market yourself.
25:38
I think, like, productize your skills.
25:40
One of my good friends who she worked at Slack, like, a bunch of years and then just she's
25:43
wanderlust, So she decided to start her own Slack consulting business Yep.
25:47
Moved to Nairobi and keep the same clients that she had worked before, basically take home the
25:51
direct pay on it.
25:52
And when she would talk to people about the business, again, to our last conversation
25:56
around, like, what if floats better in cocktail stories, everyone was like, what?
25:58
What is this weird job you have?
26:00
Allows you flexibility, but you're not really climbing the ladder anymore.
26:03
You're in tech but not really in a tech.
26:04
Fast forward now.
26:05
She's been doing this for, like, seven years.
26:07
She has major Fortune 500 clients, and she's learned how to productize and market her skill
26:12
set, which is really her as the brand of it.
26:15
And I think that a lot of white collar workers will have to learn how to do that and maybe
26:19
perhaps pick up projects here and there at different clients and learn how to do that.
26:23
But that's not a skill set that you had to do five, six years ago.
26:26
Networking, if you already had the job and weren't looking, was not something you had to
26:30
do.
26:30
I also just think there's a lot of people for whom work is a tool.
26:34
This is how I earn money to support my family.
26:37
I don't have a deep attachment Yeah.
26:39
To this job.
26:40
This job serves a purpose, which is it allows me to provide for my family.
26:43
And the job of the job is to be there, so that Monday through Friday when I come in, there's
26:48
work to be done.
26:49
I do the work.
26:50
This is an exchange.
26:51
I come in.
26:52
I do what you ask me to do.
26:53
You give me my money.
26:53
I go home.
26:54
If I went to bed there hustling, running my own business, I'd be an entrepreneur.
26:57
And everyone's like, everyone's gonna be coming out of room.
26:59
Like, what if they don't Yeah.
27:00
Want to?
27:00
Being entrepreneur is risky.
27:01
There's a set of people who are just like, I will trade the upside and freedom.
27:05
I want the nine to five.
27:05
I want the
27:06
nine to five.
27:06
I want that.
27:06
I want someone to tell me this is what you gotta do when you're done with You're done when
27:10
I leave.
27:10
I don't have to take my work home with me.
27:12
Like, that is a very respectable way to live.
27:15
I think telling people, well, we're just gonna take that option off the table.
27:17
It it isn't satisfying for people who are like, this fits really nicely into the Wi Fi design.
27:21
It doesn't land in the majority of geos, I would say.
27:23
We're all out of time today.
27:25
Thank you, Charles, for joining me in the studio.
27:28
Thank you, Angel List, for opening up your doors.
27:31
This is such an awesome place to host, and I hope that we get to do it more.
27:34
Thank you so much for everyone who joined the podcast.
27:36
Please like and subscribe and share with others.
27:39
We will talk with you all next week.
27:41
Thank you.
27:42
Bye.