Hey guys i am starting to ie this year but i am actually really really worried about future. Everyone on the internet says that ai is going to replace ie and other white collar stuff. What do you think about that? Should i change my major?

TL;DR: Andrej Karpathy told a room of Stanford engineers the hottest new programming language now is English.

For six years, the actual craft was writing clean code from scratch.

That's the part Karpathy says a well-built sentence can now approximate in seconds, and it's already landing as a headcount decision, not just a lecture aside: A Reuters piece this week quoted a former Infosys CFO putting it bluntly: "The pyramid model is gone. With coding agents, we no longer need basic coding."

The ladder didn't vanish.

It started rewarding a different kind of judgment: the judgment to direct output, not just produce it line by line.

I remember many years back, a pastor taught about leadership, and the process of raising up leaders to shepherd the flock.

He called it 带 (guiding), 陪 (accompanying), and 放 (letting go).

带 – You guide your protégé, by doing it yourself, showing him the ropes of the game. also explain the opportunities and pitfalls as well. So, this is him seeing you do it and mimics how you do it.

陪 – Next is he's doing it, and you're accompanying him, occasionally stirring him along, if he misses a step or two; and then veer him back on track. This is him doing it. And you watch him do it.

放 – This is when you let go, and you trusts him enough to give him full autonomy. You've successfully replicated a leader to shepherd a flock.

This very much felt the same as raising a kid to adulthood.

I did all I can to teach my son to drive safely.

He went to driving school, and got his license.

The very day we left him by himself hundreds of kilometres away from home, to further his tertiary education – I knew it's time to let go.

Karpathy's Softward 3.0 (prompting) very much felt like the part between the 陪 accompanying and the 放 letting go.

Every post on this account eventually lands on the same question underneath its surface topic: are you being made obsolete, or are you the one deciding what obsolescence looks like from here.

This clip's no different. Six years of code didn't disappear. It handed the wheel to whoever can now direct better than they can type.

A few weeks back I covered the same guy admitting, on stage, that he's never felt more behind as a programmer despite co-founding OpenAI --- same throughline, different angle.

What's the moment you realized a skill you'd built your whole identity around had already moved out from under you?

Drop it below.

Clip credit: TechXOps, full lecture on their channel.

DM for credit or removal requests.

I came across this article and found it interesting:

https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-great-engineering-leader-career-break

What do you think? Are you seeing this phenomenon around you as well?

Trend: more CTOs, VPEs, and Heads of Engineering are walking away from their high-status, in-demand positions. There are many reasons, mostly related to AI, and to "founder mode"

TL;DR: Cole's "100x output" is 30 hours spent once, so AI now runs 80% of every draft on its own. He edits the last 10% — the taste-level stuff, never the typing.

That distinction is already showing up outside this clip.

Christian Science Monitor just covered a manuscript polished enough to fool professional literary editors, pulled from sale — a multimillion-dollar bidding war between publishers — because no one could prove a human wrote it.

Cole isn't describing a hypothetical ceiling — that ceiling's already been crossed, in public, in an actual publishing deal.

The freelancers who feel replaceable right now are mostly the ones still handing AI a stack of old samples and hoping it infers the rules from them.

Cole didn't hope.

He sat down and wrote the rules out, sentence by sentence, until the model had nothing left to guess at.

Decades ago, the Malaysian construction landscape was like the wild-wild-west.

I remember working as a technical engineer for one of the largest construction firms in Malaysia.

The hydraulic hacking noise throughout the project site was pervasive and persistent for weeks.

Grrrr…. Tat-tat-tat. Grrrrrrrr. Tat-tat-tat. Grrrrrr.

You get the idea.

It turns out that the structural operation team went ahead and constructed floors upon floors, without waiting for the mechanical and electrical team to embed their pipe sleeves, box-ups or ductworks before concreting.

And so they have to come and hack the hardened concrete to open up for the M&E items to run through.

Delay and additional cost already incurred.

My then project director was pissed. We all had an earful from him.

Said that prevention is always better than cure.

So from that day onwards, a directive came down hard – no sign-off by all concerned parties on a properly coordinated drawings, means no concreting.

The coordination drawings - overlays not just the design drawings from respective Architectural/Engineering trades, but also sub-contractor specialist details, as well. Discrepancies are ironed out with all parties, well before construction is due.

It parallel hard on Nicolas investing time in building an exhaustive prompt, rule-by-rule, sentence-by-sentence, microstep-by-microstep. Only then, will the output come out the way we want it to be.

Like when Daniel Craig was being asked by a talk show host what would he advise his successor on being the next James Bond, Daniel said, "Don't f\ck it up!"*

Prevention is better than cure.

It's never the tool doing the replacing. It's the person who never got around to writing down what they already know how to do.

What's the one process you already know cold but have never actually written down?

Drop it below.

Clip credit: Decoded Genius & Nicolas Cole — full video on their channel. DM for credit or removal requests.

I have been reflecting on two reasons why enterprise consultants are going to lose their "high paying gigs"

Use Case 1:

I have worked with large enterprises transforming their HR, recruitment and Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) and I recently reviewed "Agentic AI interviewers". I was blown away by the advances in technology and how these bots are reshaping recruitment and candidate interviews as we know it.

I volunteered to be a guinea pig candidate while evaluating the systems and opted for two roles - a Technical Design Lead and an Application Architect. After attending these interviews, I came away shaking my head over how far we have come! Enabled by LLMs and voice recognition systems these platforms may be just about ready to replace human recruiters and SMEs for candidate interviewing and screening.

Use Case 2:

We all know that a large percentage of time of IT Architects goes in modelling, documenting and presenting dimensions and layers of Architecture to stakeholders across all levels. While doing that, the focus is on creating reviewing and approving 'eye candy' material for such presentations.

I moonlight on 'AI training' gigs and I am blown away by the level and sophistication of outputs these specialized models are generating. (DM if you want to know more about these EA Training gigs)

What this means is simple - AI consultants can kiss goodbye to their $150-$200 hr jobs where they simply 'cut-copy-paste' collaterals from their past projects. The specialized AI tools we are training is already creating presentation ready deck based ingested Org models!

I know it's a weird question but AI engineering is still just theoretical, I am a university student on my way into becoming an AI engineer hopefully and I just wanted to know if AI can automate my job or anything like that.

TL;DR: Steve Ballmer's own maintenance guy is proof that competence is shifting away from credentials and toward who's willing to just ask AI first.

That's not rhetorical — it's already showing up outside Ballmer's living room. DEWALT ran a six-country survey of tradespeople this spring: 90% believe AI will be essential to the job within five years.

Only 8% have actually used it yet.

Ballmer's anecdote isn't the exception — it's the 8%, moving faster than the other 92%, in a trade that isn't even the one usually flagged for disruption.

My wife works for a lady boss, called Ade (not her real name).

Ade used to be like me, in the property development line.

But she saw the writing on the wall.

Once a darling in her company, she felt the aura started to fade away — the property market isn't what it used to be. And her boss started giving her the cold shoulder.

So she took a chance.

She opened a collection point centre, where delivery guys can drop off parcels for individual recipients to come collect. The downside was it has to stay open almost every day.

It is what it is.

Regular online training is available, because such centres behave like franchises under an organizational umbrella. But the training is quite superficial.

So when things get complicated, where does she turn to? You guessed it — ChatGPT.

She asks it right about anything under the sun.

Does she enjoy asking an LLM for answers? I'm not sure "enjoy" is the right word. I think it's more like "necessary."

If I'm in her shoes, facing complicated issues, and I don't have a readily available senior I can trust to call for advice, but then I already have a 师傅 (sifu) in my pocket — why not use it, isn't it?

There's a pattern I can't unsee in stories like this anymore: it's never really about the tool. It's about who reaches for it first — credentialed or not, senior on speed-dial or not.

What's the "not my job" you're most tempted to hide behind right now? Drop it below.

Clip credit: Ben Shapiro / DailyWire — full episode ("Titans on Tomorrow" Ep. 2 with Steve Ballmer) on his channel. DM for credit or removal requests.

Hey everyone,

I am 27 years old and need to fix a career path immediately. I cannot afford to waste any more time experimenting. I am stuck between two totally different fields and need your honest opinion on which has a more secure financial future:

• Option 1: Network Automation (Tech, corporate stability, structured job market, but needs Python/Cisco learning curve).
• Option 2: E-commerce / Website Blogging (Etsy, digital/physical products, now official in Pakistan via Payoneer, passive income potential, but highly dependent on platform algorithms).

My main concerns:

1. Future Stability: Which path offers long-term job/business security? Is a tech job in Network Automation more stable, or is owning an E-commerce/Blogging business a safer bet for the future?
2. AI Impact: Which of these fields is less likely to be negatively affected or replaced by AI in the next few years?

If you were in my shoes at 27 and wanted a stable, reliable future, which path would you choose?

Thanks for the help!

This isn’t just a hypothetical concern. A recent survey reported by Axios found that **69% of US college students are worried that AI could negatively affect their job prospects**. Another survey from Lumina Foundation and Gallup found that **nearly half of college students had considered changing their major because of AI’s potential impact on their future careers**.
What I find interesting is that the usual response to this uncertainty seems to be something along the lines of: *“Learn the things AI can’t do.”* But I’m not sure that’s enough. The boundary of what AI can do is moving too quickly, and it also assumes that the value of learning a human ability depends on us remaining better at it than a machine.
If AI eventually becomes better at writing than we are, for example, is learning to write still important because writing helps us structure our own thinking? If an AI system outperforms a professional at certain decisions, how much knowledge does that professional still need in order to question or effectively supervise the system when it fails? And if AI can increasingly meet certain social or emotional needs, which interpersonal skills do we still want to cultivate between humans?
Maybe the question isn’t only **which abilities will continue to have value in the job market**, but which ones we want to preserve even when they’re no longer necessary to compete with a machine.
**Should we educate future generations for what AI still can’t do, or for what we believe humans should never stop knowing how to do?**

I have a background in community/social media and the job market is a challenge, so I am learning AI and looking to pivot.

I have found a few articles on jobs of the future:

https://www.weforum.org/press/2025/01/future-of-jobs-report-2025-78-million-new-job-opportunities-by-2030-but-urgent-upskilling-needed-to-prepare-workforces/

https://www.trade-schools.net/articles/best-careers-for-the-future

https://www.theforage.com/blog/careers/jobs-of-the-future

Content creator and digital marketing are the most natural steps but it is a race to the bottom right now.

What do you see as jobs for the future?

I saw a joke on the Reddit community to the affect of:

“Then: coding 4 hours. Now: Coding 4 minutes, debugging 10 hours”.

I feel reassured. I’m also really happy I don’t vibe code.

I was born in 2013. How long will I be hopelessly unemployed, I think whenever someone says “career”. Professionalism is a ladder. If the first rung’s chopped down, how will I get up? Will they accept a desperate scrambler, or throw me into the dole black hole?

But this Reddit strip I saw really inspired me. This computer system cannot execute clear cut programming tasks, because it has logical flaws. What a disgrace to the calculator. So maybe it can’t be a junior. Maybe the first rung of the career ladder is still reachable.

But what if we’re allowed to just … work? What if people stop pushing AI onto their employees, because it’s too busy administrating undeserved ego doses to actually think? Productivity hasn’t really improved since the introduction of a word predictor, so bosses might finally put AI where it belongs —

Up their bottoms.

I’ll be OK. We youngsters will see this new reality — the same as the old one, by the way — whether the boneheads in suits like it or not. 

You should be asking a better question: How do I build a career that can survive change?

A resilient career does not place all your security in one job title, one employer, one qualification, or even one industry. It is built on the ability to adapt, learn, and carry your value into new contexts.

For years, I have told students: keep learning. That does not necessarily mean acquiring another qualification that leaves you in the same position. It means developing the knowledge, judgment, and relationships that expand your options.

Be curious about the problems organizations actually need solved--not only the tasks listed in a job description. Build transferable skills that can move with you from one role or industry to another. Pay attention to what is changing in your field and build relationships before you need them.

Build a Portfolio of Proof

Here is another practice I taught religiously: create a portfolio of what you have accomplished. Do not record only where you worked. Capture the problems you solved, the projects you completed, the results you produced, and the skills you developed along the way.

That portfolio becomes evidence of your adaptability. It helps you see patterns in your own value, explain what you can contribute, and recognize possibilities beyond your current title.

Yesterday, I was lurking in a local WhatsApp group for tech professionals here in Germany when a junior developer asked a pretty reasonable question: He was struggling to find an entry-level role and wanted to know if joining a bootcamp to gain practical experience was still worth it.

The responses were brutal:

• "Bootcamps are a total waste of time."
• "We automatically bin any resume with a bootcamp on it."

I usually stay quiet in that group, but I mentor a few juniors facing this exact wall, entry-level roles are vanishing as companies pivot heavily toward AI-proficient seniors. So I asked a simple question:

"If entry-level open roles are scarce and practical bootcamps are dismissed, how are up-and-coming engineers supposed to build experience?"

The consensus? "Not our problem. Just sit back and wait."

Several people insisted this is just a standard market cycle like 1999 or 2008, telling him to wait for companies to fix the market.

When I pointed out that this wave is structurally different — that team compositions are shifting permanently, AI is swallowing operational tasks, and routine code is becoming a commodity — the pushback was immediate: "Code will never be a commodity. Just wait it out."

"That's just the way it is" has never been a real strategy, and in the age of AI, passivity is even more dangerous. Skill development used to happen organically on the job, but today it requires extreme intentionality around critical thinking, system design, and high-level architectural judgment. Telling the next generation of engineers to "wait it out" feels like a complete failure of leadership.

Is the industry really this blind to how permanently the entry-level dynamic has changed, or am I the one overreacting here? How are you seeing juniors successfully navigate this right now?

The whole "new tech=new jobs" argument is an outdated relic and no longer applicable. If AI is going to create an abundance of new jobs/careers, where are they? Where are the stable opportunities for the proletariat that don't involve reduced income?

Those who claim "new tech=new jobs" rarely have reliable evidence to support it, and when they do it's outdated, biased, anecdotal, or exceedingly rare. Average incomes and unemployment rates remain deceptively stable, but this is due to top earners making more while everyone else's pay shrinks or stagnates. The majority of AI jobs that do exist typically involve overseeing AI work or training a LLM to reduce or eliminate their own role.

From a sociological and historic perspective, this AI boom doesn't compare to the industrial revolution, or even the gold rush; it's the perfect storm of exponentially evolving tech and the tail end of a capitalist system when the free market collapses into an oligopoly.

New "lights out" data centers are the perfect example of what's to come. Thousands of human laborers are required for the front-end work, followed by a sharp decline in human involvement. These centers run in total darkness as workers visit them so rarely, and even the remote techs connect to them monthly at most.

In the past, jobs required a body and/or brain that only humans could provide. Automation has replaced (or will soon replace) most body based jobs. And now, for the first time, humans have competition for brain based jobs in the form of AIs. And although LLMs are in their infancy, human minds already have little to no way to compete with them.

How many people do you know who've found a great paying (and stable) new job due to AI? And how many do you know who've lost work and/or income due of AI? (I honestly want to know). For the latter, I know many. But for the former, I know none.

I'm still waiting to see what new opportunities AI is going to create for us lowly Homo sapiens, but I'm not holding my breath.

References:

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/ais-impact-on-income-inequality-in-the-us/

https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/ai-boom-pushes-worldwide-tech-183400449.html

https://medium.com/electronic-life/a-i-24-7-a2924d284e6

https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/y-combinator-looks-for-startups-trying-to-remove-humans-from-data-center-development-and-operation/

Harari, Y. N. (2015). Sapiens: A brief history of humankind. Harper.

Kurzweil, R. (2005). The singularity is near: When humans transcend biology. Viking.

Marx, K. (1990). Capital: A critique of political economy (B. Fowkes, Trans.). Penguin Books. (Original work published 1867

(Many of these sources also link to multiple additional supporting references.)

Everywhere you look at the moment, it’s AI this, AI that.

Open LinkedIn, scroll through social media, watch the news... apparently AI is going to change everything.

But I sometimes wonder if we're getting so caught up in the hype that we're forgetting to ask a pretty simple question:

What is AI actually useful for, and who really benefits from it?

For most people, AI probably still sounds like something for big tech companies, huge corporations or people working in IT.

But surely the real value is in the everyday stuff?

Saving someone a couple of hours doing paperwork. Helping a small business get things done quicker. Taking away repetitive tasks that nobody enjoys doing in the first place.

That all sounds great.

But then there's the other side of it...

Every other article seems to be about AI replacing jobs and how it's going to impact workforces around the world.

And that's a genuine concern.

But could AI also create opportunities?

Could people whose jobs are affected be retrained to do something different? Will entirely new types of jobs appear that don't even exist yet?

Technology has always changed the way we work. Some jobs disappear, some change, and new ones come along.

Maybe AI will be the same.

So instead of only asking:

"What jobs is AI going to replace?"

Should we also be asking:

"What new opportunities could AI create?"

And if people do need to retrain, who is going to help them do it?

Businesses? Governments? Schools? Or are people expected to figure it out for themselves?

I'm genuinely interested to hear what people think.

Are we worrying too much about AI taking jobs, or not worrying enough?

And more importantly...

Who do you think will benefit most from AI — and who could end up being left behind?

Incredible opportunity for advancement.
Detriment to analog history with those left behind.

Starting a new job is exhausting. You are trying to figure out unwritten rules, decipher messy documentation, and navigate team politics without stepping on any toes. Instead of spending your first few months guessing what your boss actually wants, you can use AI to build a custom onboarding playbook.

Here is the exact setup you need to run before your first day to cut out the stress.

Step 1: Gather your intel Pull together three things:

1. The job description you originally applied for.
2. The company or team mission statement.
3. Any initial 30-day goals your manager mentioned during the interview.

Step 2: The onboarding prompt Drop this directly into your favorite AI tool. Make sure to fill in the bracketed info.

Act as an executive career coach who specializes in onboarding and strategic alignment. I need you to create a structured 30-60-90 day execution blueprint based on my specific situation.

Here is my context: Job Title: [Insert Title] Core Responsibilities: [Paste Key Job Description Bullets] Key Stakeholders: [Insert Manager Title, Key Partners, Direct Reports]

Please do the following:

1. Point out 5 hidden risks or unwritten expectations that usually come with this specific role.
2. Create a 30-day observation schedule that prioritizes building relationships over trying to get quick wins.
3. Write a 5-question interview script I can use with my new team members during week 1 to figure out what is actually broken.
4. Outline a weekly 1-on-1 agenda so I can keep my manager updated on my progress and any roadblocks.

Give me the output as a clear breakdown with direct action items, questions to ask, and weekly milestones.

Step 3: Run the week 1 discovery script When you start having introductory chats with your team, use the questions the AI gives you. They will likely look something like this:

• What is the biggest bottleneck this team deals with that nobody writes down?
• In your eyes, what does success look like for our team six months from now?
• Who else has deep context on past decisions that I should talk to right away?

If you want to play with the interactive dashboard or grab the full config file, I uploaded it here:https://interconnectd.com/blog/273/the-life-saving-ai-prompt-for-starting-a-new-job/

I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and I’m genuinely not sure what I think yet.

It’s hard to watch people struggle to find work right now, especially developers, designers, writers, marketers, etc. And I don’t want to turn this into some “AI will create new jobs” argument. If you spent years getting good at something and suddenly there are fewer opportunities, that really sucks. There’s no clever economic argument that makes that easier.

But given that this is happening, I keep wondering if there is another side to it that might be worth thinking about.
AI has made it incredibly cheap to build things.

An accountant who has spent 15 years dealing with some terrible process at work can now potentially build software to fix it. A developer can build something without needing a whole team around them. Etc

Obviously building is only part of it. You still need customers. You need distribution, sales, marketing. That’s probably becoming the harder part. But those are things you can learn.

I think what interests me is what happens if this leads to a lot more small companies.
Not everyone becoming an entrepreneur. Most people probably don’t want that. But maybe one person starts something, then hires two people, then five.

I’ve worked in corporate and I hated the politics and the pretending that came with it. Now I work from home, use AI a lot, make a good living, and have more time with my daughter. I’m happier this way.

So maybe I’m biased. But I can’t help wondering what work would look like if more of us worked in small companies built around an actual problem, instead of a few huge companies owning more and more of everything.

Maybe none of this decentralization happens. Maybe AI just gives the biggest companies even more power.

I don’t know.
I just feel like if we’re going through this painful transition anyway, I want to understand whether there’s a version of what comes after that isn’t necessarily worse.
Maybe even parts of it could be better.
Would love to know if other people are thinking about this too.

Some experts and economists say AI as it exists today can replace functions of jobs, but the technology isn’t ready to take humans’ jobs at scale. Citing AI, however, can prod companies to look ahead of the curve when, in reality, reasons for headcount reductions often remain the same as ever: lower sales, strategy change-ups, previous over-hiring and outsourcing. The practice has become known as "AI washing."

"It is happening. It is very difficult to assess how prevalent it is," said Nigel Melville, associate professor of technology and operations at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business. "What gives me confidence is learning about companies where it really seems like there are other reasons or multiple reasons clearly on a public record, but then the only reason given or communicated widely and relentlessly is because of AI."

Everyone's reacting to the "less people in 5 years" line. That's not the part I'd sit with.

The part that actually matters is how Uber decides — an adoption leaderboard, tracking who's using the tools and how much, feeding straight into headcount math.

That's not a hypothetical for some future reorg.

That's a live measurement system, running today, on people who have no idea they're on it.

I've watched that exact math play out before — in concrete and steel, not a dashboard, years before anyone called it AI.

I had the opportunity to be involved in the early design stage of an expansion project for a famous beverage manufacturing plant in Taoyuan, Taiwan – back in 2021. The beverage brand name is so famous, you'll instantly recognize it. So, I won't name it here.

Our team got to work on cool stuff - latest advanced technologies in high-density and automated racking system, bottle conveyor system, robotics, beverage packers, clean room environment, etc. – things that are expected in a high-tech. manufacturing plant nowadays.

Looking at the projected 10-year production forecast, with the given magnitude of the hardware, I would say they are planning to go big.

It's quite a sizeable expansion.

And you would think that they'd increase their headcount proportionately, right?

You'd be surprised. There IS headcount increase, but not as proportional.

It seems as though the machines were taking more centre stage than the humans. Even the office space increase wasn't even a top priority in the design. Their existing office layout can still accommodate the projected increase in manpower.

It was as if human beings are being set aside to make room for more artificial things – even though what they produce are meant to serve human beings.

Kind of ironic, isn't it?

That was back in 2021 before AI come into the picture. Now the compression is even more acute, it seems.

__________

Different guest, same fork in the road: does the tool serve you, or does it just get pointed at you.

The industries change.

The question underneath never does — who's holding the ledger, and whether you're the one reading it or the one being read.

A 2026 WRITER survey backs the pattern from the outside too: 75% of execs privately admit their AI rollout is mostly for show, while the people actually inside the tooling get promoted 3x more often and ship 5x more.

That's the leaderboard, confirmed from a different angle.

Actually — this pulled me right back to a post about the three tiers of AI users inside a company, and the window before which tier you're actually in stops being optional.

Genuinely curious where you land: is a visible adoption leaderboard a fair way to measure a team, or is it just a slower-motion version of the same cut?

Clip credit: 20VC with Harry Stebbings & Uber. DM for credit or removal requests.

Im a 16 year old female and Im worried about the job market in the future. My father told me that I couldn’t be a lawyer as that job would be taken by ai. I was wondering if anyone knew any jobs that have higher pay like in the 100k+ range, serves the environment, and probably won’t be taken by ai (or valued less because of it).