You work in tech, you probably answer some sort of bianual culture amp style survey about how you're feeling. But the questions don't really dive any deeper than the effectiveness or of your manager or leadership at the company you work at. Whereas the big picture in this survey and and I think the the thing that stood out to us the most is how bifocated the workforce is right now. And what you're going to see is that AI has an outlier level outsiz impact on how people feel about their work more so than any other uh characteristic of their job whether it's their role, the company they work for, the company size, their level etc. Half of the people in tech are feeling incredible, energized, amplified, excited about the technology and the future of, you know, their role. And the other half feel like the future is unclear. They feel destabilized. They feel diminished. Um, other negative emotions around that. It's uh it's a very interesting picture that really cuts the tech workforce in half and that's what we'll see in a second. >> It feels so like yes, this feels correct as we we look at people in tech. Like it just uh is so clear that this happening and what's interesting is it's 50/50 in
Worked at Facebook for a while and I lived in San Francisco and we used to take the Facebook buses down to Menllo Park and like that's not a 5-minute commute, you know, that could be 40, 50 minutes. What they did was they put Wi-Fi on the buses and it always cracks me up that there are a lot of public transportation options in the kind of New York City metro area that has no Wi-Fi. So like there is a ton of lost productivity because it's not like a lot of people are sitting there necessarily on their computers right they are doing other things they're reading you know whatever but like you as you measure some of these components there's uh affordability but then also you start to say to yourself the way that people work is changing and because of that we even see um the number of hours per employee per day >> has started to evolve and like AI is one piece of that >> but also So it does feel like the preference has sh I almost get a sense sometimes like especially talking to younger employees they're like I need to get paid a lot of money and like how do I how am I efficient that's the word that gets used right like I want to be efficient which really is code for like I don't want to be here for 12 hours >> right >> and I understand that but what do you what's showing up in the data from that perspective of like it's not just preference around owning versus renting it's also like preference of work and productivity and and the impact on business too right >> yeah it seems to be this evolving sentiment where you're right, people want to get paid a lot but like perhaps work less than than they otherwise would be. >> 4 day work week. >> Totally. And like I mean if you're going to actually be more productive with that then then so be it. Um so you know it does appear to be a bit of of a shift in
Workers that are going to adopt this and we're already seeing it in our customers where you have now software engineers had always been this dynamic range of 10x software engineer. You know, Steve Jobs talked about it in the like 90s. Other jobs, maybe you had 2x, 3x, right? Like, you know, the best RevOps person is like not 10x the next RevOps person. But now they can be because they can build so many automations for their team. They can pull all the right data. They can build all the right dashboards. They can create like training tools. Um >> do you have any sense though what that does to like do companies go I don't need as many employees because the people that I have can do so much more >> so we are seeing reduction in overall jobs. >> Yes I think we'll we'll see reduction overall jobs. I also think that there's going to be more companies uh because there's there's like a lot more startups to start like >> Silicon Valley could not build all the software that that the world needs right in rural England yoga teacher that does pop-up yoga sessions in different people's backyards had a problem of like organizing community and getting payments you wouldn't think that's like a start like if you pitch to a VC uh they'll be like get out of here that's like a market of a couple million dollars, but a market of a couple million dollars is like really good for for someone who's like an individual entrepreneur that's going to like employ five, 10 people. >> There's so many of these ideas. Um, and so we're going to see a decentralization of, you know, company creation. So
I do think we're entering into quote unquote the ROI era from the experimentation era which will put pressure on every component or layer of AI relative to the current valuations but also expand substantially what I call the adoption layer. I think it's going to be a very good time to be in the business of helping companies make decisions around where to spend on AI and where not to spend on AI. In today's office hours, we discuss the ROI of AI, whether networking events actually pay off, and how rowing shaped me. H, I've not seen or heard these questions. Question number one, our first question comes from a listener who emailed us. >> Hi Scott, this is Pablo and I currently live in Boston, Massachusetts. I work in AI adoption and consulting and I'm seeing what feels like AI fatigue across organizations. For many employees, AI is starting to feel like an annual checklist, something they're expected to learn and keep up on top of their actual job. At the same time, managers are struggling to measure ROI and justify ongoing AI spending and adoption often seems concentrating among small groups. What's your take? Are expectations for AI outpacing organizations ability to absorb it? And if so, what does that mean for productivity, AI investment, and for the broader market? an economy over the next few years. >> Thanks for the question. I think it's a question a lot of people are asking, investors, CFOs, users. So AI spending is up. That's pretty obvious. Worldwide spending on AI is forecast to total 2.6 trillion in 2026, a 47% increase
Relationship to it instead. And I think it's fundamentally your relationship to coffee that's going to determine whether it's a health benefit or detrimental to who you are. There's been so many fad diets, so many fad moments, and the science has never supported any of it. The science is always looking at the human system as if it's an isolated system, then studies the impact of a chemical, caffeine, or otherwise on it. you're not an isolated system. And so if coffee is part of a complex ecosystem of your microbiome, the soil systems of your body, then it's going to supercharge you into health. But if coffee sits there as a drug that is bypassing the felt sense of being human, then you're probably undermining your your potential to be alive fully, and it's it's becoming a distraction to life. or you're doing your best to be a good office worker, >> which is why they it's the one drug they provide at work. >> Exactly. If you're committed to machine-like behavior, it's your best asset. >> It is kind of interesting that caffeine is the one drug that is provided at most offices. >> I would say that that's indirectly true. I think that uh the the one drug that's most provided at offices is actually performance-based machine-like reward systems. >> Okay. So human ingrained drugs. >> Yeah. The the brain is contains every every neurochemical you'd want to control behavior. >> And so we've created office environments that reward machine-like behavior for 150 years. And so this is how we've ended up looking like we do as a humankind
Forever. Right now, there's a third option, which is launching a startup. A lot of people are doing that. It's a very risky move, but it can be a high-risk, high-reward situation, whereas joining an industry lab is pretty safe. You also have upward mobility. I think once you've been at an industry lab, it's easier to find future jobs. But then again, how much do you enjoy the team and working on proprietary things versus how much you like publishing work? I mean, publishing is stressful. Acceptance rates at conferences can be arbitrary and very frustrating, but it's high reward if you have a paper published. You feel good because your name is on there. It's a high accomplishment. - I feel like my friends who are professors seem happier than those who work at a frontier lab, to be honest. There's a grounding there. The frontier labs definitely do this 9-9-6, which is shorthand for working all the time. - Can you describe 9-9-6? It's a culture invented, I believe, in China and adopted in Silicon Valley. What is 9-9-6? It's 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM, - Six days a week. - six days a week. What is that, 72 hours? Okay. So, is this basically the standard in AI companies in Silicon Valley? This kind of grind mindset. - Yeah, I mean, maybe not exactly like that, but I think there is a trend towards it
>> And one of the first things you said you did was everybody's in the office Monday or you've opted out of working here. >> Yeah. >> Why? >> First of all, I don't think remote works generally. It only works for Shopify. And that's because um we built more software to make remote work than anyone reasonably thought we could. And I think the jury has fully come back on this topic that companies that are primarily remote end up having slower cycles and if you look at startups that just tends to be true. >> Why do you think that is like what explains that? >> You lose a lot of culture. It's very hard to build uh culture remotely because open door's core mission is difficult. We need to make other things easier. And I think the best thing everyone intuitively understands if you played any sports growing up, you understand that the thing that causes you to build camaraderie is doing hard things together in person and winning. Like high school football teams have amazing cultures. >> Yeah. >> Amazing. >> Yeah. And look, we do a very hard thing, but we do it in person with our colleagues shoulderto-shoulder where we celebrate our victories together and if failures we see together so we can actually get through them together. That's one thing. The second look, a lot of communication gets lost in remote companies. And third, uh, intercomp multiculturalism does not work. What does that mean?
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