The Architects And The Unemployed

White collared work is being destroyed by AI and oraganization’s pyramidal hierarchies can be compressed from 500 → 50 → 5. It is just a matter of time before this new normal catches up with all businesses.

Mental Model

This is how I see things now.

A company of 5000 now can be ran by 500 → which then can be run by 50 → then 5. Meaning a massive compression in human labor for white collared work.

Within a typical Software Department, traditionally there was a pyramid of employees. A top down delegation → Vice President → Director → Manager → Technical Lead → Senior Developer → Intermediate Developer → Junior Developer (roughly like that to give you a simple shape to make the point).

Nowadays a very senior developer/technical lead/architect can do everything from a Manager level down. So you only really might have a Vice President and very senior Technical Staff member. Director optional.

The size of the pyramid of hierarchy collapses.

One can think of the AI as small teams that you can orchestrate. If you were a Software Engineer, you are now an Manager of AIs.

A technically savvy person can instruct the AI “team” to go off and build/deploy some feature. So your role as a technical human is to oversee 1, 2, 3, many concurrent different projects at the same time. My daily work has shifted in the last 6 months to having up to 5 windows open, each of which is a different “team” working on a separate feature. This kind of way to work did not exist a few years ago.

The extent goes as far as - how well can you multitask.

The Architects and the Unemployed

I heard an expression the other day which sums up this situation very well.

“The Architects and the Unemployed”.

Those with the knowledge and who can delegate, using AI will replace everyone below them. Everyone else is unemployed.

This does not bode well for those getting their feet wet in a white collared job. Entry level, intermediate and to some degree Senior level roles are all affected. And those with the highest level knowledge remain.

Soft Skills and Hard Skills

Traditionally with a Software Engineer (and knowledge workers), the value was in their innate knowledge and ability to execute on that knowledge.

Now that that value facet has been carved off from the Engineer - what then remains of value given that Knowledge and Execution is now delegated to the AI.

• Throughput - the more that can be done in parallel

• Sales - Selling still remains vital life-blood to a company

• Emotional Intelligence and Soft Skills - being a human, having empathy, being able to speak to clients

• Vision - having an opinion on what’s best for the business and what to do to get it there

• Process Improvement - Every business has gaps and blind spots where things can be improved. Implementing improvements and showing the business after the fact

• Active and background R&D - The world is moving fast. Being aware of latest/greatest technologies and approaches is still a value add

Affected Industries

Anthropic who are the lead in this space published an article on the impact of AI per industry.

Young people should especially aim for the channels with the least amount of blue in them. If you are about to exit your degree after studying for Computer Science for example I strongly recommend that you pivot immediately before taking a step further.

Hint: Physical world things where a personal touch goes a long way.

In summary - those with the top rung level of knowledge still can make a living while those beneath them get destroyed. This does not mean that those with the top tier knowledge get to name their price - they get to keep an income albeit paltry when factoring in inflation.

What Next for Me

I’m aiming to keep the same trajectory of working but move around less within jobs. The friction of onboarding a new job is extremely high - I think the last job was 6 interview rounds that I did. The sheer number of applicants to a limited number of jobs is overwhelming for the hiring staff. They lean heavily on automated screening to reduce their workload - which is dehumanizing.

My aim is to really dial in being a full time investor as that is my passion and gives me the degree of Control that i need.

One would hope that the interview process changes with time to focus more Soft Skills with time as that is the reality of the world now. AI does everything else.