Feeling anxious?

You’re not alone.

My job as a recruiter is to speak to great candidates all day, every day. Personally, I talk to about 200 a week. My team of 15 does the same; across Software, Product, Growth, Data and Infra. That’s 3,000 conversations per week, every week.

Over the past 6 months, we’d guess that 90% of these candidates are worried about what AI will do to their jobs.

I’ve personally been paralyzed by the thought many times. I’m guessing you have too.

But what about the other 10%?

There is a pocket of people who aren’t worried about AI. They are excited by it. And right now, our best clients are having knife-fights to hire them.

But first… we’re only just seeing the start of mass redundancies take place.

The writing is on the wall.

Last week was full of redundancy headlines from large, high profile companies. Get used to them. But do not get caught in the spiral that the 90% mentioned above are in.

It’s time to stop defending your position and get on the offense.

A close friend of mine recently got made redundant from his dream job at Spotify – a position his whole career worked towards. Spending time with him over the past few weeks he’s progressively saying things like “free”, “confident”, “not looking over my shoulder”, “creative again” and “actually motivated.”

He knows that every innovation in technology can have short term pain, though over the medium and long term has created more jobs.

So he’s not waiting for someone to knock on his door and offer him a similar position again. That career line has ended. He’s taking control, starting (at time of writing) 3 new businesses and revenue streams – and the opportunities are flowing in. He’s taken control. He’s even talking about hiring someone soon.

As I’ve been saying since ‘23, ‘company headcount has peaked – we will never see companies with so many employees again. Whilst at the same time, the number of companies will skyrocket.’

The number of new business applications in the US jumped 35.37% to 532,319 in January 2026. Read that number again.

This is how AI is changing the economy. It is (like every other innovation before it) democratizing business. Making it easier to start and compete in business.

Technological innovation has always taken the friction – the repeatable grunt work – away from human labor. And ultimately creating more opportunities for us to get creative.

A recent quote I’ve been sharing with candidates which builds on last month’s newsletter (The Rise of the Employagencee) is “You are the product. Productise yourself. A job pays you for hours. A product pays you for value” – Thomas Oppong.

“Earn with your mind, not your time” – Naval (Tech Buddah).

So, where to now for companies?

We need to start asking “What could go right?”

The only moat left is talent.

When the technology itself is no longer a bottleneck, a company’s sole competitive advantage now completely lies in the quality of its talent.

Humans are and should be needed to define the problem, set the vision, and direct the machine.

The better a human is at problem definition, visioning, intuition, ideation, creativity and then moving these outputs into agent orchestration, the higher their demand and their premium.

And employers are willingly paying, as competition for this talent gets hotter and hotter.

The better an employee is at leveraging AI, the more time they have to learn, upskill, and philosophise – where the best ideas are made.

CEO’s want teams full of people who can do that, and turn that into commercial reality.

If one great engineer can do the work of 5 standard engineers, imagine what 5 great engineers can do.

Chintan Turakhia at Coinbase has thought this through. He leads engineering there and has doubled down on identifying and replicating AI power users (human beings) with incredible results.

In 2023 they let go of 950 staff. Mostly those who aren’t AI fluent, and since, they’ve only hired those who are. I won’t go into the technical output though it’s incredible and worth the read.

The widening moat: Taste.

Taste is what agents don’t have, and won’t have for a very long time.

Taste doesn’t come from a degree. It comes through experience. And not “15 years sitting at the same desk at NAB” experience. I mean varied, curiosity-led, battle-scarred, proactive, breadth of experience.

We’re still seeing incredibly high demand for engineers, product managers, GTM execs and designers – but only for those with strong taste.

Developing and maintaining this will be the hardest part of your career moving forward.

Those with good taste and intuition – whether in Marketing, Engineering or Design – they know what to build and why it matters.

Where does this leave you, human?

Stop worrying about the machine taking your job, and start figuring out how to direct it.

The only defensible skill for talent left outside what I’ve mentioned above is entrepreneurialism – and the subset of skills that come with that.

If you’ve recently lost your job, I’m truly sorry. It sucks. Though you need to get building. You need to defend yourself. The role that you’ve been building a career on has changed, you need to as well. Quickly.

You can turn an idea into a fully functioning business in days. And whether you commercialise it or not, it drags you up toward the 10% of high premium talent that employers are fighting over.

Or, you can run with your new business and give the middle finger to your ex-company! And private capital wants to meet you.

Where does this leave you, employer?

See above: a wave of exceptional talent on the market means they have time to build and compete with you, or a facet of your product, at warp speed.

With more products hitting the market faster than ever, you need to elevate your talent bar – especially to enhance relationships, trust and attention.

– Go-To-Market (GTM) teams are going to scale in capability and size quickly.
– Data Security is reinforced as a product differentiator.
– Focus on Brand (design, CX). As friend and client, Sachin at Kindling, summed up perfectly last week: “AI is commoditizing software fast. The thing that costs 18 months to build, someone replicates in 3 weeks… So what sticks? Brand. Specificity. The bet on who you are, not just what you built… In a commodified world, the moat isn’t in the product—it’s in how you make people feel when they use it. In what they signal about themselves when they choose you.”

There is an exceptional multiplier in good talent across these 3 areas right now.

I’ll say it again, ‘If one great engineer can do the work of 5 standard engineers, imagine what 5 great engineers can do.’

That wave of exceptional talent is either going to build your future, or they’re going to build your competition. The choice is yours.

How am I feeling now?

I’ve pushed myself to get into that 10% of people that are truly excited by this moment. It’s been scary, but I’ve leaned in. I’ve taken control. I feel very confident.

I have absolutely no idea what the market is going to look like in a year’s time or a week’s time. Though the more I lean into these defensible skills – entrepreneurialism, agent adoption, and cultivating taste – the more control I have, and the more opportunities are coming my way.

As always, if you need help, please just reach out.