AI is Popular Because Having a Job Sucks Ass

Plus, how to use AI to make work suck less

It’s a sad fact, but your boss probably hates you and wishes you didn’t exist. I don’t mean in the Patrick Bateman, stabby-stabby-murder sense, but more in the “life would be easier if I didn’t have to deal with other people’s problems” sorta way. According to a recent study, 70% of middle managers would gladly give up having direct reports if they could keep the same salaries they currently have.

Simultaneously, you probably don’t vibe with your job, either. In the U.S, the majority of people who like their job are only into it because they aren’t actually engaged with the work. Yes you read that right. In one survey three-quarters of U.S. workers say they like their job. While another survey from Gallup found that only one worker in three is truly engaged. So if you assume that the third that is engaged likes their job, and smash the surveys together with a little bit of pixie dust and napkin math, the results looks something like this:

By my calculations that means the most popular type of job in America is the one where you don’t have to do much and still get paid for it anyway. Shocking.

Nobody likes 100% of their job. Bosses don’t want direct reports. CEOs want their employees in office as a last ditch effort to squeeze more productivity out of them. This has gotten so bad that we are at a 10-year low for engagement at work.

You could blame the concept of inbox zero, or mandatory work dinners, or the demise of remote work, or income inequality, or the HR department’s mere existence (even worse if your company reports to “people ops”), but whatever the underlying reason for this change, it is wholly unsurprising that AI adoption is through the roof.

Chaos is a ladder

As I’ve covered previously, AI software is the fastest growing type of company in technology history. Sure, for many use cases it doesn’t work. And yes, the promised land of agents appears to be far distant.

None of that matters.

People are bored out of their minds. The idea that a magic robot could free them from drudgery is too tantalizing to ignore. They could focus on higher value activities (techno-optimist) or on watching TikTok (techno-reality), but either way, adoption will be massive. Everyone wants to do less tedious work, the only difference is what work qualifies. Engaged workers want to automate administrative tasks so they can focus on the work they love. Unengaged workers want to automate everything so they can complete their mental checkout process.

It is thus wholly unsurprising that adoption is both top down, with OpenAI hitting a $10 billion revenue run rate this week on the back of enterprise contracts, and bottom-up where workers buy software en masse for themselves by using personal chatbot subscriptions to automate work. Put these forces together, you have a compounding effect of adoption that will make AI startups billions of dollars. In contrast with the internet bubble in which we were measuring “eyeballs,” these companies are doing real revenue. This is happening, like it or not.

I choose to view this as a positive development. Each tech paradigm shift, from the invention of electricity to the internet, allows people who embrace it to totally change their lives. Chaos is a ladder and I want to climb. We can make jobs for ourselves that no longer suck! That is extremely positive. You can start a newsletter company with beauty, truth, and rigor at its core. Or you can make new and wild and ambitious companies. Not because AI is particularly good at the challenging things, but because it is good at automating tedious work.

Look, maybe the machines save capitalism or maybe they just let us watch more Love Island.

Either way, there’s arbitrage here. The only way I am able to publish three times a week, sell ads, be a good dad and husband, work out, and try to occasionally relax (rare) is that I’m using AI to squeeze more output out of my day. My life has no fluff, only things I find engaging, and that is all thanks to AI.

I want others to experience what I have. For paying subscribers, let me talk about the six apps and workflows that have changed my life so I can get more done. Don’t let this paradigm shift go to waste. Use AI to go remake your life.

The game changers