Why AI Won't Kill Jobs

0:00Eric Siu:When a buyer asks AI for a solution like yours, does your business come up? Most companies have no idea. And by the time they find out, they've already lost the deal to someone who did. HubSpot AEO helps you show up in those moments with the right answers buyers are looking for. Before the first click, before the first form fill. That's the moment HubSpot AEO is built for. Check out HubSpot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. The concept of the AI job plot flips. Narrative is alive. So the AI job apocalypse narrative is just completely wrong. And this actually comes from Andreessen Horowitz over here.

0:37Eric Siu:So let me just show you this deal. So we like charts, right? So check this out. So narrative violations abound. Demand for software engineers is actually rising. Okay, that's number one. Number two, software devs are rising as a share of new jobs. That's number two. Number three is AI exposed industries are seeing above trend wage growth and then open PM jobs, so product manager jobs, haven't been higher since 2022. Okay, check this out. So demand for software engineers is rising. So you look at this from 2025, this is like, I don't know, June 2025, inflection in software hiring. So it was going down, indeed, job postings for software engineers.

1:15Eric Siu:And then all of a sudden, boom, it shoots up this dark blue one over here. But overall, indeed, job postings are still trending downwards. So what does that tell you, Neil? Let's start with this one first.

1:24Neil Patel:It shows that people need more engineers because they want to keep using Claude and all these other solutions to make their companies more efficient, better, and grow faster.

1:33Eric Siu:Yep. So my take on this is if you have AI-pilled engineers, they're doing more ultimately. Everyone's talking about this concept of token maxing, which we'll get to in a second. But the reality is now your engineers are truly – people used to talk about 10x engineers. Now we're talking about 100x engineers. We're talking about 1 ,000x engineers. you can just do a lot more with one individual who's powered by itself here's a caveat though so we have some engineers in in eastern europe and um i was talking to him recently one of them i was like hey um do you know other engineers that are like you that are super ai pilled because we'd like to have more people like you we need more engineers right and he's like oh no no no you wouldn't want people like us i'm like why it's like no no no i'm like what do you mean no he's like he's like because they believe that you should still write code by hand i was like oh no no no no no, no, we can't have that.

2:23Eric Siu:So yes, demand for software engineering is rising if they're AI built. Yes.

2:30Neil Patel:And it's not just even software jobs. We're seeing, at least on our end, we haven't seen for most roles, at least in marketing, where AI has been causing more layoffs. We've been actually seeing the usage of AI increase in marketing. So for example, I was giving a lecture. lecture or speech. It was at a university though. That's what I was saying, lecture to around 300 people. That was yesterday. And during that lecture, almost majority of the people were, and this was in Spain, but majority of the people in there worked for global brands, right? So they were just, you know, think of a big, large corporation that's publicly traded.

3:11Neil Patel:They were working in their Spain office. And I was asking how many of them in the room use Claude? more than half. It was roughly 60 % that said that they use cloth. When I asked them, how many of your marketing departments have gone smaller, no one really raised their hand. I think there was maybe one or two, but it was a small amount. It was for more reasons related to business performance than actual more business performance than actual because of AI. Then when I dove into it even more with them, and I asked, what has AI done to your marketing? You want to know what the number one thing everyone said that it's caused with humans and workers?

3:53What?

3:54Neil Patel:It's caused them to have to work more. So they've all found that AI has not reduced headcount. It did not reduce the amount of hours they're working. It's actually causing more work. Not that, yes, it is making them more efficient in marketing and in other roles, but it's also causing them to have to do new tasks and new work, and that's adding up. Yep.

4:15Eric Siu:So one thing that we'll come to as well, I was just looking at, you know, Coinbase cut, I think 14 % of staff or something like that. And they're just trying to reimagine the organization, right? So the org chart, I think they want to have less and less layers. But, you know, Brian Armstrong, the CEO and co-founder of Coinbase introduced this concept known as the one person product team, right? Or the one person teams, because the one person now can do so much more. I just look at a lot of things that I shipped on my own this week where I just didn't want to wait. And that is happening now, right?

4:44Eric Siu:So I think the demand for not just software engineers, to Neil's point, I think it's demand for AI-pilled talent is continuing to rise. And it's going to continue to rise because these people can do so much more. I think the key thing, which we'll talk about maybe later, is how you go about making sure that you create conditions where they can continue to do good work and do more. But you don't want them to burn out. I've mentioned this on a couple of times the last few episodes. my number one concern right now from the AI people, AI pill people is that they might burn out. So that's something that we're talking about.

5:14Eric Siu:Now, software devs are a larger share of new jobs. So jobs created overall, software devs versus overall. So this is cited from Morgan Stanley Research, AlphaWise. So software developer is in the blue over here. And then in the gold, you have percentage of US created jobs, which are software developers. So that's going up. I mean, it's still, you know, we see it rising from a low of maybe 1.5%. to a high of, this looks like 2.5 % or so. Cool. And then, by the way, you see software developer jobs on the left side. So that's in the thousands. And so it's kind of, it went to a low of like, I don't know, this is like 22 ,000 to a high of 35 ,000 or so, or I guess this is like 37 ,000.

5:58Eric Siu:Okay, next one over here. Above trend wage growth for system design and AI exposed industry. So computer systems design and related services, high AI exposure. so that's all moving you know up and to the right this is uh you can see the dotted line over here this is chat gpt i think this is interesting um again i think we're just going to see more and more abundance technology has always created more people are like oh you know someone was was like leaving a stupid comment on my instagram it's like well you know this time it's different it's like oh you mean it's different than the agriculture the the when when we moved to the industrial age when we moved away from agriculture where it's like 90 what 8 percent of people were in agriculture and then it moved to two percent like oh we've never experienced a shift like this before like what are you talking about, man?

6:35Eric Siu:Technology changes everything. And I'll just ask you a question, Neil. Would you rather be the king of the world 500 years ago or would you rather be who you are right now?

6:48Neil Patel:I'm going to go with I'd rather be who I am right now because when you said 500 years ago, I was thinking about it. I'm like, wait, they probably didn't even have toilets.

6:56Eric Siu:Exactly. Exactly. Let me break it down for you a little more, Neil, because somehow I was walking. Wait, no toilet paper? No, no, no. You don't get that. Let me tell you what you do get. So, Neil, I did some research on this, right? If you live in a castle, let me tell you how it works, okay? If you live in a castle, when you take a poo-poo, okay, it goes all the way into a pit. It's like an outhouse, okay? And then it smells and it comes all the way up, okay? Not only that, everybody has like a bunch of diseases and things. You don't have air conditioner. No air conditioner, no toilet paper, no toilet, okay?

7:27Eric Siu:No cell phone, no internet, no nothing, okay? And you just sit on your throne all day. So you'd rather be the king of the world or who you are today? Exactly. technology has made our lives better and that will never stop but if i had a bet i think most people would choose the king from 500 years ago you know why neil because most people you just

7:43Neil Patel:need to think about it a little more that's all i'm saying no and and that when you answered it right away my first inclination like who wouldn't want to be a king and then i started thinking about it i'm like 500 years ago is a very different time you're missing out on too many things that makes life easier like no microwave yep you know like think about food options the variety of food we get right now, you wouldn't get all those varieties of food 500 years ago. No DoorDash, no Uber Eats, no flight, no nothing. No, no, but you're a king. Someone will get you all that stuff. But yes, you would have to go to places on a horse, right?

8:18Neil Patel:It's just like there is no car or anything.

8:20Eric Siu:That technology wasn't around. You weren't the benefactor of that technology because it didn't exist. You know what I just thought about, Neil? You're going on a vacation soon, so you say there's bad internet. Why don't you bring a Starlink with you? I actually have one in my closet. I have Starlink as well. I've thought about that. Okay, there you go.

8:38Neil Patel:But you don't want to game it. That's good. Okay, anyway. I don't want to game it because my kids want to spend time with me where I'm not working that much. I can't take a whole week off or 10 days or however many days are booked. But I was talking to my wife and she's like, still work, just try not to work for more than like three, four hours a day. And I'm like, I think that's very reasonable.

8:58Eric Siu:That's so generous. That's good. That's three, four hours. When I was just traveling in Mexico, last week. I was working three, four hours a day. It's great. And then the girlfriend was like, oh, do you feel like you're bored or whatever? I'm like, no, no, no, no. You need to take more time. You take more time. It's good. Anyway, I have this chart up and then we can move it here. But before we go to the chart,

9:20Neil Patel:did I ever tell you how much time my wife requires me to converse with her on a daily basis? Like, give her attention. How much time? No, 30 minutes? 10 minutes a day. She's like, look, just try to interact with me for 10 minutes a day and she's like i'm happy with that she's like i know you're busy working but she doesn't expect much so i was like all right kids expect a lot more so i had to do quite a bit more with them my wife 10 minutes she's happy how long with the kids uh there is no set time i try to when i'm when i'm in la if you notice i don't ever do dinners with anyone very very rarely i try to do dinners with my kids no phones at the dinner table So I'm willing to sit there for 30, 40 minutes.

9:59Neil Patel:My kids probably last 15, 20 minutes. Okay. And then I'd probably do like some puzzles or other things like that or whatever games they want. I don't do that daily, but I try to whenever they want. And it's more so me not doing it as much as they actually want. They would take it every day, but sometimes I'm busy. And when I am in LA, I try to pick them up or take them to school, if not do both on a daily basis. so that gives me 30 to 40 minutes each way with them where there's nothing and we're just talking and see how their day goes. Usually, if I ask them at the beginning, they're going to give me random responses and please excuse my language, but I'm like, oh, who'd you play with today?

10:39Neil Patel:They'll be like, poo-poo, pee-pee, ha-ha-ha-ha, right? But then after like five minutes, they'll really start having deep conversations. Like my son the other day, he has a bag that he takes to school. And I was like, William, when you leave the car, it's your responsibility to take your bag. He's like, what do I do? I'm like, it's your responsibility. You need to learn to handle your possessions and take care of them and be responsible. And he's like, no, it's your responsibility. He's like, I only have to carry the bag because you're forcing me to go to school. If you didn't force me to go to school, I would have to take the bag with me.

11:15Neil Patel:So in theory, it is your responsibility. and I was like okay he didn't use the word theory but I was like all right do you do you feel like

11:22Eric Siu:he's smarter than you at your age no sorry at his when you're the same age do you think he's

11:28Neil Patel:smarter than you he's four turning five he knows the square roots of numbers in his head and he can do multiplication of double digit numbers he can do a double versus single in his head he can't do double and double in his head he can do division in his head from a double digit to a single but yeah for a lot of stuff addition subtraction is easy for him uh yeah he is more gifted but i had to i'll also give this caveat i think a lot of people in this world including you and i have more potential than where we're at right now the difference is and this is a sad reality i'm able to give my kids some of the best education there is in the world a lot of the people who apply to my kids schools actually come from China and they had to put on the website like you need to actually live here and it's very competitive from applicants from China for the school I'm in Los Angeles because one of the best academic schools for elementary in the whole world and because I'm able to provide those kind of things for them and spend the money and get them private chess tutors and jiu-jitsu tutors and baseball tutors and all this kind of stuff like one-on-one they're able to learn and consume information way more than i ever was or even you are and some of it you could say is genetics but i think a lot of it is the surroundings that you and i will be able to give the future generations and i wish you know more of the world could experience that somehow right but there's only so much you and i can do from donating and stuff like that because we don't have enough to figure out how to get the whole world onto that kind of

13:03Eric Siu:stuff so let's tie this into how this applies to people as well right and so i see ai as a big equalizer as well so so here's the thing neil i would say at age four verse the reason i asked that question is age four your son because the things you're talking about i'm like for sure smarter than you at that age or smarter than me right but because they were provided with the opportunity and also there's this this amazing technology that will help equalize things uh ai tutors and things like that as well right so i think things are going like i know there's negative sentiment in America. But again, when you look at other countries, when they think about this stuff, very positive sentiment.

13:36Eric Siu:So let me just pull up this other chart over here and we can move on. So if you look at the open roles of product managers since 2022, look, in 2023, it was 4 ,000. It was like, oh my God, like, it went from 10 ,000, dropped all the way to 4 ,000 in this time period. It was like, oh, we're not going to need product managers anymore, right? So it drops down. And then what's happening is it's continued to rise from the low. It's risen 79%. Okay, This is from Lenny's newsletter. And I think this is really important because, Neil, I think really AI-pilled product managers, we're actually looking for them right now.

14:06Eric Siu:One actually reached out to me yesterday. He worked at Uber before. I think he worked at another one of these Silicon Valley startups, and he's been like a head of growth. But if you're good at product, you have taste, and you're super AI-pilled, the way I see it right now is you're able to combine a lot of the elements around design, development, and product. And so I think those people are able to do a lot more with less, right? And so that's why this is going up. So again, a lot of narrative violations over here. And then Andreessen Horowitz wrote with the whole AI job apocalypse is a complete fantasy.

14:36Eric Siu:I think we're going to see some turnover in some areas, but especially in a lot of AI enabled industries, I don't think we're going to see that happen. So let's move on to this. Quick break. If you're doing AI SEO or content marketing in general, you know what the problem is. The problem is you're spending hours writing yourself or you're paying agencies lots and lots of money and you're getting AI slop that sounds just like everyone else. That's why we built ClickFlow. ClickFlow creates production-grade content that actually sounds like you. Plus, it helps you with other areas such as building internal links, creating FAQs, and more.

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15:21Neil Patel:Yeah, and we have some charts coming out in a few weeks. We did a survey and a study. And what we're finding is in marketing departments, at least, the adoption. And when I say of AI, I'm not talking about people just using chat GPT. I'm talking about them using like CloudCowork, CloudCode, et cetera, in marketing has drastically increased. And what we're also seeing is not only are organizations consuming AI, at least in marketing, they're not really firing and they're actually spending more money and marketing as an organization in total because a people are getting more done and they're paying for a lot of ai uh tokens and i believe what we're going to actually see is not ai causing a big cut in human capital at least in marketing but it's actually going to cause a big increase in spend due to the fact that we have to

16:11Eric Siu:pay for all these tokens dude okay so let's go to token maxing in a second but so let's hold that thread for a moment but because you just mentioned the people thing I'm going to take the other side of this one for this topic over here okay I'll take the other side so let's talk about the economics of GameStop 11.5 billion dollar company buying eBay 48 billion dollar company because you saw this on CNBC and Neil because I know you watch CNBC maybe you were traveling so maybe you didn't see it but the CNBC anchors were like hey so how do you make the math work like you're 11 billion dollar company and then it was like a really awkward like five minute interaction where it's like look at the website, look at the website, just look at the website, right?

16:51Eric Siu:He's like, yo, it's going to be half debt, half cash. And that's what we're going to do. Did you see that interaction? Uh-huh.

16:58Neil Patel:But it's not going to end up happening because GameStop can, they can't afford to buy them. And eBay is not going to want to take a lot of GameStop shares. Okay.

17:06Eric Siu:So here's what I'll say. GameStop CEO says eBay needs way fewer people. So I saw this interaction over here. I'm going to share my screen. Okay. So hopefully you can, let me know if you can hear the audio as well, Neil. So here we go. This is from TVPN. All right. You see this? Yeah. Okay. So this is Ryan Cohen from the CEO of GameStop. And then these are the two hosts over here.

17:25Neil Patel:The reality is most of that marketing spends isn't making money, but everyone's trying to protect their jobs. And there's kickbacks. There's all kinds of perverse incentives. And so I'm running the business like a family business. It's really not that complicated. And you look at eBay spending two and a half billion bucks to grow 1 million users, 2 billion in cost cuts between sales and marketing and corporate overhead. It's not a lot. And it's not something that's going to take a few years. Like it's something that is going to happen fast, fast, fast, because I'm putting leverage on this thing.