This Week in Jobs: AI Is Reshaping Work & Nobody Agrees On What Comes Next

When a commencement speaker dropped a single line about AI, the crowd booed, and the reaction said a lot more than people might think. We're based in Orlando, so the UCF graduation clip hit close to home and opened up a bigger question: why does "AI is the next industrial revolution" sound like hope to some people and like a threat to others?

We dig into the growing divide between AI enthusiasts and skeptics, especially among entry-level workers watching roles disappear while executives talk productivity and profit. We also react to high-profile forecasts of white-collar disruption and pressure-test the "AI creates jobs" argument by looking at what's actually booming right now: construction tied to data centers. That buildout is real, but it's running headfirst into a skilled-trades shortage and rising community pushback over noise, energy use, water use, and quality of life.

Then we zoom out to what rarely makes the headlines: the employee mindset. Burnout is up, engagement is down, and mental health support still feels thin. When people feel trapped by job-hugging in a crowded market, that anxiety fuels the exact disengagement employers say they want to fix.

We close with a practical take on career resilience, understand incentives, sharpen your media literacy, don't outsource your AI education to your employer, and build skills that stay scarce.

If this episode made you think, subscribe for weekly job market reality checks, share it with a coworker or new grad, and leave a review. Where do you land on the UCF moment: negative reaction from the crowd, or wrong message for the room?

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Transcript

UCF Graduation Booing Over AI

Pete Newsome 0:00

Welcome back to the weekend jobs, Peter. How are you today? I'm good. It's good to be back. It is good to be back as always. Here we are on a Friday, and this has been an interesting newsweek, specifically for Orlando, where we're based.

Peter Porebski 0:20

It's your alma mater.

Pete Newsome 0:22

You were at that graduation ceremony, just like the one that took place. This video is being shared on social media constantly. But if you haven't heard about it yet, one of the commencement speakers at the University of Central Florida's graduation ceremonies this weekend dropped a line on the crowd that did not go over well to say the least. She said that AI was the next industrial revolution. I don't think she was expecting the response that she was given.

Peter Porebski 1:03

Yeah, based on her uh her reaction, I think that was a surprise to her how uh how people reacted. Um just the overall tone of her her speech kind of shifted a lot. And after seeing all of those uh the negative reaction, the boos from the students, um safe to say it did it did not uh end up the way I think she planned.

Pete Newsome 1:24

So it it's such an interesting topic right now, and it was interesting timing for me because I saw this news story an hour before I went on stage at a conference in Las Vegas on Tuesday where I was going to speak about AI's impact on the job market. And so for me, it was just so indicative of how there are two camps right now. There are the people who are concerned, in this case, these grads who are being impacted by fewer entry-level jobs. We know that's happening right now. And then you have people who want to do nothing but celebrate it and all the potential associated with AI. This is a growing problem that we're facing.

Peter Porebski 2:04

Yep, yep. Um, so I know uh uh I believe her name Gloria Caulfield, she's uh a VP at Tavistock, and she had um their company she she had claimed is is making you know great strides and that the these graduates are gonna benefit from it, but we've got all of these people, which it was the I believe the College of Art and Humanities specifically. So the people who are seeing, you know, we're the first the graphic designers, the artists and whatnot who are first seeing uh their jobs being outsourced replaced to AI. So know your audience. Um, but yeah, I I agree there's a uh there's a growing rift, I think we're seeing between the people who are touting all of the potential benefits of AI. And don't get me wrong, I think that there are lots of benefits, but we're going about it maybe wrong in that there's these there are CEOs saying it's going to be you know getting rid of all of your jobs, the job market is gonna be changing, there's you know, this is gonna be changing, it's gonna be so dramatically different. And you've got these young people who are, like you said, coming into the market, seeing their entry-level jobs going away. So there is a growing rift of uh uh anti-AI pushback. You know, you're and I know you've you've seen it.

Pete Newsome 3:16

Yeah, yeah, we see it constantly. It's in the news almost every day. And I know we talk about as as we're getting ready for the show each week, are we going to talk about AI again? And the answer is always yes, because this is the biggest thing impacting the job market. Yes, there's geopolitical issues and there's economic issues in in our country. But this, to me, is not only the biggest story right now, this is going to be the biggest story of our lifetimes. And I don't believe that anyone really knows where it's going to end. But to your point, we see CEOs predicting impending doom, right? They're they're they're on record saying this. The Verizon CEO just two weeks ago said that he expects up to 30 percent unemployment within the next two to five years. And if he's even directionally correct, this is devastating to a degree that makes the Great Recession look like nothing almost, right, with our current situation. And it's not just him. Ford's CEO has predicted massive white-collar unemployment specifically. And that list is very long of call them doomers, if you will, right? I might call them pragmatists, but then you see the other side of that rift. I think that's a good way to put it, where they're AI's biggest cheerleaders. They want to talk about how much job creation there's going to be and how wonderful it is. And I think that's a really dangerous methods, uh message. It's starting to sound disingenuous to me because everyone who's saying that has something to gain from it.

Peter Porebski 4:54

That's what I think. It's it's it's tone-deaf at the best, where these people who are, you know, a lot of the times, frankly, they're they're rich, high-level executives, CEOs, whatever, who aren't really, you know, if even if everything went really bad for them, they're probably going to be okay. And they're telling the general public, everything is going to be great, you know, these things are going to be awesome, while we can clearly see company after company laying off. You know, you got Cisco laying off people, just you know, Meta, all of these huge tech companies lay off, layoff, layoff related to AI. How does the average job seeker, these new graduates who are, you know, they're online, they're on Reddit, they're on, they see these news articles. This is all they're seeing. So I'm I'm not surprised in the least that this was the reaction to it, that there's this pushback when you've got companies that are saying it's great, but the evidence is showing the opposite for a lot of these people.

AI Doomers Versus Cheerleaders

Pete Newsome 5:52

Yeah, they're not just seeing it, they're living it. In that age group in particular. This was hit home for me because one of my sons was also a UCF graduate uh in a master's program over the weekend. Now we weren't in that particular ceremony. It's a big college, there's six different ceremonies that they have, so we weren't there for that. I don't know if that's a good thing or not. I certainly have been in the news. That would have been painful to watch live. But more than one thing can be true in this scenario where this is the next industrial revolution, but it doesn't mean that that is something we should celebrate right now, especially to those who are going to be impacted. And you mentioned the people who will be okay. I I'll go farther than that to say they're more than okay. They are becoming wealthy to a degree that's never existed before because of all of this. So one of the messages that I've really developed through or beliefs that I've developed over the past year and a half now with this is consider the source very closely. Of anyone who's telling you that AI is going to be great for jobs, now consider it on the other side too. But this is a dangerous time that we're in right now.

Peter Porebski 7:06

Yeah, uh it's it's always a good idea to know what the person's motivations are who's giving you this information. What do they get out of it? And that's that's something that's not gonna steer these, you know, steer you wrong. If if you understand that, it makes things a lot more clear as to why the message is slanted one way or the other. Um it's like you said, these people, you know, or the the young people particularly are if their perception of the market is that it's bleak and there's nothing to there's nothing to be gained, there's no, there's nowhere going forward, and that it's only gonna get worse, then and you've got these people coming in here who they can see. I mean, we're we're we live in the digital age, it's very clear to see you know, records, you know, companies making profits on the stock market while laying off people, that disconnect is only, I don't, it's gonna not gonna go to a good place. Uh, you know, if we've if we've got these these two different groups, there's going to be pushback. And AI being a great tool, I think it has a lot of potential to do a lot of great things. But if it doesn't work for the general work, you know, if it's if it's at the expense of a huge chunk of the population having a worse you know standard of living or you know, losing their livelihoods, that ain't gonna work. Sorry, that's it's there's gonna be problems.

What Happens After The Train Leaves

Pete Newsome 8:23

So the question becomes, then what? That that and that's what where I always end up with this, because the train has clearly left the station at this point. It's picking up speed. I don't think anyone would deny that. You still see a lot of people saying this, well, but it doesn't really work well. Chat GPT hallucinates, those kind of things. That anyone who's still saying that is very far behind right now. We we know that. It seems to be that the federal government has caught wind of how severe this problem could be. But even the folks who are in charge of AI for the current administration, they've been among AI's biggest cheerleaders saying that it is going to create lots of jobs. And so I want to just touch on that real quick, because once again, more than one thing can be true in this scenario. AI, AI's existence, I'll say, and the need for AI to continue growing has in fact created a lot of jobs in the construction industry. That has been one of the two industries carrying the economy lately, right? Healthcare being the biggest, we're seeing an aging population, that all makes sense. And now we have data centers that are being built in a, quite frankly, a build-out that's never existed in that size in all of human history before. And they're celebrating it as a great thing. Here's the problem: the skilled trades workers that are being hired for those jobs, we already have a shortage in that space. We have over half a million more jobs than there are people who can do those jobs already. And so we're creating jobs, A, where there's no people to fill them, which is its own problem, by the way. That's a problem we're heading towards anyway, because more people are retiring with those skills than there are filling them. So if you're uh a parent of someone young, if you are young, consider encouraging or consider going in that space because that shortage is going to exist for decades to come. That's a problem. But the AI build out is only making that problem worse. So, yes, you can point to a lot of a big boom in construction, but that's not really going to help us long term in terms of how AI is impacting.

Peter Porebski 10:46

Once a data center is built, it takes a fraction of the people to actually run it. And not to mention that I you see you know general public opinion kind of shifting against it's in the news. People don't want data centers any anywhere near them because they're noisy, they're bad for the environment, they apparently they suck up you know all the energy, all the water. So I'm you over the last year, I've just seen more and more people encouraging call your congressman, don't let them build it in our you know, in our neighborhood, in our area. Um and I can only imagine that as they become more prevalent, that's going to grow. Nobody, everybody seems to want to be able to use it, but nobody wants it uh in in their neighborhood.

Pete Newsome 11:26

So just this week, I think it was Utah, there was a uh a group of residents who were given some sort of communication where they were told that at some point in the next year, their current provider of power is going to send all of that to a data center and they're going to lose their provider. Now, I I don't know how that's legal. I don't know any details about how that's possible. But this is what's going on because these AI companies, they have uh you know checkbooks with no limit. They can pay whatever they need to. And once again, that's great for the current uh skilled trades workers. Good for them, right? They deserve to be uh paid as much as they can get. I'm all for it. But the problem is these AI companies, they can pay as much as they want. So now it appears even the you know the providers are shifting away from residents. I mean, is that how is that possible?

When Infrastructure Pushes Out Residents

Peter Porebski 12:20

And that that just goes into like that's more fodder for the anti-you know, AI camp of people, like where they can just one more thing they can point to of how it's shifting, you know. It's one thing to say you're losing your job, it's another to say your house doesn't even have power anymore, or your water quality is you know not gonna be up to up to par. So that's yeah, it's and it's all um even with the with the building of of everything, it's a short to mid-term solution. Like, yeah, we have like you said, we have current jobs now. How does that look in five years? How does that look in 10 years? And that's what we mean. It's if we want to have a system that's gonna work for the current graduates, they're gonna be working for a while. So they they need something that's gonna be sustain, you know, it's gonna sustain them into the next couple decades.

Pete Newsome 13:09

How how do you think that someone you can go to a graduation, right? You have to know you're speaking to young people, obviously. Is it you mentioned tone deaf earlier? I've seen that phrase used to describe what happened, and I don't disagree. But do you think that that's really where we are, where there's a certain class of people uh age? I mean, that that's my age group, right? I'm certainly sensitive to what's happening. I'm very concerned about not only what's happening now, but what can happen to a more significant degree in the very near future. How are people oblivious? That that's what I wonder. Like, uh is it are they are they getting their news sources from the wrong places? I how is this happening?

Why Leaders Miss The Mood

Peter Porebski 13:56

Yeah, I mean it's it's hard to understand because with the internet it's so easy to, I mean, you can get your news sources from any number of places. You can see what the general consensus is, but at the same time, I mean, every one of us, anyone watching this knows like how easy it is to get siloed and right now, algorithms they'll reward what you want. So, I mean, I can't I can imagine a world where if you like a certain type of content, you're rewarded with that type of content, you're rewarded with people who you know agree with you. That's how I mean you look in the news, any sort of a lot of these extremists, a lot of these, you know, different political groups, that's why the country is is so divided because you're just getting fed people who agree with you or are like so wildly against it, you can only think that they're you know they're crazy. And I think that it's really easy to maybe get uh get divided like that. So that's all I can that's the only way I can think of because any person who's spent any amount of time generally online looking at different sources can see that the general consensus is not all sunshine and rainbows, and that you shouldn't just uh you know go into blind.

Pete Newsome 15:03

It's such a that's a great point. If you're getting your news from an online source, so we know that if you watch one network versus one of the others, you're going to get a very different slant on the same story. We know that that's been happening for many years now, and that's a problem. But now when you get your news from social media, as many of us do, I'm a Twitter user, if you're on TikTok, as a lot of young people get their news from, it is going to perpetuate the same message to uh based on the algorithm. Last night uh the, or yesterday, the NFL released their schedule, and what's become trendy is the teams each put out a video. And they they put a lot of uh effort into those. They're all catchy, they're fun to watch. So that was my entire news feed last night because I'm a football fan. I would barely know hockey even existed as a sport. I don't follow hockey. I don't dislike it, but it's just not something that I pay close attention to. And so that's a really valid point. It is just reaffirming whatever you're already inclined to believe. And I wonder about this speaker, if that's kind of what happened. I mean, could she really be unaware of how severe of a problem this is for entry-level and young professional workers?

Do Not Wait On Your Employer

Peter Porebski 16:17

It's it's funny because I think it kind of plays into while even while any person can fall into that trap, it plays into the out-of-touch, you know, if you're you're an executive somewhere and yeah, it's great for you because you're going to make money, but what about like us general, you know, the the populate, you know, population of the general workforce? And I think that that it's so you get you get the two-hit of there of yeah, this could happen to anybody. Anybody, she, you know, she could be at home, just that's her what her social media feed is, is how great X, Y, and Z is. I'm seeing articles, I'm seeing I'm seeing these articles about how companies are posting record profits because of AI, because of all these, you know, ways that it's great for the market. But if you're not in contact with entry-level people constantly, young people, people who are maybe not all executives, you know, around you, it's I can see where it's easy to lose that perspective, even though that that is a huge chunk of the work. That's the that's the largest chunk of the workforce.

Pete Newsome 17:15

So I mentioned that I was at a conference speaking about AI's impact on the job market, and the conference was uh the American Resort and Development Association. It's it was all the big timeshare companies were there. And I had an opportunity to see various CIOs speak about what they're doing in technology, how they're approaching AI, and it was all over the place. It was a range from very sophisticated, out in front for sure, to taking it much more slowly. And it occurred to me while I was listening that if you're an employee at one company versus another, your exposure is going to be significant or maybe not much at all. And even at the companies who are moving fast, if you're not in a department or a role where you're part of that, it just may not be something that's on your radar screen as much as it is for others. And one of the messages that I think is very important for everyone in the workforce is don't rely on your employer, your current employer, because it may not be your future employer. Probably won't be. When you look at how many times people change jobs throughout their career, statistically, you won't work for that organization very long. That's a fact. Um, hopefully you will, but odds are you won't. Don't rely on your employer to be your source of AI news and progress and what's happening, because we've also seen through the data that depending on how much your manager uses it, encourages you to use it, that will be the biggest factor in most workers how quickly they adopt it. So that's a very limiting thing to do. And I would go so far as to say it's a dangerous approach to be to allow yourself to um to not be in the game, so to speak.

Klarna And The Headline Problem

Peter Porebski 19:01

Yeah, you need to be self-serving. I mean, in in today's, I don't love the idea of it. I wish we were back in the day where it was great that you know you could work at a company and stay there, and that was a perfectly viable option, and you didn't have to constantly be um upskilling yourself. But the fact of the matter is you'd need to. And in today's society, companies are, you know, large companies can lay you off. You there are many, many companies where you are unfortunately just a number. And so you have to look out for yourself, you have to look out for your family and and and your career prospects. So doing that research on your own, if you feel like you're not, it's not being, you know, your company's not doing enough, that is the the recommended way of. And there, I I know you've talked to managers who are approaching it poorly, to say the least. And then you've talked to people who are doing, you know, I you've told me stories about people who are doing great jobs where they're using it as a tool to enhance their current workforce, and it's something that they view as being like a tool that is going to make the allow their current team to do better and you know greater and better things and not replace their entire team, but make them so much better with the you know the resources they've got. And then you've got companies that are wanting to replace their entire team with just you know just AI. You've got um, what was it? Uh who was the payment company that uh they announced layoffs and they had to bring a bunch of people back? Klarna. Klarna, yeah. That's so you've got examples like that where they had to, you know, sorry, we've got to bring a bunch of you know uh all of our team back because we couldn't, we tried to do too much. And that's not the right way to do it because now in the news, people are souring on them and it they've shown their hand as not caring about you know their their team and and all sorts of negative things.

Pete Newsome 20:41

Yeah, that that's such an interesting story because it's it's one that's unfolding. Klarna made a lot of news two years ago when they first said we're going to replace 700 workers with AI. And they're they're one of the first big companies to come out and say it, and they said it very directly, and then they walked it back. It wasn't working. But if you look at their latest earnings report, it tells you that it is in fact working. They are their headcount is down, their revenue is up. They just put out their latest new uh news report or uh earnings release, I think yesterday, which I have not actually looked at yet. So we'll I'm actually gonna pull it up while we're talking here to see what it says because this is a story, and this is, I think, similar to many AI stories right now, where what's what you did two years ago is isn't necessarily relevant to today. And what you're doing today isn't necessarily going to be relevant what with what you do six months from now because it's moving and evolving that quickly.

Peter Porebski 21:38

Well, it's funny that it's it that that that one action of having to offer jobs back to a lot of the team that were specifically laid off because they needed somebody to run and manage the AI in areas where it wasn't self sufficient. Uh that's not the kind of I've you know I've seen lots of news articles about specifically this situation, and that's not. The kind of press obviously you want to get, especially in a tech company like this. But like you said, is that going to negatively affect their bottom line? And then does that just feed into what we've talked about earlier, where these companies are, well, we can do whatever we want. And, you know, the workers who lost their livelihood and were thrown into a scramble, oh well, you know, we're going to bring them back. Maybe, maybe we won't. Uh, but the company is going to do well, and the CEO's doing well, and the executives are doing well. So where does that lead when that's more that's not just one company we're talking about? It's dozens of companies doing the same thing.

Pete Newsome 22:36

So I'm lucky now, announced yesterday Klarna's revenue went up by 44% in Q1. So this is a company that is wasn't afraid to break some glass with this. They got some good press, they got some bad press, they kept pushing, clearly. They've recently said they now have AI doing the work of 853 people at customer service. So the the headlines at times are a problem with all of this because they don't really tell the full story. And depending on, just like the leaders who are speaking, we already said be consider your source, consider their motivation. I think the same thing goes to headlines. I mean, we know that journalists are biased. Uh they want to tell a story that makes AI look like um, you know, it's a great thing. They want it to look like it's uh, but if they have a different perspective, they may want it to look like it's it's anything but. So it's hard to know what to believe at all no matter what your source is these days.

Peter Porebski 23:34

Well, media literacy, I mean, this is unrelated, but media literacy is the number one thing I think that young people can develop critical thinking and knowing your source, being skeptical, because as speaking of AI, as videos can be, you know, there's deep fakes, there's also how do you know what's real? How do you everything sounds sensational now? Every title sounds sensational. If if if I mean my this is my personal opinion of it, if a news source is trying to evoke a certain emotion from you, then you can kind of uh automatically assume that it's going to be biased in a certain way. It's not gonna be a neutral, uh, a true neutral source. But yeah, it's it's crazy because you you see it's this way, it's that way. There's you know, there's clearly an agenda behind 90% of the things that you're gonna see online.

Pete Newsome 24:23

So the the earnings report, I agree with you 100%. The earnings report also uh said that their um their revenue per employee has tripled since 2022 because of their use of AI agents. So do you think they're gonna slow down?

Profit Motives And Public Backlash

Peter Porebski 24:36

Yeah. Why would a company you know that's being rewarded for this, they got to deal with some bad press, they've got to deal with you know some workers hating them, but at the end of the day, they're making money and people and most people are gonna just put up with it and and keep using the product until actual consumers decide that they don't want to use it or that they're gonna you know put their principles or whatever, you know, first, it's not gonna stop them. And so that's we're just gonna see more companies doing that.

Pete Newsome 25:06

So, where where does that fall morally? You're a millennial. I'm Gen X. Your your generation, as we've often talked about, is much more sensitive to these things than mine.

Peter Porebski 25:15

I would say in Gen Z is even more so. It's so it that's we're what we're talking about. Millennials, Gen Z, and even you know, we'll see how Gen Alpha kind of kind of turns out, but it seems that trend is becoming more uh sensitive to these types of things, I think.

Pete Newsome 25:31

So So who's so who's the CEO that's gonna step up and say, we don't care about profit, we care about the protecting the workers first and foremost. Can they can they say that and retain their job?

Peter Porebski 25:45

It's interesting because I think they can if it's a private company, obviously. Of course. Publicly traded companies, it's a catch 22 because they want to get the put good press, but at the end of the day, they are beholden to their stakeholders. They have to make money. So no, I I think there's not really an incentive unless there's maybe large-scale, like I said, boycotts or some some sort of thing that's actually going to affect the company. And whether it's the right thing or wrong thing, you could you could argue that the company's job is to make money. But if you've got if you it's at the expense of say, like, like Verizon, 30% of the population not being able to find a job, that system isn't gonna isn't gonna stand very long. If nobody can buy your products, how are you gonna sell more products?

Pete Newsome 26:32

Oh, you you you you mentioned boycotts, and we see that a lot, right? Uh in the in the press. I don't know that that really has much impact. Those things seem to fade away. If a company makes it people have too short of attention spans.

Peter Porebski 26:46

They uh everybody wants to talk about it. Yeah, we should do, and then uh that all kind of goes the next news story. We live in the age of ADD, and everything is the is the 10-minute news cycle and it's just switching around. So I've seen many times online, I've seen many articles of calls for boycotts of this. This company's doing the wrong thing, and you get lots of people. It seems like the the majority of people are generally will are either neutral or agree that yeah, they should this company shouldn't do it. Doesn't affect their behavior, so the company doesn't change.

Pete Newsome 27:16

Yeah, I mean there were there were calls there's been multiple occasions where there were calls to boycott Chick-fil-A. And if you've been by Chick-fil-A, I can promise you nobody's that's not affecting their business at all. The line, you know, wraps around the building ever the entire time they're open. But I am concerned that this could become more extreme, right? Go from boycotts to you know more more serious things that happen because when when people are desperate enough.

Peter Porebski 27:46

Actual unrest, yeah.

Pete Newsome 27:47

Yeah, and yeah, we've seen the the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Alman's house, has been attacked a couple of times, right? I mean, is this the the populists rising against all of this at some point? I I don't clearly don't want that to happen, but I could see how it could happen.

Peter Porebski 28:07

Well, like you said, it's it's if the level of uh desperation and and if when you've got a large popular population that views their future as bleak, not having you know whether it's true or not, they the general consensus is that there are there is not as much opportunity as their parents had, and that the world is in a worse place than it was when they were born, or the generations before you see me right now we see large-scale nostalgia for the 2000s and the 90s, and so and why is that? Because that's a time before the internet, it's a time or not even before the internet, but before the current internet, when people view it as being a better time, and you've got people rooting for an AI bust the same way there was a dot-com bust. So I I don't know where it's gonna go, but yeah, I can see um when you've if people lose their livelihoods and it and a lot of these predictions, if they end up coming true for the job market, when people are fat and happy, it's it's one thing to say, I'm gonna boycott this, but it's it doesn't affect me that much. Where is that line that they get pushed to where it actually becomes action?

Pete Newsome 29:17

I I hope I'm wrong about the trajectory we're on. Um, but we're going to see. That's the one thing we know for sure. What we we will find out as we go. And if anyone who tell tells you that they know, quote unquote, what's going to happen, despite all the very confident, bold statements that we see, no one knows. We've never experienced anything like that.

Peter Porebski 29:39

Well, that's why I think it's it's in it's in a lot of these companies' interests. Knowing that millennials are a certain way and the Gen Z are a certain way, it's in their interest to make it as A, palatable as they can, and B, work for actual workers. Like it's saying that you're gonna lay off a huge chunk of your workforce and they have to just figure it out, if everyone's doing that, that's not that's not gonna work. That you need to make it something that's gonna incorporate it, that's gonna keep the population in a job, that's gonna keep them, you know, maybe help them reskill. I think that if you if you act in a completely self-serving manner with and assume that there are gonna be consequences down the line, and you need to kind of factor that in. Companies need to sell products. They it's in their interest to keep the job, the job market as stable as possible.

Pete Newsome 30:29

Yeah, you need buyers, right? Yeah, and you need you need future leaders of your company. So I I was initially hypocritical of a quote uh or a tweet that I saw from Mark Benioff, the Salesforce CEO, either last week or the week before, and it was in response to an article someone shared about how entry uh AI may actually be a good thing for entry-level work. I'll put that aside. We've already debated that enough. But he replied to that tweet by saying we're hiring a thousand new grads and interns right now. And that comes on the heels of Salesforce having significant cuts in the well, more than 10,000 over the past couple of years. So while I initially thought, well, that's rather hypocritical. This guy's been on record saying we're no longer going to need to hire developers because of AI. But what I want to believe and want to give him the benefit of the doubt of is that he's aware of that this is a problem. And now this is a way of stepping up and doing something about it. So I of course don't know this guy, but I I thought, wow, okay, good for you, right? Good for you if you're identifying this is a societal problem. We I I should feel obligated to do something about it.

Peter Porebski 31:41

So let me play devil's advocate for that and say, what if he they use that as they lay off a bunch of people that they think are paid too highly because they've got skill, and they just hire a bunch of low-level people at uh to and save money there and then use AI to supplement the mid-level skills for that. So you're taking people who are in the middle of their career, they you can't pay, they they make too much money, you get rid of them. Now you can hire a bunch of low-level, like low-paid people in there.

Pete Newsome 32:07

I mean, look, who knows, right? And unless we're in the the boardrooms for these decisions, where which we clearly are not, it's impossible to know. But I I do think if that approach is short-sighted, just like you were talking about, if you if there's no if no one has income, there's no one to buy your product. So that is self-sabotage in the not too distant future. But if you want to take a longer-term view, which is hard to do if you're a public company where you're getting busy.

Peter Porebski 32:37

I was gonna say a lot of these companies, I mean, it's it we can talk about it, but like, is it real? We see in our current, I mean, the the government and a lot of these companies, they don't seem to be taking a very long-term view of things. How so it's that seems to be the kind of general theme is who cares what's gonna happen in 10 years?

Layoffs Keep Coming Every Week

Pete Newsome 32:54

Like Peter, it was a better time 30 years ago. It was, it was. We weren't dealing with all this. Okay, so I think we we've we've talked about this enough for today. You mentioned some cuts, let's just cover those quickly. Yeah, once again, big profits, big cuts. This is not the way it's historically worked. So this week we saw Cisco, we saw LinkedIn, LinkedIn, that was LinkedIn cutting. LinkedIn is is uh maybe LinkedIn should just be cut altogether. I'm kidding. But um big cuts at those companies, GM announced cuts, here we go. I mean, it's like every week. I don't I don't remember the last week we didn't have stories like this from household names, major employers. The hits just keep coming.

Peter Porebski 33:39

Seems like it's all AI too. I mean, if it seems like that at home area, like these are all AI companies or these are all AI departments, you're not wrong. This is where the most of these are uh coming in. That's where the AI uh the AI growth is, I guess, the strongest for these companies.

Pete Newsome 33:54

Yeah, so there's there's really not much for us to say there beyond that, right? Because some people will see that and say it's just AI washing, they're just right sizing after overhiring post-COVID. Others will say it's AI taking jobs. Once again, we we don't really know, but we do know the cuts are happening, and they're happening with a lot of frequency. And no matter the reason, that's a bad thing. So we'll keep monitoring those and every week. Hopefully, maybe we'll get lucky.

Peter Porebski 34:24

Hopefully it goes away and we aren't we aren't you know announcing multiple every week, but yeah.

Burnout And Engagement Slide

Pete Newsome 34:29

Yeah, I mean look, this is we're in the staffing business. This is a bad thing, regardless of the the motivation behind the cuts. It's not uh something we want to see, to say the least. But let's close with uh what seemed to be a cycle of stories this week about worker mindset and mentality. And and I think uh this almost makes what is a bad situation worse. So just I'll read a couple headlines to you. Glassdoor reported that worker burnout has hit two and a half times what it was pre-COVID. Gallup said that employee engagement has dropped to ten-year lows. Monster reported that three and four workers say employer, their employer doesn't adequately support mental health. And then Glassdoor's report, they put out, I believe it's monthly, for employer confidence, has dropped to record a record low. So four major sources of of data have all said employers, employees are not engaged, they're not feeling good. They're and employees who are engaged are not productive employees, they're not efficient employees. If you're not happy, you're not gonna do a good job, or not as good of a job as you otherwise would. We know that. So to me, this is just making a bad situation worse.

Peter Porebski 35:49

I I agree. Um, it it is gonna make a bad situation worse. I mean, a lot of I guess you can't control whether you're burnt out or not on the on your job. So that's what I would say is these these people, a lot of so these, these, these surveys, they obviously they must have asked workers. Our own survey did a similar thing where we ask about your anxiety in the job market. So I guess it's not necessarily explicitly saying it's affecting their behavior. We know that if somebody is disengaged, they're not going to be up to their top potential. Whether the person, the worker is going to admit that or not, that's another thing. But yeah, I can I can see where uh where it's you're you know, you've got this this workforce that's burnt out that doesn't care, but then you've got companies that are apparently in the mode of getting rid of non-producing workers. So that's a it's a dangerous place to be. But on the flip side, I can see where when you're seeing article after article, like we just talked about, companies laying off, AI looming, it's hard for it for someone to not feel anxiety about the market, burnout at their job, uh force you're forced to produce because there is no other option for you. Um I and I don't know a good solution to it. It's it seems like that's kind of the mode we're in right now with the general workforce mentality.

Pete Newsome 37:10

So the we've seen a change over the years where when I was getting started in my career, no one was concerned about employee mental health. No one was, there were no surveys about engagement the way that there is now. You were expected to do your job and no one was asking about your emotions that were attached to it, right? I mean, very old school. That's become prevalent. But to me, the concern is, and now whether that's something that should be part of the workplace or not, uh everyone can have an opinion on. But I worry about that happening right now at a time where it's easy, like you were just saying, it you you hear it often when when AI comes up. Well, AI doesn't call the the the robot, so to speak, right? Doesn't call in sick, doesn't complain, doesn't take time off. The robot works 24-7. We know that. And now we have employers having to look at their own team in many cases. I mean, based on this data, this is significant, it's a problem, uh, but it's a problem that could potentially be solved not to the worker's benefit. Where if you're deciding, do I want to solve this with my the emotional challenges of my team, or do I want to just make a decision that'll allow that to go away altogether? I just it's I don't I don't have a good answer either. I there's no solution to this, but seeing it to me was concerning this week because I thought, boy, well, now we're just giving employers another reason to look at.

Peter Porebski 38:36

Well, you've got to catch 22 here because you've got that. So then how so then how does the worker feel when they're like, if I'm not at my 100% every single day, I'm just gonna get laid off and replaced with a robot? And then how does that not make you feel burnt out at your job? If you're like every I you know, we've got meta talk talking about how they're key, they're key tracking their employees, and so you can't have an off day. You can't have in say, you know, when you were starting out, that wasn't a conversation, as you said, but you also weren't as like closely monitored every second of your day. Maybe you could you could actually get away from you know your boss for a second and you can work, you're not having someone constantly looking at. I mean, I know that that existed always always, but the internet wasn't at the at such a level where there could be such you know, I guess AI enforced micromanaging of your of your every single move. And it does, and I can see where you know the worker is getting burnt out. They have to fight against it because, like you said, it's it's not a good situation to be in, but I can understand how it how it's happening.

Job Hugging And Supply Demand Reality

Pete Newsome 39:40

I struggle with this, as you know, uh, because this isn't how I grew up. And yeah, one of one of my my sons who's home from college, uh, he's working outside, he's doing a physical job this summer, he's working long hours, and he's like, oh, this this kind of sucks at times. And I'm like, yeah, that's why they're paying you to show up and do it. Yeah. If this was going to be fun and and something you would do for free, you wouldn't be getting paid for it. And I say that somewhat in jest. He actually likes the job he's doing a lot and is having fun with it too. But to me, that's sort of a a balance. If you work does kind of suck in many cases, right? That's why it's called work. It's not called fun. But you want to be in an environment where hopefully you care about what you're doing, you enjoy the people you get to do it with, who you report to. So, as I think I've said two times already today, more than one thing can be true. Work can be hard, it can be stressful and pressure. I assume that it's going to be. Again, that's just how I was brought up and how I started in the workforce. But you also don't want to be miserable, right? You don't want to be fearful and and not it enjoy who you get to interact with all day. So make a change. That that's you know, it don't let don't let that change be made for you because if if you're miserable, it's gonna show up in what you do, and and then you'll be forced out. So find a way to get into a situation where it's not that bad. But again, that that's that's not even a great, you know, that's no silver bullet to this, that's for sure.

Peter Porebski 41:24

Yeah, it's it's funny that you bring that up because I I wonder if the the general anxiety that's growing in the job market contributes to that. Because if you're stuck in a job and you feel like I gotta stay here because I can't, you know, stay in the in the 90s or in the 2000s, I can quit, you know, I can always find another job. That's the thing. Like you don't like this job, find another. Do people feel like that today? Can they always just find another job? And when you see companies laying off, not hiring, everyone knows that you know these positions we we know better than anyone. A position gets hundreds of applications within the first day, you know, you're that you're fighting against everyone saying don't you don't want to be in the job market if you don't have to right now. So we've got this job hugging trend where people feel that they've got to stick with what they've got, even if that's not uh where it if it were in a uh in a great situation right now, maybe they would leave and they would find a better job.

Pete Newsome 42:16

All right, so I'll I'll I'll give you my reaction to that, which is not necessarily going to be popular, but it's what I believe is true, is I come back to this often. The job market is about supply and demand. So depending on where you fall on that spectrum, if you have a skill set, experience that is in short supply, you have lots of options, or at least you have options, and you can make those changes that we talked about. You can leave, you can put yourself out there and get into a better situation if you don't like the one you're in. If you don't, then that is the situation that you're in, for better or worse. And it may be worse, that may not be a good thing, but don't compound the problem, right? Identify it. And if you have to do that, because your family requires it, your livelihood, your ability to pay your bills, it's unfortunate. It is. And and I've been in tough situations before myself. I've faced been faced, I speak from experience, fortunately, many years ago when I was younger and I had less responsibilities, but I was in a situation where every day was miserable. And I couldn't get out tomorrow. I had to suck it up. And and it was with a job that I was in for many years or several years where I did like it. Situation changed, got a new manager. You've heard the story before. It went from a happy place to a miserable place overnight. Well, I was married, I had a I had a child, had a second one on the way, I had to suck it up. And I had to do the best job I could until I could find a way out. So it wasn't an immediate solution, but I was committed to two things at one time. One, making sure I did the Best I could while they were paying me to do it. And then I found a way out. So I, you know, that again, that may not be the most popular way to answer that, but but at some point we have to be realistic about this. Just because you want it to be good doesn't mean it will be. And if if that's what where you have to show up every day because your livelihood depends on it, don't compound the problem.

Peter Porebski 44:22

Yep. And I I agree. But as long as you are still trying at your job and you're doing what you're paid to do, I guess it's a moot point. You know, you you can uh in the meantime look for what you know for something to change. Um it's just interesting to see these, this is kind of the general worker sentiment uh right now, is that that anxiety in the workplace and growing, you know, just disengagement or unhappiness with their uh with their current situation.

Pete Newsome 44:54

So the the one thing that also surprised me about this, and and this isn't a happy topic, right? Uh, but our own survey data, which we rely on, we don't know the source of the these data, these surveys. We assume that they were done legitimately, but we know how ours is done. And we actually saw that the workforce was generally in a good spot. They're worried about the future, but our uh employee mindset survey came back pretty positive. What most people are happy where they are. So that was good to see. That's why this was also a surprise to me this week, because this is really negative.

Peter Porebski 45:30

Uh, yeah, ours was, you know, we saw anxiety in the job market, but what they, you know, the job that they currently have, most people seem to be happy with. And that whether that's because they're happy that they have a job at all, or you know, that they truly would be there even if they they had other options. We don't necessarily know that. But uh yeah, it's that's why I I guess I kind of look at it like the job market may be anxious, uh, but seeing these studies you know, saying that people are disengaged, I do wonder if it's a certain type of you know, employee. Maybe it's entry level. We know that there's you know a lot of issues with entry right now, um, but we'd have to see kind of you know how they actually did their number, you know, their numbers for each one of these.

Pete Newsome 46:11

Yeah, and we'll and we'll be tracking our own um survey. So we do the uh as part of our employee mindset survey, we have an employee confidence index, a job satisfaction index that goes into those numbers. And they were down slightly in Q1, or I'm sorry, uh yeah, in Q1 versus Q4. But we'll have to see how these trend over time. I'm sorry, they were down slightly in Q2 compared to Q1. Boy, are we that at that far into the year already? I guess we are. That's crazy. Um, so they they went down slightly, but I wouldn't be surprised based on this if we see that uh those go even farther down, hopefully not. But um, yeah, it's not.

Peter Porebski 46:51

Some of these burnout studies, you know, they're they're over a year or several years. So there's gonna be a low, you know, this is a low since 2016, you know, a low since so I can see where they're getting dramatic numbers, maybe if you're comparing against 10 years ago. Um but in the in the most recent future, it doesn't seem like there's been a huge, huge drop as we go on, you know. Obviously, we'll see kind of what trends start to develop.

Closing Thoughts And Listener Prompt

Pete Newsome 47:17

Yes, we will, and we will see what next week brings, as always. So I think we can end here. That's a little but a bit of a negative note to end what. But look, we don't make the news, we're just talking about it. What happens? But if you want to uh go go check out the the UCF commencement video if you haven't seen it yet, and let us know your feedback on that. Let us know. It was I think everyone would agree that the audience was wrong to to deliver that message to, but was the message wrong? Do you where do you fall on that? I find that fascinating right now.

Peter Porebski 47:49

Yep.

Pete Newsome 47:51

All right. Well, that's it for today. Have a great weekend, and bye for now. All right, bye.