LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman On Which Jobs AI Will Take First
Blitzscaling tech entrepreneur and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman just did a thread on X about which jobs AI will take first.
Hoffman wrote it after a Stanford study was making the rounds which found that entry-level jobs for 22 to 25 year-olds in fields most exposed to AI have dropped 16%.
Below is the thread all in one place, plus a link to Hoffman’s accompanying podcast:
Any job where you ask a human to act like a robot, a robot will eventually do the job better. Customer service roles (scripted, repetitive) are textbook cases. And so it’s not surprising to me that these jobs are where we’re seeing some replacement with AI.
The more interesting puzzle is the drop in junior engineering roles. My belief is that all human information work will have a software copilot.
That means people who understand computation will become more essential, not less, but their day-to-day work will have shifted to agent management versus code generation.
In this early period, many companies haven’t yet figured out how to integrate new engineers into AI-native workflows.
But I still believe there will be essentially unlimited demand for people who think computationally.
Every form of knowledge work will soon have a software copilot. That makes engineers more valuable, not less, if we design the right on-ramps.
This isn’t the same as jobs disappearing wholesale. Think about accounting. When spreadsheets first arrived, many feared accountants would vanish. Instead, the work transformed, moving from clerical tabulations to scenario planning, for example.
In the meantime, though, the drop in entry-level jobs is a problem (especially for those just entering the workforce).
But this also presents a unique opportunity for the AI native generation.
If you’re entering the workforce today, you have a unique advantage: you can grow up working with copilots, understanding the leverage they give you as an employee, and help your companies figure out how to integrate AI into their work.
The real test will be whether we treat this moment as a warning or an opening.
A 16% drop in entry-level jobs could signal a long-term erosion of opportunity for young workers, or it could be the shock that forces us to rebuild.
The outcome depends less on what AI can do, and more on how quickly we adapt our institutions, our companies, and our career pathways to the reality of an AI-native workforce.
On that last note, I can say that what The Basis Point is seeing in mortgage lending — an industry full of scripted, repetitive roles across originations and servicing — is that Hoffman’s optimistic views hold for select companies figuring AI out faster than others.
AI is super-powering individuals who are embracing it rather than hanging onto processes and workflows that AI is reinventing.
Please comment or reach out and let me know your thoughts.
___
Reference:
– Reid Hoffman X thread on which jobs AI will take and/or enhance
– Reid Hoffman’s “Possible” podcast on AI entry-level jobs impact