Tech Careers Redefined by AI
Key Points
- The tech job market has long assumed that knowledge is scarce and hard to acquire, but today knowledge is easily accessible, prompting a need to rethink how we structure careers and talent development.
- Historically, the industry split roles into “technical” (requiring a CS degree and deep engineering knowledge) and “non‑technical” (focused on contextual product, sales, marketing, and stakeholder expertise).
- For decades a computer‑science degree virtually guaranteed a software engineering job, while non‑technical roles relied on domain‑specific contextual knowledge rather than formal technical training.
- Beginning around 2015‑2020—well before the rise of ChatGPT—this strict bifurcation started to erode, signaling an imminent shift in how tech talent is sourced, trained, and valued.
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Full Transcript
# Tech Careers Redefined by AI **Source:** [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4_u8wKMjAo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4_u8wKMjAo) **Duration:** 00:10:49 ## Summary - The tech job market has long assumed that knowledge is scarce and hard to acquire, but today knowledge is easily accessible, prompting a need to rethink how we structure careers and talent development. - Historically, the industry split roles into “technical” (requiring a CS degree and deep engineering knowledge) and “non‑technical” (focused on contextual product, sales, marketing, and stakeholder expertise). - For decades a computer‑science degree virtually guaranteed a software engineering job, while non‑technical roles relied on domain‑specific contextual knowledge rather than formal technical training. - Beginning around 2015‑2020—well before the rise of ChatGPT—this strict bifurcation started to erode, signaling an imminent shift in how tech talent is sourced, trained, and valued. ## Sections - [00:00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4_u8wKMjAo&t=0s) **Untitled Section** - ## Full Transcript
you know the core of our job market
problem right now in Tech is that we
have predicated all of Tech for 40 or 50
years on the idea that knowledge is
something that is hard to gain and it's
not anymore knowledge is easy to gain
and I want to take a minute to step back
to look at how we've architected our
entire job career ladder job structure
our whole Focus as an industry on how we
develop talent look at how we've done it
before
and then look at what needs to shift so
this is a strategic conversation about
why tech jobs are hard right now and
what we can do to prepare for a world
where it's going to fundamentally
shift so let's look first at what the
previous date was before Chad GPT hit
the
scene for a long time as long as I've
had my career just about for anyone else
who's a graveyard in Tech we've had a
fundamental bifurcation Tech there's two
categories there's technical roles and
there's non-technical roles those are
predicated on knowledge gain and the
difficulty of knowledge gain and
Technical roles for years and years and
years and years being a software
development engineer virtually required
a computer science degree certainly did
when I was coming through college in the
early
2000s and if you are getting a CS degree
you are going to be guaranteed a
software development engineering job
that was the implicit promise that was
the promise when I was in college it was
the promise for decades afterward and
decades before like even back in the 90s
and the in the 80s if you got a CS
degree you were headed to a technical
role of some
kind because it was all hand done like
the knowledge had to be acquired by hand
you had to read Hamming you had to read
textbooks you had to actually write code
by hand you had to learn how functions
worked you had to learn how to code a
program that was reliable you had to
learn how to design Technical Systems
all of that stuff right you get the idea
non-technical roles were different the
expectation was that the knowledge that
mattered was contextual knowledge about
the product about stakeholder management
about the customer and so you can group
product management customer success
roles sales roles marketing roles they
all fall into this non-tech bucket and
essentially everybody was specializing
in pieces of the non-tech value chain
and what they were specializing on was
contextual knowledge of that corner of
the domain right like the marketers knew
what kind of marketing worked for a
particular product in a b Toc Market
aimed at a particular
demographic and the sales guys knew what
particular sales approaches worked for
B2 to be account
selling and the product people knew how
to connect engineering requirements
which are quite specific with customer
requirements which are quite
vague and so all of that to say for a
long time we had this split the split
began to break down in the 2015 to 2020
range and this is before Chad GPT so I
want to actually call us back to this we
started to have this idea of a technical
product manager and a non-technical
product manager and that was an early
sign that this knowledge was starting to
get blurry because PMS had been around
Engineers so long that we had PMS in the
job family who could code we had PMS in
the job family who had acquired the
technical knowledge needed to build
extremely Technical Systems and we
needed them to because the systems we
were building at that point were built
by hand there wasn't really an AI that
was helping us build them but they were
extremely Technical and extremely
complex if you were driving
personalization at Netflix it's a very
technical role and you had to be a
technical pm to do it successfully and
so as our Technical Systems got more
complex in the 2010s we had to have more
technical product managers to make that
work fast forward to when chat GPT was
released and everything
changed at that point the fundamental
basis for that entire system of
employment shifted
we were now in a world we are now in a
world where knowledge is a commodity
knowledge used to be precious knowledge
used to be something you went to college
to gain and you paid like an absurd
amount of money and it it has gotten
more and more expensive and at this
point one of the interesting things is
even though College costs are going
exponential the implied value of the
knowledge you gain at a school has just
fallen through the
floor and no one really knows what to do
with that dislocation this video is not
about college cost unit economics we're
g to put that to the side uh this is
about talent in Tech and when knowledge
gets commoditized what it means is the
fundamental dichotomy between Tech and
non-tech roles
disappears like I will have people tell
me Nate I'm not a technical person and I
will say I don't care because you can
have your best friend chat GPT make you
a technical person in 30 seconds like
there is almost no point now for example
in saying we want a technical PM who can
write SQL in Python because every PM can
write SQL in Python now can they write
it efficiently increasingly yes because
the with proper prompting you can get
efficient SQL and efficient python out
of any llm it's not even a specific llm
anymore chpt can do it Sonic can do it
like it's just become commoditized and
that's kind of my point you have a
breakdown of Technical and non-technical
skill skill sets and that means that the
job creation ladder and the way we do
Talent upleveling over time has changed
because all of that was predicated on
knowledge gain so if you think about the
old way you would go to college you
would get your degree maybe it was CS
maybe it was something else and then you
get an entry level role and the point of
the entry-level role was to take all of
this knowledge you had and basically
show you how to apply it in the real
world how do you write real life
programs if you're an engineer how do
you do real life program management or
task management or CS if you are coming
into an entry LEL role on the non-tech
side and the idea was by gaining this
knowledge of real world
applications you would then be able to
acquire enough experience and show you
could solve problems in the real world
enough to eventually earn a
promotion and the problem now is that
you don't really have any incentive to
have those early rungs on the ladder in
the organization chat GPT can do a lot
of
and so one of the things I've seen
persistently is what happens to people
who are early career what happens to
people trying to break into Tech what
happens to people who are just coming
out of University how do they
progress and I think that the key is
understanding that we are no longer in
an economy where knowledge is difficult
to get and we're now in a world where
showing that you can solve problems
correctly is the new
standard and we're still figuring out
what that looks like as far as how
resumés will change how applications
will change it's early but fundamentally
as an employer what people are looking
for at the beginning of a career is show
me that you can solve problems correctly
in roughly this domain and show me that
you've been able to deliver a little bit
of impact there it's still a world where
we recognize that you need more
experience to deliver more impact but if
you can come in and you can say I am
already working in the B2B marketing
space and this is what I already
delivered on my own on the side here's a
working piece of code that I put
together with chat GPT and I got it up
and running and look what I've solve for
some marketers I'm making all of this up
by the way but you get the idea it's not
that everything has to be code
generation and code portfolios I'm not
trying to say that I'm trying to say
that the focus from an employer is going
to be on whether they can see that you
can correctly solve problems because
they know you can get the knowledge
either way and so it's about your
judgment
it's not about the knowledge that you
have and have brought to the
table our application systems haven't
caught up with that but I think that
that also is a note of encouragement for
us because I don't see a world where we
don't need people with good judgment to
solve problems I do see a world where
people who assume that knowledge is
still the coin of the realm right the
currency we work in they're going to be
in trouble because knowledge isn't hard
anymore knowledge is easy it's about how
you apply it that
matters and so if you walk back into the
job market like previously it was like
okay so you have your Tech or non-tech
degree you get an entry-level role you
gain experience you get a mid-level role
then if you show management aptitude you
get a leadership role it's a very set
pattern across a bunch of different job
families now I suspect it's going to
look different I think it's going to be
show you can solve problems at the task
level show you can solve problems
correctly at the feature level so show
you can solve problems correctly at the
product level and finally show you can
solve problems correctly at the business
level that's going to be what people
judge
on and I think that one of the core
questions if you're coming into Tech is
how are you showing you can solve
problems at what level are you operating
at and how aggressive are you about
scaling up and making sure that
knowledge isn't a blocker because it
doesn't have to be anymore you don't
have to be blocked I saw a role just
yesterday that was deliberately hiring
for someone who would literally be a
business in a box like this person would
be product this person would be
development this person would be
marketing this person would be sales and
they were operating within a larger
platform they're not a Founder but they
were taking this product end to end from
idea to driving sales by
themselves I think we're going to see
more roles like that and so my my
question for you is what kind of
problems can you demonstrate that you've
solved I'll leave it there let me know
what do you think how's the how is the
knowledge economy changing into
the problem solving economy for lack of
a better term cheers