Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

When I first started on Wall Street, I rode the bus 90 minutes each way from my home in New Jersey.

It was a great opportunity to read the morning paper on the way to the office and comb through research on the way home.

I usually sat next to an older gentleman named Jimmy. He had worked for the same company (Merrill Lynch) for 30 years and rode the same bus the whole while.

I remember doing the math in my head one day as we cruised the Jersey Turnpike: 3 hours on the bus everyday x 5 days a week x (52 weeks in a year – 4 weeks of vacation) x 30 years =

Jimmy had spent 21,600 hours on the bus over 30 years!

Now there are 8,760 hours in a year, which meant that Jimmy had spent 2.5 years of his life sitting on this bus!

(This is when I realized it was time for me to move to New York City and shorten my commute!)

Today, what even feels more remarkable is that Jimmy had spent his entire career at the same company.

In modern times, people change companies as frequently as major league baseball players change teams.  That didn’t happen last century.

This is a symptom of the creative destruction of capitalism.

As new technology disrupts existing businesses, workers are forced to leave their old jobs and retrain in new places.

You won’t find many workers with the career security of Jimmy.

And the disruption to the workforce coming from AI in the next few years will make the last few decades look like the warmup act.

Let the AI Do It…
 

In our last issue, we showed that AI agents aren’t just hype…

And Sam Altman’s prediction that: “we may see the first AI agents join the workforce and materially change the output of companies” could come true this year.

Plenty of tech CEOs seem to agree with Altman, and what they’re saying suggests that software developers could be the first to feel this “material change.”

Last year, Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman said:

“If you go forward 24 months from now, or some amount of time — I can’t exactly predict where it is — it’s possible that most developers are not coding.”

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff went on a podcast last December and said:

“We’re not adding any more software engineers next year because we have increased the productivity this year with Agentforce [Salesforce’s autonomous AI application] and with other AI technology that we’re using for engineering teams by more than 30% – to the point where our engineering velocity is incredible. I can’t believe what we’re achieving in engineering.”

Even META’s Mark Zuckerberg got in on the action recently, telling Joe Rogan that AI agents might start taking coding jobs from mid-level AI engineers at his company this year.

If you’re a coder today, these statements might make you worried about your job security.

But no matter what you do for work, if you’re still a student or even if you’re already retired, you will want to pay close attention to the rapid progress of AI.

Because what’s happening to software developers is just the tip of the iceberg.

The Downside of AI
 

Last year, Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang said:

“It is our job to create computing technology such that nobody has to program. And that the programming language is human, everybody in the world is now a programmer. This is the miracle of artificial intelligence.”

In other words, AI will open up coding to everyone.

And that’s a great thing for the vast majority of people. Whether you’re running an online business or simply have an idea for an application but lack the coding skills to build it, AI could soon make it possible for you to do the work all on your own.

But if you’re a software engineer, this freedom that AI offers could soon force you to look for a new line of work.

That’s the double-edged sword of AI.

It offers up so many possibilities for human achievement, but it does so by eliminating the need for human labor.

And software engineering isn’t the only profession that could be seriously disrupted by AI.

As of today, around 14% of workers have experienced some job displacement due to AI.

And educated, white-collar workers are expected to feel the biggest immediate impact as AI agents enter the workplace.

Any jobs where analyzing data or working with computers are key tasks could see their numbers diminish.

Which means jobs like tax preparers and data analysts are at risk, and jobs in education and finance could also be seriously impacted by AI.

According to one report, 54% of banking jobs are susceptible to AI automation…

And Wall Street is expected to experience significant job losses because of it.

By some estimates, automation will replace 30% of all jobs in the U.S. by 2030.

That’s roughly 2.4 million jobs. Gone.

But it’s not all doom and gloom.

Here’s My Take
 

You might have seen this funny post:

I agree with Joanna. AI should ultimately make our lives better.

But the transition will be bumpy.

If AI keeps advancing at the rate it has been progressing, it will increasingly replace jobs. But the reality of how it will happen is nuanced.

AI has already started making workers much more efficient.

According to a 2023 study, generative AI can improve a highly skilled worker’s performance by nearly 40% compared with workers who don’t use it.

I believe AI agents will start taking over parts of jobs and internal processes this year.

Which means we’ll see a gradual — but noticeable — shift in the workplace.

And just like what happened with improvements in agriculture 200 years ago, the jobs that are replaced by AI should open up jobs in other areas.

That’s the conclusion of the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report for 2025.

It predicts that 92 million will be displaced this decade, but 170 million new jobs will be created.

Just look at what’s happening with Salesforce.

Yes, they’re eliminating engineers. But here’s CEO Marc Benioff again:

“We will have less support engineers next year because we have an agentic layer. We will have more salespeople next year because we really need to explain to people exactly the value that we can achieve with AI. So, we will probably add another 1,000 to 2,000 salespeople in the short term.”

I’m not saying everything is going to be rosy for everyone.

The creative destruction of U.S. jobs from AI will be a major societal issue in the next few years.

But it will also open up new investing opportunities as technology lets us do more with less.

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