Afleveringen
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In this episode, Josh challenges the question everyone keeps asking about AI and work, and makes the case that it's the wrong one. The framing is always the same. AI helps us do more, or it burns us out. Faster or exhausted. Pick one. But that's a biology problem, not a software problem.
Microsoft's 2025 Work Trend Index shows the split. Eighty percent of the workforce says they don't have the time or energy for the work already on their plate. One fractional executive on a call put it plainest. "I'm 53 and I am tired."
Josh's grandfather used to joke that owning a business meant working any 24 hours you wanted. Josh built a bot this year to book his own podcast guests. It's faster. He's not any less tired.
The question was never how to work faster. It's what happens when a species that needs sleep gets asked to keep pace with something that doesn't.
Josh shares where he's drawing his own line between speed and rest. Follow The Job Sh*t Show investigation at https://joshlevine.substack.com
About The Job Sh*t Show
The Job Sh*t Show is an investigation into how finding, keeping, and doing work is changing faster than anyone is admitting â and what that actually looks like for real people on the ground. The Sh*t List is a paid Substack for leaders who want to stay ahead of what AI is doing to the workplace â and actually do something about it. Every other week, subscribers get a new AI Manager Skill: one practical, field-tested move for leading your team better in an AI world.
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In this episode, Josh challenges the question everyone keeps asking about AI in school â and makes the case that it's exactly the wrong one to be asking.
The yes-no binary is a dead end. AI in school: allowed or banned. AI in writing: authentic or cheating. These are crude frames for a genuinely complicated problem. And the institutions drawing the hardest lines â the grad school deans, the publishers who pulled Mia Ballard's horror novel Shy Girl over AI accusations her author denied â aren't protecting learning. They're avoiding the harder conversation about where the guardrails actually belong.
Anne figured out her own. Research, yes. Writing, no. Checking a paper for errors, yes. She named her AI Otis. And by semester two, she'd built a working relationship with it that her distributed, at-times-lackluster teachers couldn't come close to matching.
The question was never should AI be allowed. It's where do we install the guardrails â and who gets to decide.
Josh shares a framework for developing your own boundaries around AI use, for yourself and your team. The full essay and the framework are on The Sh*t List at https://joshlevine.substack.com
About The Job Sh*t Show
The Job Sh*t Show is an investigation into how finding, keeping, and doing work is changing faster than anyone is admitting â and what that actually looks like for real people on the ground. The Sh*t List is a paid Substack for leaders who want to stay ahead of what AI is doing to the workplace â and actually do something about it. Every other week, subscribers get a new AI Manager Skill: one practical, field-tested move for leading your team better in an AI world.
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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In this episode, Josh weaves together three stories about where AI-driven hiring is actually headed â and why the answer to whether it's making things better or worse is: yes.
The first is a conversation with someone building a high-volume AI hiring tool for a major tech company. The premise is simple: skip the resume, go straight to an AI-hosted interview. Everyone gets to speak. Everyone gets the same questions. No primacy bias, no 4pm fatigue, no inconsistency. Done well, it might actually be fairer than what we have now.
The second is a Stanford study on algorithmic bias that found 26% of Black applicants and 15% of Asian applicants applied to positions where AI discriminated against their racial group. Over 60% of Fortune 100 companies use the same third-party hiring algorithm. When one vendor mediates hiring at that scale, bias doesn't just exist â it compounds. Quietly. Invisibly. Across every company using the same tool.
The third is what happens when candidates stop trusting the process. They go around it. Build something. Show up with proof of work instead of a resume. It's smart. And it's also a signal. Because if it's a process people don't trust, it will become a process people game. And a process people game stops working for everyone.
The question in the future isn't whether AI should be involved in hiring. It's what kind of AI, built by whom, and accountable to who.
Nobody's answered that yet. But at least now we're asking.
About The Job Sh*t Show
The Job Sh*t Show is an investigation into how finding, keeping, and doing work is changing faster than anyone is admitting â and what that actually looks like for real people on the ground. The Sh*t List is a paid Substack for leaders who want to stay ahead of what AI is doing to the workplace â and actually do something about it. Every other week, subscribers get a new AI Manager Skill: one practical, field-tested move for leading your team better in an AI world.
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Josh hit a Claude Design usage limit this week. Four hours locked out of a presentation he was mid-build on. The feeling that came with it â that he didn't own it, couldn't just keep going â told him something about the moment we're all in.
In this episode, Josh argues that scarcity thinking isn't just a feeling. It's becoming a leadership strategy. And it's contagious. Jack Dorsey cut 40% of Block's workforce and then told the world most companies would follow within a year. That's not a prediction â it's a frame that spreads. The story of not enough jobs, not enough capital, not enough time is landing in boardrooms and news feeds and heads at 11pm. And if you're a leader absorbing it, it is reaching your team whether you mean it to or not.
But at a roller derby match in Portland, Josh met a software engineer from Stripe. Same industry. Same moment. Completely different tone. Cautious. Deliberate. Not panicking. And $2.2 billion in free cash flow.
The difference isn't resources. It's the mindset behind the decisions.
Josh introduces a new framework â the panic trap â a two-by-two that helps leaders identify what kind of decision they're actually making before they make moves that can't be undone. Because some decisions you can walk back. And some you can't.
About The Job Market Sh*t Show
The Job Market Sh*t Show: How AI Broke Hiring and What Might Be Next is an investigation into how hiring actually works now, how AI and automation have upended the process, and why the old rules no longer apply. It blends reporting, analysis, and firsthand stories from inside a labor market thatâs increasingly algorithmic, opaque, and indifferent to the people moving through itâwhile asking what, if anything, might replace a system that no longer seems to work for humans on either side of the process.
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This week Josh covers why AI is doing something economists didn't see coming â collapsing the coordination costs that made large firms powerful in the first place.
It starts with a 1937 paper by economist Ronald Coase called The Nature of the Firm. His argument: companies exist because coordinating through the market is expensive. Search, negotiate, contract, repeat. It's cheaper to just put it all inside one organization. That logic built every large firm you've ever worked at.
AI is now dismantling it from the outside.
A lawyer profiled in the New York Times mounted four Mac minis under his desk and runs five AI agents simultaneously â reading court notices, messaging clients in Spanish, drafting counter proposals. No firm. No overhead. No coordination tax.
The same lift that solopreneurs and small teams are feeling right now? Large organizations aren't getting it. Not because AI doesn't work â but because the friction that protects big companies from chaos is the same friction preventing AI from doing anything remarkable inside them.
The capability ceiling just got very crowded. And the large firms that built their advantage on scale are now finding out that scale might be the vulnerability.
About The Job Market Sh*t Show
The Job Market Sh*t Show: How AI Broke Hiring and What Might Be Next is an investigation into how hiring actually works now, how AI and automation have upended the process, and why the old rules no longer apply. It blends reporting, analysis, and firsthand stories from inside a labor market thatâs increasingly algorithmic, opaque, and indifferent to the people moving through itâwhile asking what, if anything, might replace a system that no longer seems to work for humans on either side of the process.
Correction: In this episode Josh refers to "Robert Coase." The economist's name is Ronald Coase. Apologies for the error.
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If a person produces X and AI produces X faster and cheaper, the math is simple. Replace people with AI. Except the equation isn't true.
This week Josh covers AI Leadership Skill #4: Know the Value of Your People â the latest entry in The Sh*t List, the paid Substack companion to The Job Sh*t Show.
It starts with a simple question: what does a doorman actually do? Holding the door is the job description. But anyone who's worked with a good one knows it's wayfinding, security, recognition, relationship. The job description captures maybe 20% of the value.
The same is true for almost everyone on your team.
Klarna learned this the hard way. They cut 700 customer service jobs in 2023, started rehiring in 2024, and their CEO admitted they moved too fast. Forrester's 2026 Future of Work report found that 55% of employers regretted AI-driven layoffs â and one in three spent more on rehiring than they saved from the cuts.
The value was there. It just wasn't on the dashboard.
AI might finally be forcing businesses to see what was always true: people are relational, contextual, and accountable in ways that don't show up in any metric. And the leaders who figure that out first won't be the ones scrambling to rehire.
The full piece on The Sht List includes three principles Josh is urging every leader to understand right now â and five questions that will help you see your people beyond the spreadsheet. Link in the description. If you're not on The Sht List yet, this is a good week to start.
About The Job Sh*t Show
The Job Sh*t Show is an investigation into how finding, keeping, and doing work is changing faster than anyone is admitting â and what that actually looks like for real people on the ground. The Sh*t List is a paid Substack for leaders who want to stay ahead of what AI is doing to the workplace â and actually do something about it. Every other week, subscribers get a new AI Manager Skill: one practical, field-tested move for leading your team better in an AI world.
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Mark Zuckerberg called it a budget trade-off. Jack Dorsey cut 4,000 jobs. Salesforce slashed its support headcount from 9,000 to 5,000. ServiceNow's CEO celebrated agents that don't need lunch or healthcare. The story these CEOs are telling is that AI made the cuts necessary. But the productivity numbers don't show it â and the pattern of how new technology actually gets adopted suggests we've been here before.
In this episode, Josh argues that CEOs aren't lying about where AI is going. They're lying about where it is right now. Drawing on research from the National Bureau of Economic Research, the San Francisco Fed, and a pattern that goes back to electric motors in the 1880s, he makes the case that every general purpose technology produces a dip before it produces a gain. The companies cutting the deepest aren't building toward an upswing â they're funding data centers, telling a story to Wall Street, and quietly eliminating the institutional knowledge, domain expertise, and human judgment that would have gotten them through the dip in the first place. The J-curve doesn't care about earnings calls. And the people who would have led the transformation won't be there when the curve finally turns up.
You can't cut your way to the future.
About The Job Market Sh*t Show
The Job Market Sh*t Show: How AI Broke Hiring and What Might Be Next is an investigation into how hiring actually works now, how AI and automation have upended the process, and why the old rules no longer apply. It blends reporting, analysis, and firsthand stories from inside a labor market thatâs increasingly algorithmic, opaque, and indifferent to the people moving through itâwhile asking what, if anything, might replace a system that no longer seems to work for humans on either side of the process.
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For 50 years, organizations have chased one thing: efficiency. More output, less friction, faster everything. And it worked â until it didn't.
In this episode, Josh sits down with organizational change expert Josh Allen Dykstra at a live conference to trace how we got here: from Milton Friedman's 1970s shareholder mandate to a workplace so optimized for productivity that there's no room left to think, experiment, or breathe. Then AI showed up â not as the cause of the crisis, but as the thing that finally makes it impossible to ignore. Because you cannot out-efficiency the machine. The conversation gets practical fast: what leaders can actually do inside broken systems right now, why restraint is the skill no AI can replicate, and why the real move isn't to work more like a robot â it's to stop. The organizations that figure that out first won't just survive this moment. They'll be the ones who define what work looks like next.
About The Job Sh*t Show
The Job Sh*t Show is an investigation into how finding, keeping, and doing work is changing faster than anyone is admitting â and what that actually looks like for real people on the ground. The Sh*t List is a paid Substack for leaders who want to stay ahead of what AI is doing to the workplace â and actually do something about it. Every other week, subscribers get a new AI Manager Skill: one practical, field-tested move for leading your team better in an AI world.
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The résumé was already broken before AI showed up. Now it might actually be on its way out.
In this episode, Josh looks at the first viable replacement he's seen â not a shinier LinkedIn profile or a better-optimized PDF, but something closer to a behavioral fingerprint. A system that stays with you across your career, learns how you actually work, and advocates for you to employers using verified evidence instead of bullet points you stretched to fit a job description. Drawing on a lecture from the founder of Inspire AI, Josh explores what longitudinal profiling could mean for candidates, why the two-sided market problem is the real obstacle, and what you can start doing right now before the technology catches up. The rĂ©sumĂ© isn't just a formatting problem. It's a representation problem. And for the first time, there's a hint of something better.
About The Job Sh*t Show
The Job Sh*t Show is an investigation into how finding, keeping, and doing work is changing faster than anyone is admitting â and what that actually looks like for real people on the ground. The Sh*t List is a paid Substack for leaders who want to stay ahead of what AI is doing to the workplace â and actually do something about it. Every other week, subscribers get a new AI Manager Skill: one practical, field-tested move for leading your team better in an AI world.
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The last thing your people need is another training.
This week Josh previews AI Leadership Skill #2: Let Your Team Lead, the latest entry in The Sh*t List, the paid Substack companion to The Job Sh*t Show.
It's built around a conversation with Jeffrey Roach, SVP of Healthcare Solutions at RisePoint, where he helps colleges and universities modernize for the real world. When Jeffrey asks leaders how often they're actually teaching AI, the answer is almost always the same: "Well, we talk about it."
Talking about AI and actually learning it together are not the same thing. And the gap between them is bigger than most leaders realize.
His advice? Ask your team. Not a survey â a real conversation. Jeffrey did exactly that with his own team of 13 and discovered some of them had access to a resource he didn't even know existed. He'd been managing them for months.
Your team already knows more than you think. You just don't know who's ahead and who's stuck â because you haven't made it something you do together.
The full piece on The Sh*t List walks through three specific moves to turn your team from an audience into co-designers of their own AI fluency. Link in the description. If you're not on The Sh*t List yet, this is a good week to start.
About The Job Sh*t Show
The Job Sh*t Show is an investigation into how finding, keeping, and doing work is changing faster than anyone is admitting â and what that actually looks like for real people on the ground. The Sh*t List is a paid Substack for leaders who want to stay ahead of what AI is doing to the workplace â and actually do something about it. Every other week, subscribers get a new AI Manager Skill: one practical, field-tested move for leading your team better in an AI world.
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When Anthropic dropped Claude Design and OpenAI released Images 2.0, something shifted. The ability to create professional-grade visuals â the kind that used to require years of training and hard-won expertise â got handed to everyone.
In this episode, Josh argues that AI isn't replacing creative experts. It's promoting them. The people with real taste, real vision, and the language to describe what they want are about to have a very good 12 to 18 months. After that, the tools catch up. And the only thing left that can't be automated is the ability to imagine something that doesn't exist yet. The new currency isn't who can use the tools best. It's who can see what hasn't been made.
About The Job Market Sh*t Show
The Job Market Sh*t Show: How AI Broke Hiring and What Might Be Next is an investigation into how hiring actually works now, how AI and automation have upended the process, and why the old rules no longer apply. It blends reporting, analysis, and firsthand stories from inside a labor market thatâs increasingly algorithmic, opaque, and indifferent to the people moving through itâwhile asking what, if anything, might replace a system that no longer seems to work for humans on either side of the process.
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Most leaders are using AI to go faster. This skill is about going deeper.
Coach Your People With Better AI is the first entry in The Sh*t List, the paid Substack companion to The Job Market Sh*t Show. It starts with a simple question: what if, before your next difficult one-on-one, you spent 15 minutes with an AI tool working through everything you actually know about that person?
This one's built around a conversation with Kathrin Fleer, who spent 12 years leading luxury retail teams for Saint Laurent and Tiffany & Co across Europe. What she said about the ceiling every manager eventually hits â and where AI fits in â stuck with Josh.
The full piece includes four specific prompts and a framework you can use before your next one-on-one. If you're not on The Sh*t List yet, this is a good week to start.
About The Job Market Sh*t Show
The Job Market Sh*t Show: How AI Broke Hiring and What Might Be Next is an investigation into how hiring actually works now, how AI and automation have upended the process, and why the old rules no longer apply. The Sh*t List is a paid Substack for leaders who want to stay ahead of what AI is doing to the workplace â and actually do something about it. Every other week, subscribers get a new AI Manager Skill: one practical, field-tested move for leading your team better in an AI world.
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Job descriptions are supposed to clarify what a company needs. But what if theyâre just educated guesses? In this episode, Josh looks at how AI is quietly breaking one of the most fundamental parts of hiring: defining the role itself. Drawing on stories from job seekers and hiring managers, he explores why candidates are getting rejected for jobs they already had interviews scheduled for, how roles are being rewritten mid-process, and why companies often donât actually know what theyâre looking for. AI may be speeding up job descriptions and postings, but itâs also removing the friction that once forced better thinking. The result is a system where confusion gets scaled, candidates absorb the cost, and hiring becomes a loop of trial and errorâwithout anyone admitting that the job was never clearly defined in the first place.
About The Job Market Sh*t Show
The Job Market Sh*t Show: How AI Broke Hiring and What Might Be Next is an investigation into how hiring actually works now, how AI and automation have upended the process, and why the old rules no longer apply. It blends reporting, analysis, and firsthand stories from inside a labor market thatâs increasingly algorithmic, opaque, and indifferent to the people moving through itâwhile asking what, if anything, might replace a system that no longer seems to work for humans on either side of the process.
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AI is supposed to help people get jobs. But what if itâs making it harder to tell whoâs real? In this episode, Josh looks at how AI is creeping beyond rĂ©sumĂ©s and into interviewsâand even the work itself. Drawing on stories of impersonated candidates, AI-assisted cheating in technical interviews, and coordinated efforts to land remote jobs at scale, he explores how trust is breaking down across the hiring process. As companies respond with surveillance, in-person interviews, and increasingly strange screening tactics, the system starts to feel like an arms race with no clear winner. AI may be improving access and efficiency, but itâs also eroding the one thing hiring depends on most: knowing who youâre actually hiring.
About The Job Market Sh*t Show
The Job Market Sh*t Show: How AI Broke Hiring and What Might Be Next is an investigation into how hiring actually works now, how AI and automation have upended the process, and why the old rules no longer apply. It blends reporting, analysis, and firsthand stories from inside a labor market thatâs increasingly algorithmic, opaque, and indifferent to the people moving through itâwhile asking what, if anything, might replace a system that no longer seems to work for humans on either side of the process.
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Job titles used to tell you what a job was. Now they often raise more questions than answers. In this episode, host Josh Levine looks at the rise of strange, sprawling, and sometimes absurd job titlesâand what they reveal about how quickly work is changing. Drawing on conversations with job seekers, coaches, and operators inside companies, he explores why organizations often donât actually know what theyâre hiring for, how AI and rapid change are reshaping roles faster than systems can keep up, and why candidates are being filtered for jobs that arenât clearly defined. The bigger shift isnât just in titlesâitâs in identity. As roles become fluid and expectations blur, the people who move forward may be the ones willing to redefine themselves before the market does it for them.
About The Job Market Sh*t Show
The Job Market Sh*t Show: How AI Broke Hiring and What Might Be Next is an investigation into how hiring actually works now, how AI and automation have upended the process, and why the old rules no longer apply. It blends reporting, analysis, and firsthand stories from inside a labor market thatâs increasingly algorithmic, opaque, and indifferent to the people moving through itâwhile asking what, if anything, might replace a system that no longer seems to work for humans on either side of the process.
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AI is supposed to reduce work. But what if it just gives us more of it? In this episode, Josh looks at what actually happens when AI hits the org chartâinside real companies, not predictions. Drawing on recent layoffs, historical patterns like ATMs and spreadsheets, and firsthand stories from teams already deep into AI adoption, he explores why automation rarely shrinks work the way we expect. Instead, it often expands itâmore output, more tasks, more complexity. AI may make individual jobs easier, but without rethinking how work is organized, companies risk doing more of the same work⊠just faster and at a larger scale.
About The Job Market Sh*t Show
The Job Market Sh*t Show: How AI Broke Hiring and What Might Be Next is an investigation into how hiring actually works now, how AI and automation have upended the process, and why the old rules no longer apply. It blends reporting, analysis, and firsthand stories from inside a labor market thatâs increasingly algorithmic, opaque, and indifferent to the people moving through itâwhile asking what, if anything, might replace a system that no longer seems to work for humans on either side of the process.
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AI gets blamed for a lot right nowâlayoffs, hiring freezes, disappearing entry-level roles. But what if itâs not the whole story? In this episode, Josh looks at the strange âlow hire, low fireâ job market where companies arenât hiring much, but they arenât laying people off en masse either. Drawing on labor data, conversations with business leaders, and a few high-profile layoffs framed as âAI transformations,â he explores why uncertaintyâfrom tariffs to geopolitics to post-pandemic overhiringâhas companies hedging instead of committing to new headcount. AI may be part of the picture, but itâs also becoming a convenient narrative for decisions that might have happened anyway.
About The Job Market Sh*t Show
The Job Market Sh*t Show: How AI Broke Hiring and What Might Be Next is an investigation into how hiring actually works now, how AI and automation have upended the process, and why the old rules no longer apply. It blends reporting, analysis, and firsthand stories from inside a labor market thatâs increasingly algorithmic, opaque, and indifferent to the people moving through itâwhile asking what, if anything, might replace a system that no longer seems to work for humans on either side of the process.
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Is it who you know? How people are and aren't landing interviews.
Applying to hundreds of jobs feels like progressâbut it might just be noise. In this episode, Josh looks at the two strategies job seekers are using right now: scale and signal. Some people are flooding the system with applications, hoping one slips through. Others are doing the oppositeâonly applying when they can get a human introduction inside the company. Through conversations with job seekers whoâve tried both approaches, Josh explores why referrals seem to matter more than ever, why charm alone isnât enough in this market, and what happens when the only way to stand out is to prove youâre not a bot.
About The Job Market Sh*t Show
The Job Market Sh*t Show: How AI Broke Hiring and What Might Be Next is an investigation into how hiring actually works now, how AI and automation have upended the process, and why the old rules no longer apply. It blends reporting, analysis, and firsthand stories from inside a labor market thatâs increasingly algorithmic, opaque, and indifferent to the people moving through itâwhile asking what, if anything, might replace a system that no longer seems to work for humans on either side of the process.
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AI used to promise better work. Now itâs starting to promise no work at all. In this episode, Josh unpacks a deceptively cheerful Grammarly ad that suggests AI can handle your tasks so you can âget back to what matters.â Cute on the surface. Slightly terrifying underneath. He connects the dots to a viral essay arguing that AI is already replacing large chunks of knowledge workâfrom coding to lawâand asks what happens when the tools donât just assist us, but quietly outperform us. If AI can do the job, are we being freed⊠or phased out? And if the future belongs to those who know how to orchestrate machines, what does that mean for everyone else?
About The Job Market Sh*t Show
The Job Market Sh*t Show: How AI Broke Hiring and What Might Be Next is an investigation into how hiring actually works now, how AI and automation have upended the process, and why the old rules no longer apply. It blends reporting, analysis, and firsthand stories from inside a labor market thatâs increasingly algorithmic, opaque, and indifferent to the people moving through itâwhile asking what, if anything, might replace a system that no longer seems to work for humans on either side of the process.
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Job searching used to feel like a transaction: effort in, opportunity out. Now it often feels like shouting into a void. In this episode, Josh argues that hiring isnât just dysfunctionalâitâs starting to resemble a classic market failure, where companies absorb almost no cost for bad behavior while candidates absorb all of it. He breaks down how ghost jobs, opaque AI screening, and endless silence create a system built on information asymmetry and misaligned incentives. And then, a rare twist: Ontario, Canada introduces a new law that forces employers to disclose salary ranges, admit when AI is used, confirm whether a job is actually vacant, and stop ghosting candidatesâor face serious fines. Itâs a reminder that when the market wonât fix itself, something else has to.
About The Job Market Sh*t Show
The Job Market Sh*t Show: How AI Broke Hiring and What Might Be Next is an investigation into how hiring actually works now, how AI and automation have upended the process, and why the old rules no longer apply. It blends reporting, analysis, and firsthand stories from inside a labor market thatâs increasingly algorithmic, opaque, and indifferent to the people moving through itâwhile asking what, if anything, might replace a system that no longer seems to work for humans on either side of the process.
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