Tim Paradis: If You Did The Work, Prove It - January 20, 2026
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
We're here because your heightened awareness deserves heightened entertainment. The Last Show with David Cooper. Could you use AI to cheat and have it do your job for you? Well, big tech doesn't like that idea and is suddenly demanding receipts from employees. Things like dashboards, badge swipes in the office, proof of effort. In a workplace where productivity is no longer assumed, it is audited by these companies. It's looking like 2026 will be the if you did the work, then prove it year for workers at tech companies. I'm here with someone who's recently written on this. His name is Tim Parity, and he's a future of work correspondent at Business Insider. Tim, I couldn't imagine a more appropriate title for you.
Future of work correspondent. Is this the future of work?
What is the main concern regarding productivity and AI in tech companies?
Proving that you actually did the work.
Well, thanks for having me, David. You know, it's funny, at least in certain firms, it seems to be the thing, right? We said in the piece, like if 2025 was about calling workers to really go above and beyond, 2026 is about making sure they do it. So, yeah, it'll be really interesting to see how this plays out.
So show your work sounds something like a third grade math teacher might say to me. let's look at what it looks like in Silicon Valley, where you've got smart kids who are good at cheating and now AI gives them the tools to do it. What does that look like?
How are big tech companies demanding proof of employee productivity?
What is monitoring or showing or proving that you did the work look like at a tech company?
I mean, in some ways, the sense we got was that it was almost like sort of maybe bringing practices that had been existing in other industries to silicon valley a little bit more making a little bit more widespread so thinking like you mentioned at the top you know tracking badge swipes so making sure people are actually in the office complying with you know return to office mandates or Just looking at Amazon, for example, a colleague of mine reported that they're looking more at individual accomplishments. Not that they hadn't done it before, but they're looking closer at, okay, what are the things you actually did? What's your sort of ROI? And they're trying to, I think, be more, from what I can tell, clearer and maybe more specific about certain things that people got done.
So I think it's a way that maybe, if you would, mature the performance evaluation process.
So for years, like I'd say up until the pandemic, maybe even a little during the pandemic, tech kind of ran on vibes. And I worked in big tech at this time.
Why is 2026 considered a pivotal year for proving work in tech?
So this hits home for me. Things like trust, employee autonomy. People at tech companies would say, we hire adults and we trust them. We don't monitor them. This seems like a big psychological change, having to make employees prove that they're doing the work. Is it just because AI entered the room and people could use large language models to code for them, to write their reports, to do things like this? Or is it an underlying financial thing, like a more tumultuous tech market, new CFOs coming in and saying, why are we paying these engineers so much money when they don't do their work? What is the cause of this?
So it's a good question. I think it's a few things. The sense that I got from talking to folks is it is partly financial, is in that they're spending an enormous amount of money on AI and AI investments. And so it's just a huge outlay. And as you well know, a lot of those returns have yet to bear out. And so there's that fear that we're getting out over our skis, right, that we've seen on Wall Street even. And then the other part of it is just the idea that It's an employer's market. And you can if you want to work in tech, it's pretty hard to do these days in many cases. So they can demand more of workers without getting much pushback because they have the power.
What does 'show your work' mean in the context of the tech industry?
So it's kind of a from what we could tell, a confluence of things.
Is this really about productivity or is it more like managers being afraid they can't tell the difference between the brilliance of their employees and machine assistants?
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:03–0:49
2
What is the main concern regarding productivity and AI in tech companies?
0:49–1:20
3
How are big tech companies demanding proof of employee productivity?
1:20–2:21
4
Why is 2026 considered a pivotal year for proving work in tech?
2:21–3:26
5
What does 'show your work' mean in the context of the tech industry?
3:26–5:53
6
What are the implications of monitoring employee performance in tech?
5:53–9:36
Speakers
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