Ask The Expert: Donal O'Donoghue
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Pat Kenny Show. With Timber Living Log Cabins. Saturday and Sunday from 10am. On Newstalk. Conversation that counts. In an ever-changing employment market, how can you protect your job from AI? Donal O'Donoghue is Managing Director at Sanderson Recruitment and host of the Talent Matters podcast. And he's our expert this week. If you've got questions for Donal about protecting your particular job, you can WhatsApp them to us now, 087-1400-106. Donal, good morning and welcome. Good morning, Pat. Now, all the time we're hearing more and more news about AI, you know, we're maybe catastrophizing it a bit or maybe not.
Yeah, well, what we're seeing in the market at the moment is a real hollowing out of roles, particularly in the larger organisations and a lot of the US tech firms. And that's having a knock on effect. It's having an effect on capacity and capability because there's far less junior people joining organisations as graduates. And that's where you develop your talent from. And there's been a whole hollowing out of mid-management layers as well, which has a real knock-on effect as well. So what we're seeing and what we're predicting for the future is that there will be a higher number of smaller organisations and a real drive back towards entrepreneurship. Because the bigger companies, if you look, I mean, we talked recently about the Facebook parent company Meta, who reduced their global workforce by 10%.
So they made a saving of $8 billion by making that headcount reduction. The context was the business is highly profitable. It's making a profit of almost $70 billion a year, but they're reallocating all their capital from people into technology, and they're spending $150 billion on AI infrastructure.
There's a huge issue here, though, and it's kind of as plain as the nose in your face. If you throw people out of work using AI, you're going to have people with no income to buy the stuff that they want to sell you. So, I mean, where's the logic in that? Well, where's the logic in any business when the... You know, Tesla wanted to sell you a car and you can't afford to buy one.
Sorry. Where the business has been driven by return to shareholders, that is always going to be the case, that they're driving for productivity, they're driving for improved profits. But I think what we're going to see more of now is more back to entrepreneurship, because the other change that's happening with social media is the fact that if you are... You know, if you're a plumber or if you're a carpenter or if you're a great hairdresser, you have access to a market of building a community of, you know, hundreds of thousands of people very quickly. So I think this drive back towards entrepreneurship and creating your own work is something that AI will drive.
People won't be able to afford to use the hairdresser or the plumber or the electrician or whatever.
How is AI currently reshaping the job market and causing role hollowing in large organisations?
You can have loads of people who've got skills, but no people to pay their bills. Well, I don't know if this mass layoff that is predicted for AI, and there are the doomsayers who say it will eliminate a huge tranche of income.
Absolutely. Well, if you think about it, if you're advising people who are, say, doing the leave insert or going to university or into higher education at the moment. What were the typical safe jobs in the past? Engineering, accountancy, finance, law. And when you think about it from a legal perspective, reviewing and drafting legal documents now, AI can do so much of that. When you look at preparing accounts, cash flows, budgets, AI can do a huge amount of that now. So the safer careers of the past, I think, are more at risk. And the more entrepreneurial careers, personal services, hairdressing, trades, are coming back in vogue now.
But I'm still getting back to the bottom line. You've got influencers. That's seemingly a viable career these days. So you're influencing people to buy this cosmetic or that piece of clothing or whatever, but they don't have the money because they're out of work because of AI.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:01–2:42
2
How is AI currently reshaping the job market and causing role hollowing in large organisations?
2:42–5:33
3
Why are companies reallocating capital from people to AI infrastructure like chips and cloud?
5:33–12:18
4
How might AI drive a return to entrepreneurship and growth in personal services and trades?
12:18–12:30