This week I’ve been thinking a lot about the cycle of labor arbitrage, a fancy way to talk about jobs moving away from you and toward someone (or something) else.

It was very early in my tech career when I learned that the ROI we were forecasting with technology was mostly about removing humans and paper from the workflow in favor of machines.  Most early ERP implementations were funded on the promise of reducing jobs.  This gave me a smidge of discomfort, but I told myself that the jobs we were eliminating were pretty awful and boring (sound familiar?).  Of course, this was rarely said out loud in plain language but this was well understood.

Later, the trend moved away from technology replacing jobs and toward offshoring/outsourcing - moving jobs from high cost to low cost locations.  This trend spanned multiple industries and in the US moved the labor growth away from things like manufacturing and toward service oriented industries that are the primary growth drivers today.

Looking toward the future there is so much uncertainty of where jobs move and while I agree it’s far too soon to predict how the growth levers shift early data is clear that there is a new reckoning [read pressure] on operational efficiency [read cost] and organizations are responding with a mix of layoffs and cost reductions in an attempt to show they understand the expectations of investors and shareholders.

I do not believe this shift will be a straight line - there will be material ebbs and flows in how we navigate the new world of AI-first businesses but I am becoming more aligned with the belief that this is a business architecture opportunity and that the abundance that will be created [jevons paradox if you will] is going to take some time to emerge.  We are in the messy middle a time of uncertainty and opportunity.  It is on us to use this moment to #InventTheFuture because a future of work that is driven by operational efficiency alone is not one that inspires me.

I believe that the value creation story of the AI Age is in front of us and it is likely to require an outsider perspective.  That is a hopeful story for me and I am here to nudge that future along.

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** Typos and poor grammar either because I'm too lazy to edit properly, or to make you feel confident this was written by a flawed human and not AI generated.