Workquake Weekly

There's a question I ask before I take on any new client: does leadership already know what's broken, or are they hoping I'll discover it so they don't have to say it out loud themselves? If the answer is the second one, I walk. This week I connect that standard to something quietly telling: OpenAI and Anthropic, the two companies insisting AI is about to remake white-collar work, needed to walk i...

The AI Jobs Story Nobody Is Telling Everyone is afraid AI is coming for the jobs. But what if we've been afraid of the wrong number? New research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, the Bank of England, and the Bundesbank surveyed nearly 6,000 senior executives across four economies — and found that more than 90% reported no impact on employment from AI over the past three years. These a...

For two years, we've blamed AI for the disappearance of entry-level jobs. But what if that story was never true? In this solo episode, Steve digs into new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — a source with nothing to sell — that ties roughly 64% of rising unemployment among young grads not to AI, but to remote work. The finding that stopped him cold: when teams spread out, the...

A new PwC analysis of nearly a billion job postings found something hard to ignore: when a role asks for AI skills, it pays about 56% more than the identical role that doesn't — and that premium has doubled in a single year, up from 25%. In this episode of Workquake Weekly, Steve Cadigan unpacks what that number actually means (and what gets misread about it), why the AI skills shortage is rea...

The Megamanager Era: What Happens When We Stretch Managers Too Thin The average U.S. manager now has 12.1 direct reports — up nearly 50% in just twelve years. Meta is running new teams at 50-to-1. Nvidia's Jensen Huang famously keeps 60 people reporting directly to him. The "flatter is better" playbook is rolling downhill from CEOs to first-line managers, and in this episode of Workq...

Three headlines from this week in work, and the pattern connecting them. Steve breaks down: why dropping degree requirements barely moved the needle on who actually gets hired (fewer than 1 in 700 hires affected), why 55% of HR leaders regret their AI-driven layoffs and one in three companies are now spending more on rehiring than they ever saved, and why a 40% collapse in entry-level tech hiring...

Loyalty Is a Broken Contract… And It’s Time to Stop Pretending Otherwise What if the biggest misunderstanding in the workplace today isn’t about AI, remote work, or even talent shortages… but about loyalty? In this episode of Workquake Weekly, Steve Cadigan challenges one of the most deeply held assumptions in leadership: that employees should be loyal to organizations, even as the terms of employ...

Oracle cut 30,000 people last week. At 6 AM. Via email. No manager conversation. No handoff. Just: you're done, your access is revoked. Steve has been through dozens of staff reductions in his career — and this one hit differently. Not because of the number, but because of what the process communicated. In this episode, he breaks down why the Oracle move is a leadership failure dressed up as a...

This week on Workquake Weekly , Steve unpacks new research from Harvard Business Review that brings real data to one of the biggest debates in the future of work… are jobs being replaced by AI, or reshaped by it? The answer is becoming clearer. Roles built around human and AI collaboration are growing fast, while purely automated roles are shrinking. But the real story isn’t job loss or job growth...

Is AI destroying jobs, enriching them, or doing a bit of both? In this episode of Workquake Weekly , Steve Cadigan explores a new research tool released by AI company Anthropic designed to detect when AI is displacing workers across occupations. On the surface, it sounds like responsible foresight. But Steve asks a deeper question: if we’re building sophisticated systems to track job loss, why are...

This week, Steve Cadigan tackles the emotional rollercoaster around AI, flipping the script from fear and FOMO to understanding and real confidence. You’ll learn: Why panic isn’t the answer—and what questions leaders should be asking instead How “talent velocity” (a concept highlighted in a recent LinkedIn report) puts learning security ahead of job security Why AI adoption isn’t a sprint but a hu...

This week, Steve digs into a startling The Wall Street Journal report revealing that, for many Americans, healthcare expenses are now outpacing mortgage payments. Drawing on his own experience as an independent business owner, he explores how soaring premiums and shrinking coverage have turned “healthcare plans” into little more than catastrophic safety nets, and what that means for families and e...

A landmark trial in Los Angeles is testing a hard question: did social media product design cause real harm, especially for younger users? This isn’t a hearing. It’s a courtroom, with jurors and evidence, focused less on content moderation and more on product architecture… infinite scroll, autoplay, notification loops, and the incentives behind them. Steve connects this “tobacco trial moment” to t...

Feeling 2026 fatigue? You are not alone. In this episode, Steve digs into the prediction trap so many leaders are stuck in right now, chasing benchmarks and waiting for a safe best practice to appear. In a supersonic world, there are no benchmarks. The only real advantage is your ability to take your best shot, learn fast, and move. Steve reframes the AI conversation as a cultural challenge, not a...

Email promised speed and delivered FOMO. In this episode, Steve reacts to Google’s deeper AI features in Gmail, calls out the irony of tech solving a problem it helped create, and reframes the real win of AI: buying back quiet time. We dig into how summaries, prioritization, and automated triage can free up hours, why creativity lives in the margins, and how leaders can shift from frantic processi...

Rethinking New Year’s Resolutions New Year’s resolutions rarely stick because they start with wishes, not reality. In this episode, Steve Cadigan shares a simple, honest alternative he learned from Tim Ferriss, the Past Year Review. Instead of guessing what to change, you look back at what actually happened, who and what gave you energy, and what quietly drained you. From there, you make small, me...

What can the NBA teach us about modern leadership? In this fast, practical episode, Steve riffs on a Wall Street Journal piece about Chris Paul’s retirement and the fading era of the classic “floor general.” On the court and at work, running everything through one person no longer fits the speed and complexity of today. Steve breaks down how the Warriors reinvented offense with shared playmaking,...

Most AI headlines still shout about job loss. This week, I unpack McKinsey’s new State of AI report and the story is very different. Yes, many companies are experimenting, piloting, and playing. Only a small fraction are seeing real profit lift today. The ones that are winning share a pattern: they redesign how work gets done, they pursue growth and innovation, and they keep people at the center....

In this special, more personal episode, Steve looks past the headlines and into his own home to explore why early career paths feel so discouraging for today’s students. Using Lindsay Ellis’s Wall Street Journal article, “Companies Predict 2026 Will Be the Worst College Grad Job Market in Five Years,” as a springboard, Steve shares the real conversations he’s hearing from his college-senior son an...

Are our AI shields down? In this short, reflective episode, Steve explores how quickly skepticism around AI has faded and why that matters for leaders, teams, and culture. He unpacks the subtle forces behind the rush to adopt, from fear of being left behind to groupthink inside organizations, and offers a simple mindset: trust, but verify. Expect practical questions you can use with your team this...

This week on Workquake Weekly , Steve Cadigan dives into one of the biggest myths in today’s workplace — that AI is killing entry-level jobs. Spoiler alert: it’s not. Drawing on Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky’s recent comments that “AI can do the interns’ work, but leaders should still hire Gen Z,” Steve explores why cutting early-career roles is one of the most dangerous mistakes companies can make — an...

This week on Workquake Weekly , Steve Cadigan unpacks a powerful truth Brené Brown shared at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit: “If you’re leading people, you probably know people are not okay.” In an age of nonstop change, AI disruption, and emotional overload, leaders aren’t just managing projects — they’re managing nervous systems. Steve explores why burnout today is less about weakness an...

AI has officially moved from curiosity to urgency. But before we race ahead, Steve Cadigan asks a better question: Fast enough… toward what? In this episode of Workquake Weekly , Steve explores how AI could finally repair our broken relationship with technology — if we let it. From burnout to trust, from productivity to potential, this is a call to leaders everywhere to rethink what “progress” rea...

This week on Workquake Weekly, Steve Cadigan unpacks a quiet shift in tech compensation: companies are moving from the classic four-year, even vesting schedule to front-loaded equity. Think 40/30/20/10 or even three-year designs. Why the change, what it signals, and how it might reshape trust, loyalty, and performance at work. Steve explores potential drivers like offer competitiveness, accounting...

This week on Workquake Weekly, we’re peeling back the curtain on something rare: CEOs getting real about AI and talent. Accenture’s Julie Sweet admits reskilling isn’t moving fast enough. Walmart’s Doug McMillon promises to guide employees “to the other side.” Both perspectives reveal a deeper tension: leaders are trying to look in control while racing to figure it out themselves. Are companies re...