00:41:21 · Adam Miller, Xharmagne Carandang
[00:41:21] S5: was just gonna bring it back to something we were talking about before. Michelle, you were talking about amplification and displacement in something what you're saying before. And think a lot of what people are questioning right now is what does AI amplify and what does it take away? You know, people are talking about what are the skills that are still going to remain with AI and what gets amplified. So I'd love to hear from perspectives about what are those skills that are going to remain with us and still be important. [00:41:48] S0: I think we're driving... Like, people who are building AI powered apps help design and drive that as well. It depends on what we build. Because I was thinking about this whole industrial revolution versus AI, and one thing I've noticed, at least, you know, from, for example, coding, augmented coding, I can do better because I I know the foundations. I'm already a senior engineer. It helps me a lot. And so that human expertise matters a lot to be... As in AI amplifies it more because there's already a good base, if that makes sense. What I'm worried about is the people who don't yet have the base in much, like grads, whatever. Will there be a gap there? Will the people who are already skilled be so amplified and the people who aren't, will they be left behind? [00:42:36] S5: I also think that something just to set the scene for this discussion a little
00:42:36 · Adam Miller, Sachin
[00:42:36] S5: I also think that something just to set the scene for this discussion a little [00:42:40] S2: bit more is I think people in tech think that everyone has 100% agency to go learn anything. Doesn't work like that. But I hear a lot of things like, oh, you can just become an expert prompter if you are, I don't know, working for the government. And it's just like, the world doesn't work where we perfectly rationally acquire all these skills and change our personalities and our behaviours. So I think that's just a comment I want to make as we set the scene for this. [00:43:05] S5: Yeah.
00:43:07 · Michelle Gilmore
[00:43:07] S1: I think that... I mean, Juno is my fifth company. Right? So I I think that I've employed... I haven't worked for anyone else for twenty years. So it's it's hard for me to think about the kind of employee perspective, but I can talk with experience to the employer experience and hiring more traditional developers and engineers and be... Building, like, traditional software versus what we're doing now. I mean, one of my most talented engineers is self taught. And he's brilliant because he's an incredible philosophical thinker. Like, he can understand relationships and object definition, and distinction, and actually all the things that make a great engineer an engineer, like high IQ, mental acuity, being nimble, being adaptive. And I I do think that traditional engineers that are rigid in their thinking are actually not as good in the current space that we're working in, which is why places like SF are going to see a little bit of a ripple, I think, because what's been successful there and what's been rewarded there is not necessarily what we're talking about. And so I'm really excited by people that are really great at critical thinking, problem solving, people that can do debate really well, people that are interested in, creativity and philosophy. Yes. There needs to be an expertise, obviously. I need them to be able to do something in my company. But I am thinking very differently about talent and the results and the value that you can generate in my company Yep. Which I don't think is what we were thinking about ten years ago. It's it's absolutely not how we were thinking about technical talent nor how we were thinking about, you know, that wage that I was applying to that human and what I was gonna get out of them. It's it's a... It's almost kind of created this horizontal notion as opposed to this vertical notion that we were working on before, which is why I think things like institutions and universities are over the next decades going to become less and less important, which will hurt places like SF, right? Because they've leaned on that as opposed to other places that don't necessarily have that branding of the institution, but don't necessarily have to compete with that anymore.
00:45:33 · Xharmagne Carandang, Michelle Gilmore
[00:45:33] S0: There's this concept of... Because I used to work in tech consulting, ThoughtWorks, and I feel like that's what they already had going there. We didn't go, oh, are you an expert in Java? It's the critical thinking skills. It's the foundational problem solving skills that we look for. And there's this term that... I don't know who came up with it. Martin Fowler or something. The term called expert generalist [00:45:56] S1: Yes. [00:45:57] S0: Which is basically you've got these tech consulting companies. They were already indexing for, are you good at the basics so we can chuck you at any company with any tech stack, and you just go. And now that we've got Gen AI augmenting that, there's that whole new type of talent where you just need to know the foundations, and you can be augmented so much more. [00:46:17] S1: Yeah. And in fact, they're very valuable if you can jump around.
00:46:20 · Daniel Palmer
[00:46:20] S3: Yes. I think a keyword you mentioned earlier was creativity. And I've been reflecting on this a lot, because I've been thinking a lot about, okay, what are agentic automation good at, what is traditional automation software good at, what are humans good at. And I realise that humans are like, in a theoretical sense, are very good at low scale but high creativity work. Agents are pretty good at high scale mid creativity work, and then software is really good at low creativity, deterministic high scale work. And I think thinking about creativity in that sense, I think one thing that at Relevance, we've always, always taken big bets on folks who come from maybe non traditional backgrounds in terms of any factor really, but have showed that element of determination and particularly creativity. And I think we've seen some really great success stories now, but in the last couple of months in particular, lot of those folks in our company have just taken this next step of amplifying themselves into absolute superstars. Both our platforms have gotten better but other platforms like Cursor, Lovable, all of these very democratizing Gen AI platforms have gotten better. That breed of person that we, you know, just happen to fill our company with, have just turned into these incredible superstars who are now like, despite whatever background they have, building internal applications with Cursor, or automating whole parts of our company with our own platform for example. And starting to emerge as just like potentially, you can kind of see them as the sort of leading people in our company. And I think that's a little glimpse to me of what, I cause think it's hard to answer the question of what will humans still do, that will always move and evolve, and it's really hard to answer that. I've started to see a glimpse of what humans are succeeding in the world we're about to of enter, what they look a bit like. And I think creativity is one of the key things
00:48:27 · Sachin, Adam Miller, Michelle Gilmore, Xharmagne Carandang
[00:48:27] S2: I What's sort interesting to [00:48:28] S5: me there is like, you know, all the way growing up, [00:48:31] S2: was always told like, oh, C students are the A students. And I feel like it's almost that distracted kid in the back of the classroom that gets like, fails all their tests, but is daydreaming all the time. That person has an opportunity now, like, you know, unlike anything ever before, right? You know, because what is a tertiary education system reward, road learning and memorising specific things, right? Those are literally the things that are not valuable at all in the AI world. And I'm [00:49:00] S1: literally thinking about not sending my kid to school. Yeah. Like, I've... What are we doing to them? How is it helpful to put a child right now through Australia's traditional education system? [00:49:14] S0: Yeah. I feel like that would completely change. Because, I mean, the the distracted kid at the back of the room. Right? Yes. They... They're more empowered to just try all these random different things. But I think then the other skill, apart from creativity and coming up with all these ideas, is knowing which ones are working. Mhmm. [00:49:30] S1: Yeah. [00:49:30] S0: Because especially now that we're empowered to do so much, how do you recognize what is quality, as you were saying earlier? And I I overheard someone saying how now reading comprehension is such an important skill, especially with Gen AI. [00:49:45] S5: Yeah.