Jason M. Lemkin warns that 20-40% of employees won't survive the AI era because they resist adapting. Sales reps, CMOs, and customer-success staff who cling to pre-AI practices risk being left behind, even at healthy companies like Microsoft, which recently cut 3% of staff.
Chapters
The truth is, and this is true for startups too, it's probably 20 to 40% of your teams are not gonna make it in the AI age. That sales rep that told me if I wanted to come to Saastr next week is not gonna make it. He's not aggressive enough. Okay? It's tough. Your CMO still running the same human content SEO team from 2021, and that's his best idea today, is not gonna make it. Not going to make it. The CRO that doesn't believe in AI in the sales team, except for some maybe enterprise stuff, is not going to make it. Certainly, we have a great CCO summit coming on here today, hundreds of the best CCOs. Folks that think that customer success experience from that junior folk that said he had one hour due next week, they're not going to make it. They're not going to make it. So I don't know how this will all play out, but I think the notion that everyone wants to be reskilled, A lot of folks don't want to be reskilled. A lot of folks are comfortable working in slippers from home 3 days a week. They don't like it when I say it on LinkedIn, so I'm just saying it among friends. I don't believe they want to be reskilled. I don't believe they want to learn. I don't believe using ChatGPT once a week to ask about recipes is the same as being reskilled. So this is not only does everyone have to move twice as fast, but it's tough. I don't think 20 to 40% of our teams want to change. And we're gonna see— people are like shocked that Microsoft did a 3% layoff this week. 3% layoff, okay? But those are folks that can't change. They need new people to change. We're gonna see this trend accelerate. We're gonna see more and more layoffs of companies that are doing well, and the net headcount is not gonna go down. They just gotta reskill people. It's brutal, but if you don't do it, you're gonna fall behind. You're gonna fall behind.
