the future of ai in your career

All right, listen, I am pumped to be here. This is, this is a pinch-me moment for me. I'm gonna pick on Todd real quick. We're dear friends now, but I'm going to, but I wanna start this out by basically saying that, like, to not give up, to not give up, right? So, I have submitted to All Things Open for the last 5 years. I have got rejected after rejected after rejected after rejected after rejected. And that's 5, if y'all can't keep count. I went to South Carolina, where, you know, math hit great. And finally, finally, thank you, it's basically you and my wife laughing at my jokes. Basically, the 6th, I, for last year, I almost did not submit. That's not funny, but I appreciate your support. I almost didn't submit. I was like, you know what, let's do it, why not? So, I submitted, I got accepted to talk, right? That's cool. Talk last year. Yeah, yeah, thank you, thank you, appreciate it, appreciate it. It's not, we're not punchline quite yet, not punchline quite yet, but I appreciate that. Then, I kind of stayed in touch with Todd, then basically, this is not part of my talk, so I'm gonna have to fly through this thing, but basically, Todd then asked me to come speak a few months ago at Fidelity. Anybody at that meetup? Cool. That's that same talk, so you can zone out for the next 15 minutes, right? I texted my wife on the way there, and I was like, I think Todd is auditioning me for— to keynote at his event. 3 weeks later, Todd texted me and said, hey, would love for you to keynote day 2 of the conference. I said, absolutely. Listen, I will tell you this. I know this is a small microcosm of things, but listen, do not give up. You are one email away. You are one DM away. You are just one action away. from changing the trajectory of your career. Again, my name is Taylor Desseyn. I'm VP of Global Community at Torque.dev. And listen, I'm not gonna talk about MCPs. I'm not gonna talk about Goose. Angie, I love you. Also, it's terrifying to go after Angie, by the way. I love Angie to death, have the utmost respect for her, and I tweeted, I was like, oh God, I'm going after Angie. What I'm gonna talk about for you today is I'm gonna go over some pretty useless statistics that, but I put in there to like, you know, gain credibility on my slides for y'all to pay attention to me. But basically, I'm gonna talk to you about the rest of really your career and how you should position it with AI. So, who am I? I'm a father, I'm a husband, I have a beautiful 5-year-old daughter named Ari, I have a 14-month-old really handsome son that takes after me, and surprise, I have a third on the way. Thank you, appreciate it, yeah, yeah. Was not planned, was not planned. I'm a mediocre golfer, I'm about as good as a golfer as like it looks in that picture with the captions cutting it off. I'm an ice hockey player, I play in the A Division in Nashville, we are back-to-back league champions. I have a miniature dog and a miniature donkey and 4 horses and live on 15 acres and I love my family dearly. And shout out to my wife, Jackie. Woo! For allowing me to be here and supporting me and the kids to speak. Yeah, yeah, give it up. All right, I want to talk about Torc. What is Torc? We are a community-first talent marketplace. Listen, we are so passionate about community. We are the next evolution, I would say, of staffing companies, right? What's the biggest gripe about staffing companies today? I talked to a recruiter and they never got back to me. How many of y'all have had that experience? Raise your hand. Look around. It's common. You know what we're trying to do at Torque? We're trying to single-handedly change that for the entire industry through Ronstadt Digital. Ronstadt Digital bought Torque as the marketplace, as the platform, and my entire job is to make sure you feel loved on. My community team is here, Brianna and Jason. Please stop by our booth. We run 4 to 7 virtual events a week on resume reviews, career help, Anybody in our resume review session yesterday? Yeah, absolutely unhinged, right? Absolutely unhinged. We booked out 4 hours of resume reviews at our booth today. Somebody send me cold brew. If you want to at least see people get their resume reviewed, we would love to have you there. But again, I would love for you to sign up on our jobs platform. If you wanna pull out your phones real quick, scan this. My entire job depends on how many people sign into our platform, so please do that for the love of Jesus. Do that for me. Thank you. Also, if you want to email me after this, I'll send you the slides. taylor@torc.dev. And we'll move on. Also, I should have brought up that QR code up. That's my QR code to get access to everything I have going on. All right, so what I want to get across today, hiring in tech is not dead. It's not dead. No matter what the headlines are saying, do not sleep on the startup ecosystem for your next opportunity. I was brought up in kind of just this like, hey, big tech controls all, you know, you know, you gotta work for a SaaS company, you gotta work for a tech company. Listen, I know people working software in the ag space that are making way more money than some people in big tech, right? There are other industries out there. The big, like I said, big tech gets the headlines, but the hiring is happening. And I truly believe We are entering into the new age of the internet, right? So, let's talk tech hiring real quick. Listen, it's going up, y'all. Also, by the way, I didn't read Todd's directions. Shocker, a man not reading directions. And I had to put all of my slides from Keynote into Google Slides this morning, so that was cool. All right, so, let's talk about some hiring stats. Again, you can Google all this stuff. To me, all I wanna show is this. AI job postings are up 7x since 2024. I also want to tell you that I have friends landing jobs right now. Is Lawrence Lockhart in here? Lawrence? Lawrence, where are you at? I don't see you. Oh well. Anyways, I interviewed him on my podcast. He found a job in 89 days. Okay, people are still getting jobs, but you actually have to do the damn thing. Excuse my cursing. All right, let's move on. However, you're probably like, well, Taylor, listen, at the end of the day, I do know it's not perfect. You're right, it's not perfect. Let's talk about what's chipping away at hiring right now. First off, the great hesitation. Anybody heard that term? Anybody heard that term? Okay, great hesitation. Basically what that is, how many of y'all have gone through and gone through 5 rounds of interview lately? I have. and never heard back? Raise your hand and say aye. Aye. There you go, few of y'all, right? I'm learning some things, I'm learning some things here, right? That's the great hesitation. Even it's happened to me. My team, we specced out a program manager role last year. I was like, oh, we're ready to rip and roll. My finance guy goes, nope. I'm like, damn, all right? So again, more emphasis on LATAM nearshoring. Listen, it's happening, right? I think a lot of companies are understanding there's a lot of amazing talent. We do a lot in LATAM. We love our LATAM community. We do a lot in that area, but that is absolutely chipping away at hiring in the US. Listen, I still think we're dealing with the overhiring in 2022, and I truly believe AI has a marketing problem. The reason why people are getting laid off is not because of AI. We as human beings like to blame things. Let's just call it what it is. We like to put blame on things, and at the end of the day, The blame should be the overhiring that happened in 2022. It's not AI. Okay, now I could get into micro arguments with you, or probably some people have thoughts on, but find me afterwards so we can talk because I'm gonna be honest with you, I'm already running outta time. All right, let's talk about AI real quick. Yep, that AI. So listen, again, a bunch of data that you can probably argue or disagree with or find elsewhere, but the, the big thing I want to get, uh, focus on is AI-related job titles. Have surged 7x from last year. So job postings, job titles are through the roof. Anybody in here raise your hand and say I that grew up sailing? One guy. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. All right, two, right? So so three. So so if do I got four? So basically, when you sail, when you sail, the wind's coming at you, and you can't go into the wind. Everybody understand that concept? All right, so what my talk is, and we still got a lot to get through, is navigating and where the wind's going, right? My thing is here is you gotta, you gotta see where the wind's going, and it's absolutely racing and signaling that AI is here to stay. Here's just another stat that really doesn't matter because of time. Uh, let's talk big tech again. At the end of the day, I wanna read, there's a lot. Again, we're talking about, we're talking about wind, air, right? Where, where's it going? Listen, let's read between the lines here. Microsoft plans $80 billion in AI spend while laying off 9,000. Amazon plans $100 billion in data centers and AI development while laying off 22. Meta, you can read, okay? Right? So again, where's the wind going, right? It's obvious AI's here to stay, but I do think that the internet is changing. You need to get with it. Let's talk startups. So again, I was not really accustomed to the startup ecosystem, and for me, one thing I've realized is that investments are through the roof right now. Here's some other stats, right? US startup funding for the first half of 2025 is up 75.6% year over year. M&A activity for the first half of the year for 2025 is over $100 billion, right? There is a lot of activity going on on the startup side of things, right? So, you're like, Taylor, this is a lot of information. Give me some good news. Say less, fam. I got you. You're not behind. Everybody look to your neighbors to the left or right of you and say, oh Lord, you not behind. Say it to the neighbors to the left or right of you, oh Lord, you not behind. All right, however, this does remind me of a trend. I'm not technical, but I've been staffing the internet since 2011. I was staffing when .NET MVC came out. That was wild, right? We went from like VB.NET to C#. We went from .NET Web Forms We have time. You can go a little— sweet. Awesome. Sick. How much time do I have? 5, 7 minutes. Left? No, no, no. You can go longer than 5, 7 minutes. Okay, sweet. Awesome. Awesome. All right. Well, hopefully I'm not boring people yet. I don't see too many people on their phones. If you are, come back to me, please. We're almost done. However, this does remind me of a trend. Anybody, anybody raise your hand and heard of a technology and say aye with React. All right. That's cool, right? That's where we're at. I— this reminds me of when React dropped. People lost their damn minds, right? We had people jumping onto React, creating content around React. They were React aficionados, right? And then there was others. React's a fad. It's not here to stay. It's stupid. I'm gonna stick doing jQuery. Right? I don't know if that's real. I'm not technical, but I can just say things and get away with it. So, so again, like, listen, but the individuals who learn React, who pivoted quickly, they're the ones that have continued to find success when that transition happens. Right? I truly believe that's where we're at. All right, so, Taylor, you're like, what do we do next? This is great. I love your energy. Why are you yelling? I've had 2 cold brews this morning off no food. It's great. It's drugs, basically. All right, so, let's talk what we do next. Is it time to pivot? Listen, Angie Jones, Kenzie Dodds, anybody heard of them? Probably. Kenzie Dodds, Remix, React, what is he now? MCP this, MCP that. Angie Jones, Java Queen. What are we now? Goose. MCP. I don't know what these words mean, but it's wild, right? So, I just get to say this stuff. All right, all right, next thing. So, is it time to pivot? I don't know. You have to ask yourself that. I got in a conversation yesterday with the Whiskey Web and Whatnot, Robbie, the podcast. Check it out if you have not. But one thing we talked about is me and my business partner, Jason Torres. I don't know if you can go to a boot camp as a MERN stack developer and find a job is easy anymore. I just, I just don't see it. I will say this, look where the wind's going. Talk to people in your field. What's Sally Sue doing that's interesting, right? I think too many of us, and listen, mind you, I have talked with probably close to hundreds of thousands of engineers at this point in my career. I'm not lying. Some of y'all are too stubborn. Right? Can I get an amen? All right, right? So, again, like, be aware, right? Let's talk to people, right? Let's not be stubborn. Now's not the time to be stubborn, right? Find online communities. Listen, I'm gonna plug torque.dev. Would love to have you. We would love to have you. I think we have probably one of the best communities out there in terms of how to help people find a job. Thank you for the 2 followers we have. Right? Find individuals who have communities. I'm a big fan of Ben Lang. Anybody heard of Ben Lang? He's the head of community for Cursor, right? He formed a startup community called NextPlay. I pay $10 a month. I don't even use it, but I'm just in there to see who's— what's doing what. Be a part of a community. If you're not, you're falling behind. Listen, I will tell you this. This is special. This does not happen normally. You understand that, right? So, if you see Todd, if you see Danny, if you see the team today, tell them thank you. This is where the magic happens. We had somebody attend a Torque event Sunday night. He came up to me and goes, dude, I think I got a job offer. Not surprising. This is where it happens, right? Anybody single, say aye. I'm trying to help y'all out here. Say aye. Y'all look around. Like, like, like, like, like, like, what's the ongoing joke, right? No one's gonna jump through your window to date you. That's robbery. You have to go out and find that person. You're not going to change the trajectory of your career sitting at home flipping through Netflix. Be more efficient. Take responsibility of your career. Also, find a mentor. Listen, this is something I'm extremely happy about. Yeah, we got another— I like you. What's your name? Sophia. I like it too. Oh, there you go. That's awesome. She's great. She's great. Find a mentor. Listen, this is what I'm super passionate about at Torque. If you go to torque.community, that's our community page, torque.community. If you need that again, torque.community. We have opened up our ambassador signups. We have opened up our mentor-mentee signups. The single most thing I'm passionate about for 2026 is making sure we have a team that is passionate about spreading the word of Torc and a badass mentor-mentee program that is fundamentally taking care of the next generation of engineers. So, if you are a mentor or if you're a senior engineer and you've always wanted a place where somebody can just give you structure, Jason, again, my colleague Jason Torres over here, he's helping head that up. Would love to have you part of it. If you're somebody who wants a mentor, Please go sign up, torque.community. All right, job boards. Listen, you can email me. I also just freaking ChatGPT'd this, right? It's not hard. Just go find— I see some of y'all taking pictures. Just ChatGPT AI job boards. Not hard. All right, other steps you should do. Use X. Use X. For the love of the Lord, get on X. Taylor, it's stupid. There's politics on it. People are dumb. Yeah, it's social media, man. Have you seen Facebook lately? Right? Listen, I can't tell you, even Brian Douglas, met him on Twitter, slid into his DMs, he came on my podcast. Angie Jones came on my podcast, slid in her DMs on Twitter. Get on Twitter, follow industry experts, follow lists, create your list. There's something called a list, we can talk about it later, Right? Use X, right? Build in public. Listen, you do understand that you can just start talking about the same shit day in, sorry, day out, and you can be known for that? Literally, you could be junior. There's this girl in our Discord, her name's Naz. She's junior. She's yapping about Python 24/7. Guess what I know her as now? Python queen, right? It's crazy. Talk about what you're doing. Be known for that. Taylor, I don't know a skill set. Neither do I. I'm a technical recruiter keynoting, but I have yapped about helping people find a job in the development tech industry for 14 years. You have no excuse. Side note, my dad is 65 years old and is posted on LinkedIn in the restaurant industry, so none of y'all have an excuse. Also, look at job descriptions. We're almost done. We're almost done. Look at job descriptions here. You're probably like, Taylor, I'm so lost. I don't know what skills to learn. The answer to the test is on the internet. Look at job descriptions. What are people wanting, right? Taylor, I don't know what to learn to jump to an AI engineer. ChatGPT it. It's amazing, right? Y'all, I just wanna say thank you. This was an unbelievable experience. I would love to connect with you. Again, I don't know if my QR code even worked with that down there, but again, taylor@torc.dev is my email. I'm T. Desseyn on all of my social media handles. My next talk, there you go, if you wanna scan that. My next talk is at 11:30, room 206. It's gonna be a more unhinged version of this. Thank you. I love you. Appreciate it.