Chief Change Officer
#252 Work3 Institute Co-Founder Josh Drean: Employment is Dead. Now What? — Part Three
Mon, 24 Mar 2025
Part Three of a 3-part series on Josh Drean. Josh has worn many hats—Harvard MBA, psychology grad, co-founder of Work3 Institute and now, co-author of Employment is Dead (Harvard Business Review Press). We’re kicking off 2025 with a bang—by declaring employment dead. Yes, you read that right. Josh Drean is here to dismantle the traditional job market, toss outdated HR policies into the digital abyss, and redefine what it means to work in the modern world.In the Part 1 of a three-part series with Josh, where we dig into why the corporate world’s obsession with employee engagement surveys is as effective as asking your toaster for career advice. Spoiler alert: Most companies don’t actually want honest feedback from employees.Today's Part 3, where we take the conversation even deeper into the new rules of work.Key Highlights of Our Interview:Degrees vs. skills: The battle for relevance – If Josh and Vince, proud Ivy League grads, are questioning the value of degrees, maybe it’s time we all did.Web3, DAOs, and the digital workplace revolution – Why the next wave of companies won’t have middle managers breathing down your neck.What happens to companies that don’t adapt? – Hint: They’ll struggle to attract Gen Z, Gen Alpha, and anyone who doesn’t dream of a soul-sucking 9-to-5._________________________Connect with us:Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Josh Drean_________________________--Chief Change Officer--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Expansive Human Intelligencefor Transformation Gurus, Black Sheep,Unsung Visionaries & Bold Hearts.10 Million+ All-Time Downloads.Reaching 80+ Countries Daily.Global Top 3% Podcast.Top 10 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.130,000+ are outgrowing. Act Today. --Chief Change Officer--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Expansive Human Intelligencefor Transformation Gurus, Black Sheep,Unsung Visionaries & Bold Hearts.12 Million+ All-Time Downloads.Reaching 80+ Countries Daily.Global Top 3% Podcast.Top 10 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.>>>140,000+ are outgrowing. Act Today.<<<
Chapter 1: Who is Josh Drean and why is employment declared dead?
Hi, everyone. Welcome to our show, Chief Change Officer. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Our show is a modernist community for change progressives in organizational and human transformation from around the world. Today, we are diving into the future of work with George Dream. George is a Harvard MBA, a startup founder, and the co-author of the book called Employment is Dead.
Yes, you hear it right. That is a very bold statement. But he's got a story to back it up. Across this three-part series... We'll explore why traditional employment models are failing, how emerging technologies like Web3 and AI are reshaping work, and what companies must do to survive.
We'll also go behind the scenes of George's phone, how a cold call turned into a major publishing deal, and why the old ways of managing people just don't cut it anymore. Whether you are an employee, an employer, or just curious about where work is headed, this series will challenge the way you think. I spent over an hour diving into your book.
and certain chapters really caught my attention, especially the ones on talent, skills, credentials, and degrees. You and I, you are from Harvard, I'm from Yale, are both beneficiaries of brand name degrees. In the traditional playbook, that gave us a clear advantage in securing opportunities but with emerging technologies, are degrees becoming less and less relevant and useful?
In your book, you talk about how employers still claim to degree requirements. It's a tough mindset to break. As someone who has benefited from a prestigious degree, just like I have, what's your take? Do degrees still matter? Or is it time for a new way of thinking, working, and doing?
Yeah, that is a really great question. And you need to, I think we need to just hone in on what is the purpose of a degree? What's the objective of getting a degree? And as I understand it, the idea was to, one, obviously gain the skills that you would need to be valuable in the workplace to be productive. And two, I guess that's really it, right?
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Chapter 2: Is a college degree still relevant in today's job market?
And the reason why a company would ask for degree requirements in order for you to get hired was simply because they can trust that they that you learned lessons, that you learned how to work, that you pushed hard, that your GPA is somehow representative of your work ethic and your knowledge, and then entering the workforce, hitting the ground running, right?
That was the idea of getting a degree for the younger generation. The attractiveness of it was that if you go to school, you will get the skills you need to land a high-paying job and be fine. You'll be just fine in life. And what we're learning is that's no longer the case. Degrees are no longer... guaranteeing employment, no longer guaranteeing a job.
And we're seeing a lot of organizations start to drop degree requirements. We'll take you if you have a degree or not. And how does that feel to someone who just spent tens of thousands of dollars going to school to earn a certain skill or earn a degree and then to hit the workforce and they're like, sorry, we're not going to hire you.
The reason is because we are moving to a skills-based environment hiring process rather than an experience-based process. Yes, you have a degree, but I've learned as an employer that even though you have a degree, it doesn't mean you have the skills, soft and hard, to do the job or that you're not ready to be able to undertake.
And a lot of companies famously will push against hiring someone from Harvard or Yale because they're divas, because they feel like the world owes them something and they're just not...
into that as as much anymore so i will answer very directly i don't think that getting a college degree is the right model for making sure that we are being valuable to companies especially when we are upskilling in ai right is there a degree out there around ai yeah there's very technical degrees that you can get and yeah we're starting to add some of that into the curriculum but
In my mind, there's no Gen AI experts unless they've already been in the field building it directly. So a lot of these students have to learn it and have to come in to the workforce ready to go. And I will say that one part about your thing of we are beneficiaries of brands, degrees. The interesting thing about attending school at Harvard is that there's this idea of
The subject matter is fine, but we're really there for the connections and for the resources. That holds much more weight than the actual degree itself. It's who are you connected to? What opportunities do you have? And as you probably are aware, there's a portion of students who
got in because they had very wealthy or well-connected parents they don't take their education seriously and somehow they're able to land a pretty decent job or they go and take over their parents textile factory in india somewhere yeah i definitely agree with you at one point in my career i helped a lot of students from china apply to business schools in the u.s
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Chapter 3: How are traditional hiring processes changing with technology?
Most of them came from ordinary backgrounds, no special connections or privileges. And honestly, I was in the same boat. I went to Yale on a scholarship. Now, when people ask me, is an MBA still relevant? I get it. There's a lot of debate, just like with degrees in general. It's about connections, networks, and the brand name of these two-year MBA or law school programs.
And yes, these programs accelerate learning, especially the soft skills or life skills like communication, critical thinking, and relationship building. But beyond that, the real value is in the people you meet and the deep connections you build over those two years. That's something you can't just replicate by networking on LinkedIn or signing up for an online course.
It's a different kind of experience. That said, if your goal is purely to learn, some skills. There are so many ways to do that now, many of them more affordable and accessible. I've personally taken online certificates and courses to upskill, building on a traditional education background. Now, going back to your book and the discussion on degree requirements.
Employers, some of them, are starting to look beyond just degrees. They are using other signals to assess skills and knowledge before making hiring decisions. But the degree requirement itself is still deeply ingrained, not just in the U.S., but in many countries. So how do we change that? How do we take real action to jailbreak the degree system? What needs to happen to shift the mindset?
Yeah. And let's get into the technical weeds a little bit and really take a look at this, right? The foundational is, do you have the skills to do the job? That's what it comes to. We're seeing a lot of these processes break down already. When you look at the hiring process, AI has broken it. It is completely shattered at this point because the idea is the HR manager is going to ask chat GPT.
write a job description for me based on this criteria. And then the person applying for that job is going to say, hey, ChatGPT, write my resume to perfectly match this job description. And now you're getting a flood of perfectly tailored job applications that are now being vetted by AI solely. Like 95% of these aren't even going to be seen by a human being.
So you've got AI writing the job description, AI applying to the role, and AI vetting the process. How do you verify if someone has the skills that they say they have? A self-reported resume is such a terrible way to ask people what skills they have. Blockchain, however, will allow us to verify our skills. So that piece of paper, that degree that you're holding,
You could be standing right next to someone who has a degree and they partied the entire time, but they were able to push through and they were able to get the degree. Whereas you worked very hard to develop the skills and you're walking away with a very different experience. So how can that piece of paper symbolize the exact same thing to two different people when the experience or the skills?
We can't verify that you have the skills. We can only verify that you have the degree itself. So again, blockchain allows us to build experiences, to upskill, to verify the projects that we've worked on and the work that we've completed. So now when you apply for a job, you have this pedigree, right? You have this crypto wallet, if you will, a digital resume imprinted on the blockchain.
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Chapter 4: Can blockchain verify skills better than traditional methods?
So we don't have to verify your transcripts. And we don't have to like look at your paper. We can now know immediately that you have the skills to do the job because it's already it's already recorded. And so we talk about blockchain in this. It's called trustless trust. There's this concept of trust but verify.
Like, I trust that your resume is right, but we're going to verify that you didn't lie to us. With blockchain, now you just have to trust. Like, it's already there. So imagine a platform like Upwork. which is a freelancing site. And the way that they verify that you have done the job is typically it's reviews. You landed a project, you did really good. So a client gives you a great review.
The more five-star reviews that you have, the more you get bumped up in the algorithm. And that's how you verify. That's a great method, but it takes a long time. What if you already have the skills? and you already know what you're doing, and you don't want to start at ground zero, where do you start? Where do you do that?
If your skills are already verified, then that means that AI can just scrub the entirety of all these projects and all of these work opportunities and drop into your lap the perfect fit based on your skills, based on your preferences for how often you want to work, whether you just want to be a part-time worker or full-time or double full-time.
Working in the future is going to be just as easy as opening an app and getting started. And it's because we have these technologies that will verify whether we can do the job or not.
So far, I've asked you a lot about credentials and education. That's one of my key interests. But in your book, you also introduce this massive Work 3 transformation map. A full framework for how organizations can innovate and leverage emerging technologies. Now, we won't go into all the details today. Maybe we'll save that for future episodes. But I want to ask you this. Let's say I am a CEO.
You and Deborah present me with this phone. You come in as consultants advising my organization on transformation. Where would you recommend starting? Obviously, executing the full roadmap, strategy, concepts, implementation could take more than a year or even longer. But what's the first step, the first major pain point to tackle?
I know it depends on the company, but if you had to pick a key entry point from your roadmap, what would be a strong starting place for any organization looking to make a meaningful shift?
Yeah, it's such a great question. And it's what we spend most of our time doing at the Work3 Institute. We love working with human centric, digital first leaders who are ready to push the boundaries on what's possible. And the roadmap is a long process, right? There's 14 steps there.
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Chapter 5: What is the future of work according to the Work3 framework?
But we've trained these individuals to be free thinkers. They go to college, they learn how to be technical and creative and innovative, and we don't allow them the opportunity to do so.
How do we change the power dynamic and maybe empower some of these workers to be able to make decisions on the front line, to give them the flexibility and the autonomy that they need to do their best work and to remove these layers of oversight that no longer serve us? Why do we have six levels of management when
Technology can absolutely flatten an organization where you have maybe 200 direct reports instead of the Steve Jobs, two pizzas kind of analogy or the Jeff Bezos analogy. How do we, how does that work? It breaks down silos, communication flows freely on the blockchain, and you're able to work without the oversight of a manager. So again, this step five is piloting the DAO at the organization.
Let's get a team. together, let's distribute tokens to that team. Let's get on snapshot, which is a tool that allows them to pitch ideas and pitch directions. And then everyone on that team gets to vote on which directions they should go. And when a majority vote happens, they move in that direction. So it's a bit of a democratization of work. while also moving faster, right?
The idea is to be as agile as possible. And it's fun to watch companies really gravitate towards that. It's fun to watch micromanagers get really nervous because they want to control things. But yeah, I would say there's a lot there for sure.
One thing I want to add to that, when you talk about why there are 600 people reporting to you and why organizations have six layers of hierarchy, at the end of the day, all comes down to politics and power, and of course, money. More layers mean more justification for higher salaries at the top. That's just how economic incentives, power, and corporate structures work.
But that's a whole other discussion, one that goes beyond technology, yet still shapes the way employment functions today. Even as the world changes, traditional employment structures are still deeply entrenched, especially for my generation. And even for yours, despite being younger, business schools and corporate environments still reinforce many of these same structures.
Now, employment isn't disappearing, but its function, nature, and diversity are evolving. The depth and breadth of work are shifting, and that's where technology plays a huge role. So as a closing thought, Josh, you've been a strong advocate for integrating and merging technologies into the workplace. What do you see as the consequences for employers who don't adapt?
For those who aren't paying attention, who aren't taking steps to evolve how they manage, recruit and lead, what risks do they face? I'd love to hear your take as the final message to the world on this show.
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