The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
How to Make Sure AI Doesn’t Take Your Job, Planning a Guys’ Trip, and When to Take on Debt
Wed, 30 Apr 2025
Scott shares his updated take on whether AI is truly coming for our jobs. Then, he offers tips for planning a meaningful guys’ trip that deepens friendships. And in our Reddit Hotline segment, Scott responds to a listener asking about when it is smart to take on personal debt to level up your life. Want to be featured in a future episode? Send a voice recording to [email protected], or drop your question in the r/ScottGalloway subreddit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Is AI really going to take your job?
Hey, Prof G. You've mentioned before that AI won't necessarily take our jobs, but rather people who know how to use AI will. but I've been seeing more examples lately that make me question that. For instance, Shopify's CEO recently said that any new roles at the company need to prove they can't be done by AI before they get approved. Basically, if AI can do it, they're not hiring for it.
So as much as I want to believe that AI isn't taking jobs, it feels like there's growing evidence that it actually is. What's your take? Has your thinking evolved on this? Appreciate you taking the time.
That's an interesting question. And also, I just want to acknowledge that there's some truth to what you're saying. Shopify CEO, Toby Luckey, told employees in a memo that they need to prove that they cannot get what they want done using AI before looking to hire new employees. Shopify ended 2024 with a headcount of 8,100. down from 8,300 a year earlier.
The company laid off 14% of its workforce in 2022 and laid off 20% the following year. The stock is up nearly 21% in the past year. I don't think that's AI. I think they probably just over-hired during COVID like most of the tech companies. No one in tech has been spared. Last year, over 150,000 employees were laid off in the technology industry alone.
This year, Meta expects to have AI that can function as a mid-level engineer, which probably sent shivers down the spine of prospective employees. I hate to admit this, but Musk inspired this race, and that was the following. He basically maintained a minimum viable product on Twitter, with 80% fewer employees. So essentially, the entire tech market stood up and paid attention.
And then you had what was probably the seminal earnings call of the last 10 years, and that was That is Mark Zuckerberg said, we increased revenues 23% while reducing our head count 20%. That's never happened before. Think of what GLP-1 drugs do. They switch off the signal in your brain that you need to eat more. And the signal to every CEO's brain when they're growing is I need to hire more.
That's just, okay, I'm growing. I need more protein in the form of human capital. Basically, AI has been ozempic for the corporate world and that it's turned off the signal that you necessarily need to hire more. And so a lot of people are saying, well, okay, what if we can do this with AI?
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Chapter 2: What evidence shows AI affecting employment at tech companies like Shopify and Meta?
I got to be honest here at PropG Media, I keep asking, why don't we have this podcast in numerous languages using AI? I'm starting to think that way. But I still hold on to the notion that what's going to happen with every technology, whether it's PCs or automation, there's some short-term damage in terms of job destruction.
But the auto industry, which was supposed to be wrecked by automation, had some short-term declines in employment, but we couldn't envision heated seats or car stereos. These companies rip costs out of the basic non-value-add part of the production, make more profits, and then start investing in new models, new dealerships.
basically, or more profitability, which creates cheaper capital such that they can have, I don't know, more investment, more employees, more hiring. I just think that's a natural cycle of business. And while AI will come in to Shopify and reduce, for example, customer services is going to get wrecked. I wouldn't want to be in the business of customer service.
I wouldn't actually want to be in, I wouldn't want to be a systems engineer right now because programming is going to get just get so much easier and better. But if I have a vision for new products or new features that require software engineering, which I now have much greater firepower around, I think there'll be a lot more product management jobs.
I think that these companies, I think Shopify is going to get to expand to new regions because they'll have additional profits and be able to scale up faster with AI. As a result, there'll be a shift in skill sets required, but not a shift in, I don't think, in employment or total employment. I think total employment will grow. That's a dangerous thing to say.
But I think the idiocracy vision of the world where none of us need to work and we're all just sitting on couches watching big screen TVs and getting angry at each other, I don't see that. I think there's still going to be a need and opportunities for people who know how to leverage AI.
Now specifically, when I said AI is not going to take your job, someone who understands AI is going to take your job, I still think that's the case. I still think if you can figure out a way to understand how AI is going to impact your division and be the person that quite frankly understands how to do more with less, I think there's more opportunity for you.
I'd hate to be a mediocre real estate lawyer right now. But a good real estate lawyer that understands AI is going to make a lot more money because he or she is going to be able to draft basic documents, but they're still going to need a human to be creative about the type of leases and negotiating with the landlord and reading the market and all of that good stuff.
I think there's just going to be enormous opportunities here if you understand how to leverage this technology. PCs supposedly are going to put a ton of people out of business and If you didn't understand PCs, you probably were vulnerable. I think it's just really important. What is my advice here? My advice, especially if you have kids, play with AI with your kids.
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Chapter 3: How can professionals leverage AI to enhance their careers?
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So we want to introduce you to another show from our network and your next favorite money podcast for ours, of course, Net Worth and Chill. Host Vivian Tu is a former Wall Street trader turned finance expert and entrepreneur. She shares common financial struggles and gives actionable tips and advice on how to make the most of your money.
Past guests include Nicole Yoder, a leading fertility doctor who breaks down the complex world of reproductive medicine and the financial costs of those treatments, and divorce attorney Jackie Combs, who talks about love and divorce and why everyone should have a prenup. Episodes of Net Worth and Chill are released every Wednesday.
Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch full episodes on YouTube. By the way, I absolutely love Vivintu. I think she does a great job. Welcome back. We asked and read it delivered. Let's bust right into it. Our Reddit question today comes from Bodega Poet. Ooh, aren't you sexy? That is very special.
Hey, Prof G, what are your thoughts on personal debt for business, real estate, or educational pursuits? I learned about personal finance from Dave Ramsey, and his principles have resulted in my wife and I to be in our late 30s with no debt beyond our mortgage. We are getting by, but it seems like we will forever be stuck in the middle class.
Would you ever advise utilizing debt as leverage to increase your earnings potential, returning to school, borrowing? for seed capital for a business or buying property. Thanks for considering my question. Okay, there's no easy way to just summarize debt. Can debt put you in an awful place? Can you go to a, can you apply to a good college and not get in?
Because we as good universities or elite universities take pride in scarcity and manufacturing artificial scarcity such that we can reject people, go up in the rankings and raise tuition fast and inflation such that a good kid gets arbed down to a mediocre college that's the same price. but doesn't offer the same upside opportunity.
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Chapter 4: What practical advice does Scott give for using AI in everyday life?
And we've shamed everyone into believing if they don't get a college degree that the parents and you have failed. So you can borrow cheap credit, student loans, and you can literally borrow $100,000 to end up in a job that pays $40,000 a year. Yeah, we've done that. And a lady in a pantsuit with a big logo behind you telling you that you can never go wrong investing in yourself.
Keep in mind, she gets to cash that check. And then you want to talk about how mendacious our society has become and how much we hate young people. Student debt is one of the few forms of debt that is not dischargeable in bankruptcy. So you literally have a generation, tens if not hundreds of thousands of young kids who go to school. It's not cut out for them.
They drop out, but they still get to hold on to their debt. And for the rest of their life, they have this anchor around their neck. So there are terrible forms of debt. You can get in—you can be house poor. Everyone thinks, again, another one of these tropes or conventional wisdom when— Wisdom becomes conventional.
It's no longer wisdom that everyone needs to own a home or otherwise you aren't an adult. And sometimes people just get out too far in front of their skis, the market goes down, and they have a $300,000 mortgage on a place worth $190,000. And that can haunt you the rest of your life. Credit card debt, new offers every day. And You want to lead a good life. You're working hard.
You think I deserve this. And the reality is you wake up with $30,000 in credit debt. So there's a lot of bad forms of debt. There's some very good forms of debt. Your ability, if you're buying a house and you can get a good mortgage that is also tax deductible up to a certain amount, that is very attractive debt. It's low interest debt.
As long as you're thoughtful about buying a place you can afford, you typically don't want to spend more than 30 or 35 percent of your income. gross or your net income on rent or a mortgage, and also you need to calculate the phantom costs, which people don't want to do, property taxes, maintenance.
But if you can finance an asset at 5% or 6% and you get to write off part of that, that's what you call good debt. So good debt can give you leverage. So there's good debt and there's bad debt. I like leases more than debts on cars because you can just hand the car back. And I think the transaction costs of trying In the time in the human capital to try and sell a car is a pain in the ass.
So I was like leases and generally speaking, manufactured sponsored leases sometimes end up with a low interest rate. So this is what you do. How do you discern between good and bad debt? You need a kitchen cabinet. You need someone who will give it to you straight and say, okay, you're going to school or if you want to go to college, you're gonna have to borrow $120,000.
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Chapter 5: How should you plan a meaningful guys’ trip?
What's the average salary of the person graduating from the school? Is it worth it? For the first time in a long time, and this is a tragedy, Sometimes the answer is no around college. It's just not worth the money. And even though there's a nice lady or a nice man telling you that you can get student debt, maybe you shouldn't take it.
Just having access to debt doesn't necessarily mean you should take it. You need to think about the interest rate. You need to think about the term of the loan. And you need to think about the incremental bump it's going to give you. When you buy a house, houses typically go up. Throughout history, 4% to 6% a year.
Chapter 6: What are tips for deepening friendships during guys’ trips?
Well, okay, if you can get leverage on something, if you can borrow 80% and it goes up 4%, then effectively you're getting, you know, 15% or 20% return on your equity capital. That's the down payment. That's good debt if it's a low interest rate. So what do you need? You need someone who understands finance and your kitchen cabinet. You need to be very careful around debt.
And you need to always ask yourself, is this good debt? Is this good debt? What is the interest rate? All credit card debt is bad debt. Sometimes you want to take out debt to get rid of debt. Sometimes you want to take out a home equity line at 8% to pay off your 18% credit card debt. So sometimes you want to use debt to pay off other debt. There are
real there's real nuance here and you need someone who understands debt but the key question is not whether debt is good or bad it's whether this is good debt versus bad debt and for that you need people understand your situation we'll give it to you straight but in general you want to be very you know what just fucking breaks my heart this buy now pay later on burritos so i can now finance a burrito if you need to finance your coffee or burrito that is bad debt because they will figure out a way to charge you more and if you're late on your payments huge
Hugely punitive penalty is, I think I read an article saying, you know, these BNPL companies have now figured out a way to sell you a $100 burrito. I think when you're at the counter of a specialty retailer going to Coachella and you get automatic credit that says, oh, you want to spend $400 instead of $200? Ask yourself, okay, if I don't have the money right now, is this a really good idea?
Is the incremental... outfit at Coachella going to pay off? I mean, there's different types of payoff. You might look fabulous. You might look fabulous. But I think generally speaking, in consumption, you don't want to go into debt. You want to use debt kind of only for things that might grow in value. Another thing that's just so sad, 40% of Americans have medical or dental debt.
How can we be the most prosperous nation when almost one in two households have the burden of medical debt? That's the kind of debt you can't You can't avoid. You don't have the money, someone gets sick. By the way, we should absolutely lower the age for Medicare from 65 by two years every year, and then boom, in 30 years, you have socialized or nationalized medicine.
We're the only G7 country that doesn't have it. It's an absolute tax parasite in our society. Sure, there's probably some additional innovation, but it's just not worth it. And that would give us the chance to slowly but surely let the industrial complex that makes huge amounts of money off of people suffering in debt Give them time to adjust. Anyway, it's not what you asked.
It's not whether debt is good or bad. It's what type of debt. You need someone to help you discern good debt from bad debt. Thanks very much for the question. That's all for this episode. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to officehoursatpropertymedia.com. Again, that's officehoursatpropertymedia.com.
Or if you prefer to ask on Reddit, just post your question on the Scott Galloway subreddit and we just might feature it in our next Reddit hotline segment. This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez. Our intern is Dan Shalon. Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prop G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network.
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