Unlearning the Past: Why Most Talent Isn’t Ready for the Agentic, AI-First Workplace of 2026

Unpopular opinion: today’s talent isn’t up to date with the skills required in an agentic world.

If you’re an exception – great!

👉 But I was first alarmed during the summer of 2023 while hiring a couple of growth marketers for Growth Shuttle.

Troubled by the lack of AI adoption (anything besides “I chat with ChatGPT”), I found two Claude-native folks with Make experience at the time who got integrated into the current workflows, automating email campaign sequences in an LLM-first environment, with enrichment and scraping in the mix.

🎡 Over 2 years later, and 4 days before the THIRD anniversary of ChatGPT, we’re hiring for several engineering, marketing, account management roles.

The aggregated and consolidated feedback through my teams here + external recruiters and screening calls I’ve done as well:

📝 Engineers rarely using copilot tools (at work or outside of it), very very few ever tried vibe coding.

(meanwhile, we’ve standardized Cursor for the entire eng team + 7 Lovable licenses).

📝 The inbound/digital/GTM marketing stack commonly simplified down to running ads (PPC/SEM) with native interfaces, emails via MailChimp, and day-to-day admin work. No automated sequences, using Apollo/Instantly, using Clay or anything else for enrichment, no landing page builders or prototyping sites, no practical site editing experience, etc.

📝 Product managers spending weeks on PRD development vs. brainstorming and prototyping with Claude (let alone ChatPRD or anything specialized), not building prototypes with v0 or Lovable or anything beyond napking drawings or best-case Miro boards

The list is longer, but the summary is: 📗

1. Adoption outside of work is almost non-existent
2. Most companies are still lagging behind on tooling and operational improvements (we all know that part)
3. Most talent is using outdated tech from 2020-2021, and many look for career opportunities for 2026 ❗
4. The velocity/pacing/process of using agentic systems and LLM-supported tools is a different mindset. It takes a few months to fully adapt and shorten the timeframes from weeks to hours
5. This turbulent transition takes a toll on corporate roles used to extremely slow velocity (compared to startups/agency). Many can’t adapt effectively
6. The risk of retraining/adjustment is too high for organizations to hire people without proven experience with said tooling

The easiest way to become competitive for work in 2026 is catching up on how progressive organizations adapt to the new work environment.

Jobs are getting replaced, even though many will take another 5-8 years until evaporation. Everyone who’s adjusted and doesn’t take 20x longer than a generic, publicly wide agent, will still be in demand and employable.

Some will instead be replaced by “agent operators” who know how to oversee systems vs. conduct 1:1s and quarterly feedback sessions with people.

We live in a different world. Not necessarily good or bad, but different.

Are you adapting?