Why Commitment, Speed, and Ownership Are Becoming the New Scarce Currency in the AI-Accelerated Workforce

Interviewing juniors a decade ago:

“Ready to start at 9 and clock out whenever the team is done, will take homework assignments and books to catch up, will bring coffee and take groceries on the way to work if I have to.”

Interviewing Gen Z juniors this year:

“How about flexible hours? Can do 2 days a week on-site tops. Also need to leave at 4 every Wed and Fri for a practice. Will be out of pocket after 8 for hanging out. Also, does the office come with private transport?”

Labeling is bad and I know this isn’t universal. We also have a couple of great Gen Zs at the office, but both coming from referrals, strong work etique due to solid parenting and incredible example at home.

I’ve also hired college students in the 2010s. It was way trickier then when demand for white collar roles was through the roof and we’ve had many sleepless nights tackling complex problems simply because work had to be done and the school flexibility was overcompensated – a lot.

Right now – post-pandemic, deep into the AI era, where A-players can deliver a junior’s work 50x or 150x faster, while probably making 4-6 times more, AI agents can crunch big data and analyze in seconds, including large volumes of reports from GA4 and Search Console across dozens of websites simultaneously (let alone content creation or graphics and presentations) – working your schedule around a junior not ready to pull their weight when the entire market is against them, shows a wrong attitude to work.

While the anecdotes above may seem exaggerated to an extent, I’ve never heard “I will work my [bleep] off” over the last year or two. While that level of commitment was generally “common” in the early 2010s since kids understood that working is a necessity, flipping burgers was less lucrative to office jobs, and busy adults are not thrilled to babysit all the time.

Just like mass media frequently blasts “junior jobs are done” or “middle management is disappearing” and “software engineers won’t exist”, this is never really true for the top percentile. But that pie is shrinking, and if the top 50% were in demand 10 years ago, then top 30%, top 20%, it’s top 10% now. Commitment, willingness, motivation, hard work, adaptiveness, availability, responsiveness, agility, and other key traits will always be in high demand. Lacking most of them won’t be a promotable skill in any career.