Althouse: "At Notion, the $11 billion business software developer he founded 13 years ago, [Ivan Zhao] hired a high-schooler."

May 10, 2026

"At Notion, the $11 billion business software developer he founded 13 years ago, [Ivan Zhao] hired a high-schooler."

"'We had to ask his parents for permission,' he explained. 'This guy has no experience working anywhere, but he is so talented, and he just grew up with YouTube, grew up with language models, so he knows how to access information given the tools in front of him.' The move was a small example, Zhao argued, of what he referred to as a new 'abundance approach' unlocked by powerful artificial intelligence (AI) tools. 'We’ve become a lot less picky about your capabilities and years of experience,' he explained. 'We are almost doing the reverse of what we were doing before.' Where once Zhao hired mostly mid-career, mid-level workers, Notion... now targets either very young or senior operators. The former are high on 'agency' (the enthusiasm to try things and embrace new tools); the latter often have high taste (a sense of what works and what doesn’t, refined through years of experience)...."

So begins "America’s white-collar jobs bloodbath gathers pace/US business has embraced AI, but predictions of mass unemployment may be based on the false premise that there’s a fixed amount of work to be done" (London Times).

20 comments:

J Severs said...: I endorse "false premise that there’s a fixed amount of work to be done" . In my employment in the pharmaceutical world, I saw the demands for more analyses and more nuanced analyses rise as the computing power increased.; 5/10/26, 8:53 AM
Leland said...: The AI taking jobs narrative is just a repeat of the robots taking jobs narrative of the 90s. It is likely for the same reason, unions are on the decline and need a scare story to get workers to organize.; 5/10/26, 8:53 AM
TosaGuy said...: AI is a tool and the strategic-minded leaders will adapt to it and use it in new and innovative ways. However, your standard CEO follows the herd and will use AI as just another way to slash cost, but the actual productivity of the company will not grow in comparison to their market.; 5/10/26, 8:57 AM
TosaGuy said...: Anti-data center efforts are a line of effort in the anti-AI wars. China funds the groups behind this effort — anti innovation and social unrest all in one!; 5/10/26, 9:01 AM
Achilles said...: AI created a massive F up in the coding space. Some people made it work really well. Other people caused millions of dollars in damage that is now being cleaned up.

Institutions are slow and have no way to deal with the new tools. It will be a time while some people catch up. But there are other people who know how to use it and they are moving forward very fast.; 5/10/26, 9:01 AM
Achilles said...: There are mathematical arguments that LLMs have a ceiling and will never reach actual AGI levels.

But that is old thinking where LLMs and agents are slaves that CEOs can replace their workers with. It should be illuminating when a CEO acts like they don't need anyone to help them and this is what they want.

LLMs will top out at allowing people to have near perfect memory and endless mental energy. The best users will learn how to leverage electronic execution speed. They wont substitute for insight and judgement. They will augment it.; 5/10/26, 9:05 AM
TosaGuy said...: “ But that is old thinking where LLMs and agents are slaves that CEOs can replace their workers with.”

The is an old Dilbert cartoon where the boss daydreams “if I cut costs to zero then my productivity will be infinite!; 5/10/26, 9:08 AM
Luke Lea said...: Samuel Gompers, the pioneering labor leader, once said that the answer to new labor-saving technologies is a corresponding reduction in the hours of labor. That's how we got the eight-hour day. What's next? https://lukelea.substack.com/; 5/10/26, 9:11 AM
Larry J said...: J Severs said...
“I endorse "false premise that there’s a fixed amount of work to be done" . In my employment in the pharmaceutical world, I saw the demands for more analyses and more nuanced analyses rise as the computing power increased.”

That’s good so long as you avoid “paralysis by analysis”. I saw that many times during my years in the military and as a defense contractor. “God forbid anyone make a decision” was the unofficial operating principle more often than not.; 5/10/26, 9:36 AM
Achilles said...: 'We’ve become a lot less picky about your capabilities and years of experience,' he explained. 'We are almost doing the reverse of what we were doing before.' Where once Zhao hired mostly mid-career, mid-level workers, Notion... now targets either very young or senior operators.

The value of college is going to zero. There is no need to go to a place where there is a "store of knowledge." You can instantly find everything available right now. If you have the insight and the judgement you can produce a thesis on any subject in a few days.

Colleges and Universities have turned themselves into enemies of humanity. They caused their own inevitable downfall.; 5/10/26, 9:38 AM
Achilles said...: Larry J said...

That’s good so long as you avoid “paralysis by analysis”. I saw that many times during my years in the military and as a defense contractor. “God forbid anyone make a decision” was the unofficial operating principle more often than not.

LLMs have a massive bias towards action and optimism.; 5/10/26, 9:40 AM
Indefinitely Extended Excursion™️ said...: As AI becomes central to how professional work gets done, how do organizations identify the people who are actually doing it well?

This isn't a trivial problem. There's a meaningful difference between:
• Someone who can fluently operate AI tools
• Someone who has the judgment to know when AI outputs are wrong
• Someone who can architect a complex professional problem into a sequence of AI-assisted steps that produces genuinely excellent work

The first of these is now table stakes. The second is relatively rare. The third is genuinely scarce and almost completely invisible to current hiring and assessment processes.

Here's the uncomfortable truth underneath this: you can't assess a skill you don't have yourself.

A lot of experienced managers have deep domain expertise, strong professional judgment, and real wisdom about how work gets done. Many of them are also significantly behind junior employees in AI fluency. Meanwhile, younger workers may be highly capable AI operators but lack the professional experience to know when outputs are subtly wrong or contextually inappropriate. Neither group can fully evaluate the other on these new terms. That's a genuine organizational problem that is only going to become more acute.

What this probably means is that the most valuable managers in the near term won't be the most sophisticated AI users, they'll be the ones with enough intellectual honesty to recognize that gap and hire or partner with people who can bridge it.; 5/10/26, 9:41 AM
William said...: A young person who can get into a good college and get good grades there can probably learn how to use AI with more deftness than a young person who is into cannabis and rap music. I don't see how this changes the world.......Lenin wrote sixty books of over six hundred pages. They were mostly all wrong, but he knew how to write and he had a fierce intelligence. Maybe AI will replace people like Lenin.; 5/10/26, 9:42 AM
Gusty Winds said...: We LOVE the poorly educated!!!; 5/10/26, 9:58 AM
Gusty Winds said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 5/10/26, 10:00 AM
Gusty Winds said...: AI may threaten credentialed, “highly educated” people who treat a college degree as proof of intelligence. Today, many universities have lowered standards and award diplomas to people who contribute little. If you can borrow or pay the tuition, a degree is within reach.

AI is only as good as the person prompting it. I takes a little bit of imagination to figure out how to make it work for any given task or research. That doesn’t require a college degree. It requires imagination. Once you get the hang of it, it ROCKS!!

Universities and academics will be AI's biggest critics in order to self-preserve. If you’re not using it, you’re already behind.; 5/10/26, 10:10 AM
Gusty Winds said...: Amazon recently launched Amazon Health. It impowers the patient. It can answer questions based on health history and symptoms. It can explain lab results to the lay person.

AI will make medicine BETTER. You will no longer be held hostage by a DEI graduated “Doctor” who must pull out the textbook anyway, or some asshole more worried out his tee time, or her kid’s soccer game.

AI will take over diagnostics and make it faster and more accurate. Also, a simple way to get a second opinion. I’d imagine it will be used in emergency rooms, and your EKG and other symptom measuring tools will automatically be plugged into AI to get life saving output.; 5/10/26, 10:18 AM
Achilles said...: William said...

A young person who can get into a good college and get good grades there can probably learn how to use AI with more deftness than a young person who is into cannabis and rap music. I don't see how this changes the world.......

Wrong signal.

You are talking about rich kids who start on third base getting to home plate before most of the other batters.

AGI is going to boost the talented poor kids. Talent is going to be far more important than connections.

The only question is whether or not rich kids have better genetic predispositions and more talent.

But I will counter that the most important mental strengths are the ability to focus and apply rigorous judgement. It is easy to just go along with LLMs and let them go ham. You need to hold them back and really focus down on what they are doing.

Managing LLMs is actually hard work to get good solid results and it is a learned skill.; 5/10/26, 10:21 AM
J Severs said...: @Larry J: you are correct re 'paralysis by analysis'. I saw it too.; 5/10/26, 12:27 PM
boatbuilder said...: "...the false premise that there is a fixed amount of work to be done."

Eureka!

Is it possible that it is dawning upon the editors at The London Times that the "zero-sum game" paradigm that has plagued mainstream political and economic thinking for many decades may be incorrect?

Baby steps...; 5/10/26, 5:37 PM