Six in 10 Tech Workers Reportedly Try to Avoid Using AI
14-minute, 39-second read.
This Week:
- 24-year-old treated 186 job applications like a machine-learning experiment
- Why are young people now paying witches and tarot readers for career guidance?
- Your kids might send voice notes to their boss instead of writing emails
- Being good at AI might now be worth an extra $100,000 on your paycheck
- Six in 10 tech workers reportedly try to avoid using AI
- Employees at a four-year-old AI startup just got a $300 million cash-out opportunity
- How did a 23-year-old college dropout build a $10 billion AI startup in one year?
- OpenAI wants some job candidates to explain how humanity should handle AI
- Google co-founder Sergey Brin spent $102 million fighting a tax that could cost him $13 billion
- Has your one job quietly become two jobs without the second paycheck?
24 Year Old Treated 186 Job Applications Like a Machine Learning Experiment
Margareth Felicia Gono, 24, got tired of sending job applications into the digital black hole, so she basically turned her job hunt into a science project.
She used Claude to study job descriptions, compare them with her résumé, find missing keywords, track applications, and figure out which approach was actually getting interviews.
The final scoreboard was brutal: 186 applications, 44 cold messages, 19 interviews, 6 take-home assignments, 3 final rounds, and 1 job offer. That offer was for a senior associate role at DoorDash.
And some of us send six applications, hear nothing for four days, and start wondering if LinkedIn secretly put us on a government watchlist.
She even analyzed her interviews.
When she had notes or recordings available, she used AI to look for moments where she hesitated, talked too much, gave weak answers, got strong reactions, or actually made the interviewer laugh.
Then she used those patterns to improve the next interview.
Think about that the next time you leave an interview saying, “I think it went pretty well,” based entirely on the fact that the recruiter smiled twice.
Felicia Gono had data.
Her story shows how far the job-search arms race has gone.
Employers already use software and AI to filter people, and now applicants can use AI to study themselves right back.
The uncomfortable question is whether this is unusually clever today, or whether everyone else will soon have to do the same just to keep up.
Why Are Young People Now Paying Witches and Tarot Readers for Career Guidance?
Career anxiety has reached the point where some young people are now paying witches, tarot readers, astrologers, and other spiritual advisers to help them figure out jobs, breakups, money, and what the hell they’re supposed to do with their lives.
One survey found that 57% of Gen Z respondents had turned to spirituality or manifestation practices to feel more in control over their future.
Think about that.
You have Google, LinkedIn, Reddit, career coaches, AI, your parents, your smartest friend, and probably 46 saved TikToks telling you how to fix your life.
Still confused?
There’s a serious reason behind the weirdness.
A lot of younger workers are dealing with layoffs, expensive housing, AI changing jobs, brutal hiring processes, and the wonderful experience of watching somebody your age announce on LinkedIn that they became vice president of something while you’re eating cereal at 2 p.m. wondering whether your career is cooked.
Spiritual advisers can make uncertainty feel easier because they give people a story, reassurance, and somebody who actually listens.
But tarot isn't proven career forecasting, so the big question is where you draw the line.
If somebody reads your cards and it helps you think clearly, fine.
But if a piece of cardboard tells you to quit your job, move to Miami, and launch a candle company because a new chapter is coming, are you following your heart or outsourcing your entire adult brain?
Your Kids Might Send Voice Notes to Their Boss Instead of Writing Emails
Researchers working with Jabra, a company that makes headsets, earbuds, and other workplace audio equipment, and the London School of Economics say voice AI could become a normal way of working by 2028.
In their study, some workers already preferred talking to AI instead of typing, and people reported more trust in AI when speaking to it.
The bigger prediction is that by the time Gen Alpha starts showing up at work around 2030, keyboards might matter a lot less.
So while you're still rewriting sounds good or thanks six times because you're negotiating a nuclear treaty, your kid might just tell an AI, “Yeah, tell my boss I finished it.”
The AI writes the clean email, and your child goes back to living their life.
But nobody has proved that email or keyboards are about to die.
Voice actually performed worse in the research when people needed careful wording, persuasion, or detailed editing.
That means the likely future isn't an office full of people screaming voice notes at their bosses like a family group chat from hell. It's probably workers talking to AI, then letting AI turn those words into polished text.
Still, think about what that could mean for you.
The real question is whether voice becomes another useful tool, or whether the people refusing to use it eventually become the office version of someone proudly explaining why they still own a fax machine.
Being Good at AI Might Now Be Worth an Extra $100,000 on Your Paycheck
Being good at AI is starting to look less like a nice little resume bonus and more like a giant flashing dollar sign.
New data from Robert Half, a global staffing and recruiting company, says 72% of managers plan to pay more for candidates with relevant AI skills, and 42% say AI knowledge can be worth an even bigger premium than other technical skills.
Separate LinkedIn research found that the typical U.S. AI job posting pays about $177,000 in base salary, compared with roughly $80,000 for a typical non-AI job.
That's almost a $100,000 gap.
You and your coworker could have similar experience, similar degrees, and similar sad little desk lunches, but if one of you can actually build useful things with AI, your paychecks could eventually look like they came from two different planets.
The catch is that companies aren't throwing $100,000 at anyone who figured out how to ask a chatbot to rewrite an email.
Robert Half says 92% of technology leaders are willing to pay more for people with relevant AI skills, while 63% say they're struggling to find workers with specialized AI and data science abilities.
That means the valuable skill isn't just using AI.
It's knowing how to build with it, connect it to real work, handle data, and make it produce something useful.
If AI keeps spreading this fast, do you want to be the person companies are fighting to hire, or the person quietly realizing that Kevin from accounting learned this stuff six months ago and now somehow owns a boat?
Six in 10 Tech Workers Reportedly Try to Avoid Using AI
A new survey from Stack Overflow, one of the biggest online communities for programmers and software developers, found something pretty awkward.
About 6 in 10 tech workers said they try to avoid using AI at work or school for at least some reason.
The same people sitting closest to the AI explosion are looking at it like, “You go ahead, buddy. I’ll watch from over here.”
Some worry about privacy, security, losing their skills, or helping build technology that could eventually do parts of their job.
The funny part is that many of these workers still use AI tools anyway.
So you can basically picture someone asking an AI assistant to write code and quietly wondering if they're training their future replacement.
Funny enough, companies are starting to pay serious money for AI skills.
Robert Half found that 72% of managers plan to pay more for candidates with useful AI skills, while other research has found big pay premiums for jobs that require AI knowledge.
That creates a strange career choice.
Avoid AI because you don't trust it, or learn how to use it because the person sitting next to you might, and they could end up getting the bigger paycheck.
Nobody needs to worship AI or hand over their entire brain to a chatbot.
But if employers keep rewarding people who know how to use these tools, refusing to learn them could start looking less like caution and more like showing up to a calculator fight with an abacus.
Which side are you on?
Employees at a Four-Year-Old AI Startup Just Got a $300 Million Cash-Out Opportunity
Employees at four-year-old AI startup ElevenLabs just got access to something most workers can only dream about: a chance to turn some of their company stock into real cash before an IPO.
The company completed a $300 million tender offer, which means employees and other existing shareholders could sell some of their shares to investors.
The deal valued ElevenLabs at $22 billion, double the $11 billion valuation it had in February.
Double in less than a year.
Employees inside the hottest AI startups can suddenly find themselves sitting on stock worth serious money.
That doesn't mean every ElevenLabs employee became a millionaire, and the full $300 million didn't all go to employees.
But it does show how fast wealth can build inside a private company when investors are fighting to get in.
Is this another ridiculous AI bubble waiting for gravity to remember its job, or are the people building these companies getting rich while everyone else is still debating whether AI is just hype?
How Did a 23-Year-Old College Dropout Build a $10 Billion AI Startup in One Year?
A 23-year-old college dropout started an AI company last year, and it's already valued at $10 billion.
Noah Shinn dropped out of Northeastern after doing serious AI research as a student, worked at AI startup Sierra, then started Instinct, a consumer AI company building a personal assistant that can handle real-world tasks for you, in 2025.
In August 2026, Instinct raised $250 million at a $2.5 billion valuation.
About a month later, it raised another $1 billion at a $10 billion valuation.
Instinct is building a personal AI assistant that can actually do things for you, like make calls, book travel, shop, buy tickets, and manage subscriptions.
That puts the young company in the same race as giants like Meta, which is also working on personal AI assistants.
Instinct reportedly has only around 14 employees, making the whole thing even harder to process.
Imagine being 23, competing with Meta, and running a company investors say is worth $10 billion.
Are investors looking at the next huge consumer technology company, or are AI valuations moving so fast that nobody really knows what these companies are worth yet?
OpenAI Wants Some Job Candidates to Explain How Humanity Should Handle AI
OpenAI is trying something pretty wild with some job candidates, a mission interview where applicants have to explain how they think about AI, humanity, and the trade-offs that come with building extremely powerful technology.
The company is piloting it with some marketing and HR candidates.
Candidates can disagree, question the company, or be skeptical. What matters is how they think, explain their judgment, and deal with hard choices.
Imagine applying for an HR job and suddenly getting hit with, “Cool résumé, now tell us how humanity should handle AGI.”
The bigger point is that OpenAI wants people across the company to understand its mission of making sure AGI benefits humanity, not just the engineers actually building the technology.
How much will your personal judgment matter in future hiring?
Knowing Excel and crushing behavioral interviews might not be enough forever.
You might also have to prove you can think clearly about technology that could reshape jobs, money, power, and everyday life.
Is this a smart way to find thoughtful employees, or have job interviews officially become so competitive that you now need a philosophy degree just to work in marketing?
Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin Spent $102 Million Fighting a Tax That Could Cost Him $13 Billion
Google cofounder Sergey Brin has put about $102 million into a political group fighting California’s proposed billionaire tax, which voters are expected to decide on in November.
The proposal would charge certain billionaires a one-time tax equal to 5% of their taxable wealth.
Brin could reportedly owe around $13 billion if it passes and applies to him as estimated.
He is basically spending $102 million trying to avoid a bill more than 100 times bigger. At his level of wealth, even the tax fight needs its own billionaire-sized budget.
Spending $102 million sounds completely insane until you compare it with a possible $13 billion bill.
That means he could spend hundreds of millions fighting the proposal and still come out massively ahead if it fails, supporters say the tax could raise tens of billions of dollars for health care and other public programs.
Opponents argue it could push extremely wealthy people and their money out of California, hurting future tax revenue.
Should someone worth hundreds of billions pay a one-time 5% wealth tax, or is California basically daring its richest residents to pack the private jet and change their address?
Has Your One Job Quietly Become Two Jobs Without the Second Paycheck?
Your job might quietly be turning into two jobs, except nobody remembered the tiny detail where your paycheck is supposed to grow too.
Korn Ferry, a global consulting company that helps businesses with hiring, leadership, pay, and workforce planning, surveyed more than 16,000 professionals across 11 markets and found that 61% said they were now doing responsibilities tied to more than one role.
Another 62% said their workload had increased significantly over the past two years.
If your co-worker leaves and suddenly their spreadsheet, meetings, reports, and random 4:47 p.m. emergencies magically become yours.
Management has discovered cloning, and the clone is also you.
About 45% of workers said they were so busy that they didn't have enough time for meaningful work that could actually help the business grow, while 44% said they were being pushed beyond what they could comfortably handle.
Companies can cut positions to become leaner, but the work doesn't always disappear with the employee.
Somebody still has to do it, and that somebody might be staring back at you from the bathroom mirror wondering why being valuable suddenly means doing three people’s work before lunch.
Would you rather have more responsibility at work, or a job where you only have to do the work of one person?
Please note that this content is for general information only and shouldn't be considered medical, financial, or professional advice. We encourage you to do your own research and consult a qualified professional before making important decisions.
