Wake me up when AI can cook a burger

and deliver it to the table.

The dichotomy between the 50+ year low unemployment rate (3.4%) and nonstop onslaught of tech layoffs has been hard for people to wrap their heads around.

Yesterday it was plainly obvious on my social feed. Two things popped up.

1. A Wall Street Journal article on the hospitality industry adding more jobs than anyone. (Here.)

128,000 jobs in January, more than any other industry. Yes, still yammering about that monster report last month. New data comes out this week. (Yes, this article is weeks behind.)

2. Non-stop ChatGPT nonsense from the online hucksters.

How are these things related?

Well, when you talk about job growth in the hospitality sector to the office dork crowd (nothing but love, folks), you typically get a backhanded response. “Yes, but those aren’t *well-paying jobs.*”

Nevermind that they’re how millions of people earn a living. They are, in the words of Draco Malfoy, “the wrong sort.”

What we need are good, high salary jobs. Jobs backed by VC firms doing new and exciting things that will change the world. Like NFTs (RIP), the Metaverse (RIP), web3 (still not sure what this is, maybe RIP?) and now: AI that writes boring copy for your spam emails.

Show me a bad writer and I’ll show you someone really impressed with ChatGPT.

The point is this: there’s a glaring disconnect between what we really need (e.g. food) and the new shiny objects that people get obsessed with. And how we value them.

Most of us can agree that the tech sector was in a bubble that was bound to burst. And that VCs were making absurd bets and it was a matter of time before their models changed.

Yet we still backslide into the next tech hype cycle. When the things that people really need, what we should be investing in and creating businesses around, are staring us right in the face.

James Hornick

Partner at Hirewell. #3 Ranked Sarcastic Commenter on LinkedIn.