AI Killing Engineering Jobs Is “the Biggest Load of BS”

A year ago VCs were telling Parker Conrad that software engineering was months away from mass unemployment. His update: salaries are higher, the market is tighter, and a great engineer is worth more today than ever. The Rippling CEO joins Sam and Jess (no Morins this week) to argue that the only moat left in AI is seeing the problem before your customer does, that good gross margins are a sign nobody is actually using your product, and that Rippling isn't a software company at all. Sam counters with his own setup: a private notes file he hands to four different agents so they race each other to finish things he never asked them to do. Jess brings the mood from New York, where the money people think the $8 trillion CapEx bill doesn't pencil out and financing is about to get much harder. Plus Deel fighting a federal grand jury subpoena, Anthropic's IPO date, and Sam's plan to pay people minimum wage with a 5% shot at a million dollars.

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

01:14 Parker Conrad Joins, No Morins This Week

02:13 Everyone Watched the Election on Prediction Markets, Not TV

04:09 The Blue Wave, and Why the Market Went Up Anyway

07:48 Hyperscalers, Data Centers, and Builds That Just Got Harder

09:27 California's Wealth Tax Fails

10:24 Why Paper Billionaires Can't Pay a Wealth Tax

12:17 The Financing Trick Where One Investor Sets the Headline Price

13:06 New York's Mood: AI Financing Is Drying Up

13:45 Sam: We've Run Out of Money in the World

15:09 Parker: Good Gross Margins Can Be a Bad Sign

15:30 Anthropic's IPO Date and OpenAI's Approach to Margins

16:44 Rippling's IPO Plans and the Public Market Retirement Community

18:26 The SaaS Apocalypse That Didn't Happen

19:00 "Rippling Is Not a Software Company"

20:29 AI for Boring: Government Forms, Faxes and Fraudulent Audits

25:36 The Only Moat Left Is Seeing the Problem First

28:01 Sam's Notes File and the Agents That Compete Over It

29:32 Instinct Keeps Asking Jess the Same Question

30:02 Today's Agents Are Shitty Assistants

30:49 Permissions Architecture as the Real Advantage

32:21 Where Rippling Makes Margin and Where It Makes Zero

33:19 Usage Pricing and Deleting the Bottom Half of a Job

34:36 What You're Really Selling Is a Promotion

36:04 Software Written at Installation Time

37:26 Why You Shouldn't Vibe Code Permissions

38:07 AI Is Excellent at Using Software, Humans Are Not

39:42 Should an AI Negotiate Your Pay?

41:05 Rippling's $17M Seed and Two Years Before the Starting Line

42:07 Why Reversibility Decides How Fast You Can Move

44:52 The Deel Lawsuit and a Federal Grand Jury Subpoena

46:06 Sam: Your Job Doesn't Look Fun to Me

48:40 The Engineer Layoffs That Never Came

49:25 Random Reward Payroll, a Very Bad Idea

51:26 Overrated and Underrated in Silicon Valley

54:01 Sam's New York Marathon

55:14 Starting a Company: The Narrow Ray of Daylight

We're also on:

X: https://twitter.com/moreorlesspod

Instagram: https://instagram.com/moreorless

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2CJdt6HhJ8ioNkbqqVKckC

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/more-or-less-from-the-morins-and-the-lessins/id1692234179

Connect with our guest:

Parker Conrad, CEO of Rippling: https://x.com/parkerconrad

Connect with us here:

1) Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin

2) Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin

3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin

4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit

About More or Less: For 15 years, the Morins and the Lessins have debated the future of Silicon Valley as the closest of friends. Every Friday, they break down technology, capital, and media. From The Information, Offline Ventures, and Slow Ventures.