

[S03E11] No Juniors, No Google, No Chill: Survival Tips for the AI Shake-Up with Erin Weigel and Lukas Vermeer
Jul 2, 2025
42:30
What does life look like when search engines, junior tech jobs, and even human therapists start losing ground to generative AI? In this lightning-charged round-table, host Sani sits down with experimentation legends Erin Weigel and Lukas Vermeer to test-drive a future that’s already creeping into the present.
In this episode you’ll hear:
- “RIP Google SERPs?”. Lukas explains why he’s stopped opening SERPs and lets ChatGPT do the leg-work instead, and what that means for SEO as a profession.
- Therapy by chatbot. A frank debate on the ethics of replacing licensed counselors with LLMs, complete with Erin’s tale of an AI that literally narrated its own fake empathy.
- The vanishing ladder. Why companies are skipping junior hires, how that starves tomorrow’s seniors, and whether YouTube “mentors” can fill the gap.
- Layoffs, wage pressure & the fourth AI hype-cycle. Erin argues that generative tools are becoming the C-suite’s favorite excuse to “do more with less,” accelerating job insecurity across tech.
- Blackout reality check. Sani recounts a one-day power failure that froze an entire city, highlighting just how thin our digital safety net really is.
- Off-grid plans & doom-prep kits. From Raspberry Pi LLMs to a solar-powered farmhouse in France, the crew swaps tongue-in-cheek tips for surviving an AI-augmented apocalypse.
About the guests
- Erin Weigel is the former principal designer at Booking.com, now charting the blurry boundary between human-centered design and AI-generated “V-Zero” mock-ups.
- Lukas Vermeer is the ex-director of experimentation at Booking.com and Vista; known for turning data questions into live product experiments. Both Erin and Lukas started the same day at Booking.com, one of many shared origin stories they unpack.
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