The Aboard Podcast

Does AI mean the end of software development jobs—or is this the start of a brand-new boom? Tech industry narratives are painting a gloomy future for coders, but on this week’s Reqless, Paul and Rich take the opposite tack. AI will shift who has access to software creation and the way things get built—so how should technologists position themselves for the coming decade?

Is the SaaS era coming to an end? On this week’s Reqless, Paul and Rich discuss recent comments from Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski, who says that generative AI has allowed them to build internal tools that let them dispose of products like Salesforce and Workday. With the cost of building software on the brink of dropping precipitously, what does that mean for the SaaS giants going forward?

If AI is about to fundamentally change software development, what should current students be learning about code? On this week’s Reqless, Paul anoints Rich as head of a fictional programming department and asks him to lay out his syllabus—before hijacking the exercise and laying out his own syllabus. You need just enough knowledge to really use these tools to program, so what exactly should students learn? 

Generative AI is already revolutionizing software development—so how long are developers’ jobs safe? On this week’s Reqless, Paul and Rich use a recent post on the subject by Amazon CEO Andy Jassy to discuss the future of coders: What these tools will mean for organizations large and small; how new development paradigms will imperil the big consulting firms; and what advice they have for a junior developer looking at the next few decades of their career. 

How is AI changing the marketing industry? This week Paul and Rich welcome Noah Brier, a marketer and startup founder who’s excited about the ways AI could be used to solve the industry’s problems. Topics discussed include his early interest and adoption of generative AI tools, the types of problems his marketing clients are trying to tackle with AI, and why the tech industry seems to be missing the true potential of AI in its messaging.

By emphasizing the chatbot use case, are we missing the real communication powers of generative AI? On this week’s Reqless, Paul describes his recent journey to understand the 900-page, far-right master plan that is Project 2025—which he fed into ChatGPT and then asked for its contents to be summarized by “​a ​really ​cheerful, ​optimistic ​squirrel.” With the power to instantly change voice and tone—for humor, to accommodate different reading levels, to speak with different dialects, etc.—is AI’s future role a sort of universal information translator?

Are Meta’s ideas about AI the future of the technology? In the wake of the recent tech stock slump and with questions about newer AI companies’ true value, Paul and Rich look at Meta’s Llama and how the company is positioning its model in the broader AI landscape. Plus: They assess the recent decision in United States v. Google LLC—aka the Google antitrust case—and see if there are any real takeaways to be gleaned before what promises to be a lengthy appeals process.

It’s easy to make blanket claims about “AI taking jobs”—but what does AI mean for specific industries in the near-term? On this week’s Reqless, Paul and Rich run through five careers (musician, advertiser, teacher, therapist, and consultant) and assess the ways AI might—and might not—change work. Plus: Paul describes himself as the “slightly grumpy girlfriend” as he and Rich reminisce about going to see beloved indie band Low together.

On this week’s Reqless, Paul and Rich look at how AI might affect the dominant way people organize data today: The spreadsheet. With its low barrier to entry and ability for users of all sorts to hack together solutions, does the humble spreadsheet leave any room for an AI transformation—and does it even need one? Plus: Fresh off a trip to San Francisco, Paul reports back on our driverless car future. 

On this week’s podcast, Paul and Rich look at how AI is going to transform a very special industry filled with the nicest people: The law. After laying out the specific areas of the legal profession that are ripe for AI transformation, they assess a few current startups and their application frameworks (e.g., document review, research, contracts), and propose a new segment for each industry-specific podcast: “Will AI take your job?”