Recently, I have been constantly applying for jobs in order to relocate to Europe. I mostly use LinkedIn: 3 Chrome tabs, each containing Software Engineer roles in the three countries I’m willing to move to, sorted by the most recent ones. Anyone who has experienced the process knows that applying for jobs is a tedious process, and any tiny action to make it less tedious is more than welcome.
Almost at the same time, OpenAI enabled a one-month free trial of Codex for all ChatGPT users. I was thinking of a way to automate the extraction of job posts that were suitable for me. Thanks to Codex, I implemented a very basic agentic data pipeline that crawls LinkedIn using CDP, applies some filtering, passes them to OpenAI, and shows me a summarized list of all jobs selected in a concise way.
That’s cool, and I’m even thinking of making it a mini-SaaS. It’s really good, as I can feel the value myself. On average, I used to spend 2-3 hours daily checking jobs. Now it’s at most half an hour. And it’s the very beginning: I still don’t match my profile and skills against the job posts, for example. (FYI, I’m not willing and probably will never apply automatically. I do that part all by myself.)
But there is something I wanna talk about: Now, I struggle to “fill” my time with more useful, valuable actions when I’m used to working in a way that is regularly time-consuming. The struggle goes quickly, as I have a lot to do; but if we put AI at its extreme, it won’t go away that quickly anymore.
It’s obvious there will be AI-powered robots that do the dishwashing for us; it’s just a matter of time. The question is, what will we do with the time AI bought for us? Honestly, I have found there is peace in doing household chores. When I’m stressed out, when I’m not okay, or most importantly, only out of preference, sometimes I like not to work, not to think, not to check my phone, and not to stay idle on the couch (which I often do). I just want to tidy up the house, wash some dishes, put old stuff out of the fridge, and finally go make my own espresso and enjoy it. And no, no way I would ever let any human, automatic espresso machine, or an AI, become the default for making my espresso. Not joking, go away.
By the way, it’s not mostly a critique. I’m just curious. I may be dead the day I’m talking about, but it doesn’t make me any less curious to know, when human beings are free from time-based limitations, what kind of things they try to build, and how they spend their time.
Survival and adaptation are among our top strengths, and I believe this is just a new thing to adapt to. It won’t be cheap. Many will become unemployed. There may be a financial crisis. Grapes of Wrath is not a myth, and the 2008 crisis wasn’t the last one. But that’s how reality works.