AI Will Replace the Schlep, Not Jobs

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Ok, now to the newsletter. 

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AI is Coming for the Schlep

AI is gonna change the way we interact with software. But not in the way most people think.

Everyone's talking about AI taking over jobs, creating mass unemployment, and fundamentally disrupting the workforce. The feeling seems to have made it to the mainstream because I was coaching my kids’ baseball game last night and it came up while talking to one of the other coaches. The predictions paint a picture of human obsolescence. But I think they're looking at it completely backwards.

I had a conversation just before the game with Jacob Bank, founder of Relay.app, that perfectly crystallized this point. He told me about a customer who works for a recruiting agency. Previously, creating matching documents between candidates and clients took recruiters 30 minutes of careful work—reading resumes, matching them to job descriptions, considering company culture fit. Now their AI agent does this automatically at 95-99% human quality. The cost? $1.30 in AI credits for what used to be hours of manual work.

That's not job elimination. That's schlep elimination.

The Click Labor Revolution Is Here

The doom-and-gloom predictions about mass job displacement miss the real story. Yes, certain roles are evolving—the traditional Salesforce admin who knows how to click all the buttons is becoming obsolete. But even their role is probably safe. Companies will still need someone who understands the data model, what users want, and can tell the AI agent what to change. In this paradigm, they’re still fulfilling a similar function but they don’t have to click the buttons. This means they can accomplish more work with less schlep. The change isn’t the end of the story, it's the beginning of a much better one.

Jacob shared another example that drove this home. He built an AI agent that analyzes the top 100-200 LinkedIn posts every week, identifying engagement patterns and trending topics. It generates a personalized 5-page content strategy report. "Imagine how much you would have to pay an agency to create that report every week," he said. "5,000 bucks? More? It costs me 40 cents."

We're witnessing a fundamental evolution: from Static SaaS (Database + GUI) to AI-Powered Apps (Database + GUI + System of AI Agents). The AI agents become the new layer that work on behalf of the user. 

Why This Makes Me Optimistic

First: The Resource Constraint Finally Disappears

Think of the last time you were in a product prioritization meeting. There's always a whiteboard covered with sticky notes representing features everyone agrees would be valuable, but there's never enough time or people to build them all. Look at the features requested on Discord servers, Slack groups, and Reddit communities of any major software platform—it quickly becomes clear that we're nowhere near solving all of the problems for all of the users.

When people don't have to spend time on click labor—updating CRMs, copying data between systems, sending status updates—we'll have bandwidth for exponentially more ambitious projects. The strategic thinking that's currently squeezed into Friday afternoons. The creative problem-solving that gets deprioritized because "we don't have capacity." The experiments we never run because someone would need to manually track the results.

Eliminating the schlep is just going to increase the number of things that companies are able to do. This point hits home if you've ever worked for a large company—the more layers that exist in an organization, the greater the schlep required to keep them functioning.

Second: Corporate Bureaucracy Gets a Solution

Anyone who's worked at a large company knows the schlep well: simple requests become email chains with twelve people CC'd. Projects that should take days stretch into months because of coordination overhead. Information gets lost between organizational layers not because people are incompetent, but because human-to-human coordination at scale is inherently complex.

AI agents can handle the mechanical aspects of coordination—the status updates, the data syncing, the follow-up reminders—freeing humans to focus on the decisions that actually require human judgment.

Here's a simple test: Ask any friend at a big company what percentage of their day goes toward value-creating activities versus administrative overhead. The answer may depress you.

Most people enjoy the core challenges of their role—problem-solving, creative thinking, meaningful collaboration. What they hate is the administrative schlep. When you remove the fear of job loss and ask what tasks they'd hand over to AI, almost everyone has a long list: data entry, status reporting, scheduling coordination, routine follow-ups.

The Mental Model Shift

I've been thinking for a while that the future of UX is no UX—that we're moving away from interfaces designed around human button-clicking toward systems that just get things done. When I shared this idea with Jacob, he immediately understood and built on it perfectly:

"That sounds abstract, but we all already have a mental model for this. We've all hired contractors, managed interns, worked with plumbers. We know how to delegate work to other people. That's exactly what working with AI agents will be like."

You become less of a systems operator and more of a systems architect. Less of an information processor and more of a decision maker.

Jacob's point: "Learning how to work with AI agents is not optional. Just like Excel was a foundational skill for the last 40 years of knowledge work, creating and working with AI agents will be a foundational skill for the next era."

The Real Promise

Jacob's company went from begging users for feedback meetings to having his calendar completely booked out. The transformation happened when they repositioned from "automation tool" to "build AI agents that work for you." Same product, different framing—but it tapped into what people actually wanted.

As Jacob told me: "AI agents are way underhyped right now. The world does not understand how much work is going to change once we get better at creating and adapting these things."

This isn't about humans becoming obsolete. It's about humans becoming more human—focusing on creativity, empathy, strategic thinking, and complex problem-solving, while machines handle the mechanical tasks that never required human intelligence in the first place.

The future of work isn't humans versus machines. It's humans and machines working together, with each focusing on what they do best. When we get this partnership right, work becomes more engaging, more productive, and more rewarding for everyone involved.

How much of your day is spent on valuable work versus busywork? What tasks would you hand over to an AI agent tomorrow if you could? 

Hit reply and let me know—I read every response and this conversation is shaping how I think about the future of work.

Collin 

PS - The full episode with Jacob drops on the podcast next week, but you can check out our conversation from 12 months ago to see how much has changed. Relay.app is absolutely taking off right now, and getting this behind-the-scenes look at a founder navigating the inflection point in real-time feels like a rare glimpse into how breakthrough moments actually happen.

PPS - Jacob shared a guide for automating the LinkedIn research he mentioned above, you can check it out here. This isn’t sponsored, I just think it’s awesome.

PPPS - any feedback on the pre-sale CTA? My publisher is getting on me about promoting it regularly so expect it to be a more regular occurrence. I’m trying to find ways of fulfilling their desire and keeping it fun for us. Hit me back with any ideas.

Last one - this post was inspired by Paul Graham’s Schlep Blindness post, go check it out if you haven’t read it before.