“The org chart was built in the industrial age to bring order, predictability, and stability to rapidly growing organizations,” says Raman, LinkedIn’s chief economic opportunity officer and co-author of a new book on the future of work. “Companies need to let that go, as it’s going to hold back innovation.”
Instead of waiting for top-down transformation programs, Raman argues, executives will need to get comfortable with workers figuring out AI on their own, even if those experiments cut across departments and job descriptions. “Where you’re going to see the real returns on AI isn’t just a new workflow around AI, but rather new work around human capability,” he says.
Raman, a former CNN war correspondent and Obama speechwriter, is the co-author of Open to Work: How to Get Ahead in the Age of AI, alongside Linkedin CEO Ryan Roslansky. The book draws on LinkedIn data and case studies of early adopters to offer what he calls a “how-to-human-with-AI” playbook that tries to counter the “fatalism” that dominates most conversations about AI’s effect on employment.
He urges workers to think about their work, and how AI relates to it, in three categories. The first bucket covers activities AI already does today, like generating code, running quick analyses, or writing a first draft to inspire someone else’s writing. The second bucket are experiments to create something new with AI. The final bucket involves using the time saved from the first bucket, and the lessons learned from the second bucket, to start using AI as a group. “What are you doing with other people?” he asks.
“It’s going to be a worker-led transition, and so companies are going to have to figure out how to let individuals start to move into this new era in their day-to-day work,” Raman says. “We have more autonomy than we often think in terms of pushing for what we want to do that might push our work to the next level.”
LinkedIn is in the middle of a pivot to what it calls a “skills-first approach” to hiring and employment. In theory, employers are looking for specific skills and capabilities—and proof that potential hires have those skills—instead of just looking at a list of job titles on a resume. LinkedIn is also integrating AI into its own product, such as a new AI agent to help with hiring.
Raman, for his part, thinks computer science isn’t obsolete. Instead, employers need to look at the broader skills a degree like computer science provides. “A computer science degree doesn’t just teach coding alone. It teaches complex thinking, organizational design, and structures of systems” he points out.
“There’s a hunger in Asia, not just among companies but also among workers, to learn about these tools and put them to use,” Raman says. “There’s an entrepreneurial culture in a lot of countries in Asia.”
Still, Raman is sympathetic to workers concerned about automation. “There was a career ladder, and there was extreme clarity about what you had to do to get on each rung of that ladder,” he says.
But he’s optimistic that, ultimately, employees will be better off as AI starts to dismantle the ways companies traditionally organize and reward their talent. “Very few people have ever had real control over their career,” he says. “Because of AI, I think we’re about to have the first generations at work that have more control over their career than any who’ve come before.”
But what if someone doesn’t want to be an innovator at their job? What if someone wants to do their responsibilities and earn a stable wage?
Raman’s answer to those people is direct: “Nobody is coming to save any individual but themselves.”
Change is coming, like it or not. “It’s just a question of when this change hits you, and how hard it hits you,” he says.
