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Bill Gurley: people who don’t love their jobs are most at risk of losing them to AI

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Passion could be the best defense against AI taking your job, Bill Gurley says.

“The people that are most at risk are the ones that are sitting idly in the job and don’t really have a why or a purpose for it,” the legendary venture capitalist said during the latest episode of the “On with Kara Swisher” podcast.

“I think a lot of the people that go through that college conveyor belt, that are chasing a safe job, that end up working as a widget or a cog in an industry they may not love — I think they are ripe for disruption,” he added.

Advances in AI have spurred numerous high-profile companies to slow hiring or make layoffs in anticipation of cheaper, more productive digital workers replacing human ones.

Technology giants such as Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet are also spending hundreds of billions of dollars to build AI infrastructure, fueling widespread concerns of future job losses.

Gurley is a general partner at Benchmark who’s known for placing early bets on businesses such as Uber, Nextdoor, OpenTable, and Zillow.

He recently published a book titled “Runnin’ Down a Dream: How to Thrive in a Career You Actually Love.”

The veteran investor said on the podcast that young people should choose careers they enjoy and care about. Warren Buffett, who famously “tap dances to work” at Berkshire Hathaway, has long offered similar advice.

“For people that are in a job they love, the honing’s free,” Gurley said. He explained that when someone is passionate about what they do, they don’t need to set aside time or convince themselves to polish their skills and knowledge; they naturally prioritize improvemen and feel energized by the process.

“It really becomes an unfair advantage in almost any industry if you’re that person because you’re learning constantly,” Gurley said.

One key thing they should learn is how to harness AI to bolster their efforts, he said.

“Be the most AI aware person in your job,” Gurley said. “And you’re going to then be the last person that they want to get rid of.”

Gurley compared AI to “jet fuel” that can expand a worker’s capabilities. Employees can now learn more quickly and thoroughly than ever before, he said, so if they’re focusing their learning on AI, they’re “going to have even better chance of winning,” he added.




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Skeptical of the ‘SaaSpocalypse’? Bill Gurley says you should channel your inner Warren Buffett and strike

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Bill Gurley has some suggestions on how you might invest in the so-called SaaSpocalypse if you believe the companies still have value.

Software-as-a-Service stocks have stumbled to start 2026. Investors worry that new AI generative tools — particularly Claude Code’s latest app-building update — could become direct competitors with legacy SaaS giants like Salesforce, Atlassian, and DocuSign.

Appearing on CNBC’s Squawk Box, Gurley, the longtime Benchmark general partner, acknowledged the concerns and compared it to another disruptive moment in tech.

“Right after Facebook went public, there was a concern about this mobile transition, and their stock went from $42 to like $18. That was fear of a technology disruption,” he said.

Still, Gurley emphasized that today’s SaaS fears feel unusually widespread.

“I’ve never seen a disruption that had this much anxiety and go across so many companies,” he said.

Yet he noted that even AI-native companies aren’t abandoning traditional software vendors. Anthropic, which makes the Claude chatbot, uses tools from Workday and Salesforce, he said.

“They’re paying for these things,” he said.

If the stocks continue to fall, Gurley suggested that investors who believe in the SaaS companies channel Warren Buffett, who has long argued that moments of panic are the perfect time to buy.

“You shouldn’t be blogging about what’s wrong with the prices,” he said. “You should be quiet and picking them up off the floor.”

He’s worried about circular investment


A person walks on a pathway toward AMD's glass-filled offices. There is a gray sign outside that says the company's name

AMD and Meta just announced a deal on Tuesday morning. Gurley said he is worried about the deal’s structure.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images



Gurley expressed concern about the increasing circularity of deals between AI companies and the firms building their massive physical infrastructure.

“This is a little bit odd that we got started this way from the very beginning,” he said, referring to early transactions between Microsoft and OpenAI that involved cloud credits flowing back into Microsoft’s Azure business.

There’s a fresh example of intertwined AI and infrastructure agreements on Tuesday morning: Meta and Advanced Micro Devices announced a deal in which Meta would buy six gigawatts of computing power from the chipmaker.

The arrangement could also result in Meta owning up to 10% of AMD’s stock.

Gurley said he once described similar AI and infrastructure deal structures to ChatGPT without naming the companies involved.

“It spit out words like Enron and WorldCom,” he said. “All I did was describe the structure of the deals. I didn’t say which companies they were.”

Gurley said he doesn’t think regulators will step in to fix the circularity issue.

“When it comes undone — and it will come undone one day for reasons we can talk about — I think people are going to point these things and say they shouldn’t have existed,” he said.

AI as ‘jet fuel’

For workers worried about AI’s impact on their jobs, Gurley was far more optimistic.

He called AI “jet fuel” for people passionate about their work (something he has also said on X), and argued that the tools can dramatically accelerate skills and productivity.

“You can learn faster than you could have ever learned at any point in history right now,” he said. “You can fire this thing up and get it on your side.”

Even in an era of sweeping technological disruption, Gurley said he wouldn’t choose a different path if he had to start all over again.

“If we lived in a society where all jobs paid the same, I would have still done venture capital,” he said. “I just had so much fun being a part of it.”

Gurley didn’t respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.




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Americans are living in a ‘career industrial complex.’ Venture capitalist Bill Gurley explains how to break out and find your dream job.

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A top Silicon Valley investor has an antidote for “quiet quitting.”

Bill Gurley is a general partner at venture capitalist firm Benchmark and the author of “Runnin’ Down a Dream, How to Thrive in a Career You Actually Love.” Gurley told Neal Freyman and Toby Howell on the “Morning Brew Daily” podcast that aired on Sunday that it is “horrific” how some people are actively disengaged at work, but the heart of the matter is that people “aren’t ending up in the right place.”

“We developed this mindset where you push kids toward economic safety — doctors, lawyers, jobs where unemployment is low, and salaries are high,” said Gurley. “But we’ve pushed a lot of kids into what I call the ‘career industrial complex.'”

Gurley said that the “career industrial complex” means pushing children toward a “résumé arms race” of standardization and credential accumulation, rather than encouraging curiosity and exploration.

A simple test as to whether you would be successful in your dream job, said Gurley, is whether you would be willing to learn on your own time.

“I like to say, you know, if you have three episodes of Breaking Bad left, would you study this instead?” said Gurley. “Like, does it compete with what you do in your free time?”

Gurley added that he once did a survey where he asked 10,000 people if they would choose a different career if given the chance to go back in time, and 60% said yes.

Gurley’s comments came as workplace trends such as “job hugging” and “quiet cracking” emerged in 2025.

While workers feared layoffs and the prospects of landing new roles dimmed for many young professionals.

A Gallup poll done in 2024 found that employee engagement in the US fell to its lowest level in a decade, with only 31% of employees feeling engaged. Additionally, workers under the age of 35 are less engaged compared to other age groups.




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