This is not about a 14-hour work day, or working for 70-hours a week. Reid Hoffman, the co-founder and executive chairman of LinkedIn, has made a startling prediction that the traditional 9 to 5 job will vanish by 2034. But unlike other bold claims that people keep making, this is not just another dystopian, or even utopian, proclamation.
“You may not only work at different companies, you might work in different industries,” said Hoffman, adding that people may stop working like employees and begin working in a gig economy.
The ‘Gig Economy Revolution’, Hoffman believes, will be more significant than anticipated. According to his prediction, within the next decade, 50% of the population will become freelancers and earn more while working for “3 or 4 gigs”, than those working in traditional employment,
Though this might create a lot of opportunities, it could create a lot of instability as well, which Hoffman said people would not necessarily like. “One of the challenges would be how do we minimise the uncertainty and increase the stability, while continuing to have the opportunities, productivity, and flexibility,” said Hoffman.
Notably, Hoffman’s previous predictions have been accurate. In 1997, he foresaw the emergence of social media and its transformative impact on the world, anticipated the sharing economy (as an early investor in Airbnb), and predicted the AI revolution before the advent of ChatGPT.
The Future is About Results, Not Hours
Not just this, Hoffman has also predicted the imminent decline of traditional office headquarters, noting that this shift is occurring more rapidly than anticipated. He expects office space costs to drop by 40% by 2034 as more companies move to a fully online presence without physical offices.
According to him, the future of work will be both hyper-local and global at the same time. However, he emphasised that the disappearance of 9 to 5 jobs is not a threat but an opportunity to redefine success. He added that the future will favour those who are adaptable.
This is similar to what AIM said earlier about there being jobs for ten times the developers. Contrary to popular belief, the tech job market is booming with a high demand for specific skills. All developers have to do is move beyond being “generic software engineers.”
This is applicable for every field. With the help of AI, people will be able to do multiple jobs at once and even become overemployed. This isn’t uncommon as it is, as several employees already moonlight in addition to their regular day jobs. But in the future, it will constitute a major part of the economy.
Since everyone has the free time to engage in a certain amount of creative jobs at their workplaces, such as creation of art, music, and other such pursuits using AI tools, the question about how much time it takes to do some work would be eliminated. All people would focus on is the end result rather than the time it takes.
More Businesses?
Moreover, another prediction is that by 2034, one in three professionals will operate multiple micro-businesses. The passion economy will give rise to unexpected millionaires. This could also possibly give rise to the first billion dollar business built by one person with the help of AI.
“Do you think it’s finally possible for a one-person billion dollar startup?” asked Ben Horowitz to Marc Andreessen. “You could put a whole bunch of things in this bucket…it’s the inherent scalability of software and the internet but you could also put AI,” Andreessen responded, adding that you could also do it using a lot of work getting outsourced.
Andreessen said that it is possible that super geniuses in the coming 20 years would be able to crack this using just AI and Copilots. Horowitz added, “the internet is actually probably in some ways a bigger breakthrough than AI,” while also saying that we might see a few companies like these crop up soon.
This conversation is similar to what Sam Altman said in an interview. “We’re going to see 10-person companies with billion-dollar valuations pretty soon…in my little group chat with my tech CEO friends, there’s this betting pool for the first year there is a one-person billion-dollar company, which would’ve been unimaginable without AI. And now [it] will happen.”
So it is likely people will stop working at companies and, instead, start creating their own businesses soon. Not working 9 to 5 jobs, but a lot more jobs beyond the regular 9 to 5.
