Chris S - The Next Rung

September 2026

Hope you have a plan B
What a LinkedIn pile-on on a Monday afternoon told me about who’s actually scared
 • Chris S - The Next Rung
Why certificates expire
Qualifications are becoming weaker signals every year while the capabilities they do not measure become priceless. A chapter for parents.
 • Chris S - The Next Rung
The Luddites were right about the mechanism
Skilled workers, four counties, twelve thousand troops sent to stop them. What 1811 teaches about now, and why the first AI riot will probably be…
 • Chris S - The Next Rung
The honest number only turned up when the bosses left the room
I sat with an agency team last week. No owners, no directors, nobody senior in the room, because I asked for it that way. Just the people who actually…
 • Chris S - The Next Rung
$2.5 million per employee
AI-native firms against traditional ones, and the two gasps that slide gets in boardrooms.
 • Chris S - The Next Rung
Adopting AI is buying the gym membership
Nearly nine in ten organisations use AI somewhere. The number that matters is 31 per cent of use cases are in full production, doubling annually.
 • Chris S - The Next Rung
Say they're lying
Assume the AI labs hit a wall and the pause talk is cover for a missed IPO. The career ladder still goes, and one part of it gets worse.
 • Chris S - The Next Rung
Fifteen hours of my own voice
How the book was rebuilt so every sentence traces to something I actually said, and why a book about AI displacement has to be able to prove that.
 • Chris S - The Next Rung
Aha, then uh-oh
The brief takes less than a minute to generate. Then the founder looks at the screen, looks at me, and says the thing.
 • Chris S - The Next Rung
I sit on three sides of this problem
I build the tools, I built the platform measuring what the tools cannot do, and I advise the owners deciding to use them. The conversations end the same…
 • Chris S - The Next Rung
The hire that never happens
Orca does not usually replace a role. It prevents one from being hired, which is harder to measure and easier to ignore.
 • Chris S - The Next Rung
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