The other half of the commute included a 30-minute walk from the ferry building to Bryant Street, the kind of city walking that requires purse sneakers. Purposefully paced steps avoid landmines that litter the sidewalk. I learned how to accurately differentiate human and animal feces from this ritual. The glamorous ferry to the gritty sidewalk clearly juxtaposes the haves and have nothings.

At the time, I was working at education technology unicorn Degreed, my first foray into startups. I was hired to launch the first iteration of their skills product. The pitch went like this:

Executives need to know if employees possess the skills to meet company objectives in an ever-faster-changing future. CEOs sensed global growth was set to stall and the lack of key job skills was a top 3 threat in reaching new revenue opportunities according to PWC’s 22nd Annual Global CEO Survey in 2019. Skills-to-jobs-based learning was inevitable because the time it took to build skills and how fast businesses needed them was accelerating. The message was to stop guessing and start measuring. For the most forward-thinking clients, we’d forecast a future where people weren’t on the liability side of the balance sheet, but the asset side. If employees’ skills could be measured, they mattered.

Employees care about skills, too. They want to understand the path for them to advance at the company. How does the Business Analyst of today become the Artificial Intelligence Specialist of tomorrow? Yes, the pitch slides literally read “Artificial Intelligence Specialist” way back in 2018. Skills give employees quantified terms to talk about their capabilities and contributions.

Employees: Assets or liabilities?

In the broader jobs landscape, the definition of employee was being actively litigated. In April 2018, California’s Supreme Court unanimously ruled the same-day delivery service Dynamex misclassified employees as independent contractors, depriving workers of wage protections. Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and Instacart were caught up in the mix, spending $230 million on collective lobbying to pass California’s Proposition 22 in November 2020, earning an industry-specific exemption from the state law.

Employment law creates incentives for businesses to misclassify independent contractors in order to avoid paying into Social Security, workers’ compensation, unemployment insurance, payroll taxes, and employment taxes that typically cost employers 10 to 15% of wages. When adding benefits like health care, paid time off and retirement benefits, these costs balloon to 130-150% of wages. When I managed a $40 million P&L at a Fortune 100 firm, we used a 40 percent adder as our standard benefits cost forecast. That means a full-time employee with a $40,000 annual salary came with an additional $16,000 in annual costs, logged to the benefits expenses chart of accounts. Liabilities, not assets.

Meanwhile, futurists were forecasting a similar shift. A landmark study commissioned by Upwork and the Freelancers Union forecasted that 50% of the total US workforce would be contractors by 2027. MBO Partners made similar projections, calling for the continuation of what demographer and sociologist William Frey coined as the “barbell effect”: growth at the high-end and low-end of the wealth spectrum. The weighted ends of the barbell represent low-wage service work and high-ticket freelancers, consultants, strategists and AI orchestrators with the middle layer left hollow. So how do we fill it?

The most essential job skill of the future is creating your own job

With 2027 looming, a few voices are sounding the alarm about job loss AI can create if left unchecked. Bill Gates has been making his rounds with The New York Times and The Atlantic, critiquing tech leaders for downplaying the risks of AI, especially with regard to bioterrorism, cybersecurity and social engineering. In his personal Gates Notes memo, Bill Gates also called for a more explicit connection of planetary health and human health to generate collaboration in containing the climate crisis. Bro seriously needs to stop copying me; I’ve been saying the jobs thing since 2018 and the planetary health meets human health one since 2021. Subscribe already, my guy.

Anthropic founder Dario Amodei is also among the few willing to speak about job loss and AI on the record. In his interview with Axios in May 2025, he said he was speaking out in hopes of jarring other AI leaders and government officials to action. In his January 2026 essay, “The Adolescence of Technology,” he forecasts AI displacing 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs, spiking unemployment to 10-20% by 2027. Among other risks, he foresees how Anthropic as a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC) wrapped in a Long-Term Benefit Trust (LTBT) attempts to build safety into their corporate structure.

Despite these warnings, legislators remain asleep at the wheel, with the 119th Congress on track to be the least productive Congress in history, passing only 102 laws as of Sept. 1, 2026. With four months left in the term, that’s less than half the number of laws enacted by the 118th Congress which passed 209 laws and held the least productive spot until this session.

So while they’re sleeping, I hope you aren’t. The job skill of the future is creating your own job.

Three ways to play

Here are three things you can do to start exploring how to build your own career path through ownership or entrepreneurship:

• Inches (Interpersonal): Determining the business you want to start or acquire begins with knowing yourself. My company, Downland helps beginners start farms and established ones find successors, matched on their goals and values. If you want to take our values assessment, join the waitlist here.

• Feet (Local): Author and economist Angela Duckworth wrote about the necessity of a network in a recent guest opinion essay in The New York Times titled “I Study Successful People. They Have One Habit in Common” about the power of your network to get things done. Start networking in your community to find gaps that exist and where your skills can fill them. Try meeting with folks in an industry you’ve never encountered, or volunteering in new sectors. Attending a few city council meetings will show what they are investing in creating locally.

• Miles (Provincial & Beyond): Three primary strategies have been tested to address job losses more broadly. Learn about them and form a perspective to help you advocate and navigate: (1) Opportunity Zones focus on capital allocation, (2) Federal Jobs Guarantee Development Act focuses on job creation, and (3) Universal Basic Income focuses on poverty alleviation.

The conversation start…

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That lightbulb moment is exactly why Build Team exists.

While everyone else is doom-scrolling through climate headlines, we’re building. We’re the ones who see a broken food system and think, “What if we could fix this and make money doing it?” We’re connecting the dots between soil health and startup opportunities, between carbon sequestration and cash flow.

Build Team is Chaotic Natural’s insider tier for the builders, the entrepreneurs, and the beautifully chaotic souls who refuse to choose between profit and planet. Every month, you’ll get exclusive access to the climate, food, and ag insights that most people won’t hear about for another six months. We’re talking founder interviews, investment trends, technology deep-dives, and the kind of market analysis that helps you spot opportunities before they’re obvious.

This isn’t your typical sustainability newsletter filled with feel-good fluff. This is intel for people who want to roll up their sleeves and build the businesses our changing world desperately needs. From vertical farms to carbon marketplaces, from food waste solutions to regenerative ranch management tools—if it’s solving real problems in the food and climate space, we’re covering it.

Because here’s what I’ve learned after years in this space: The most effective climate action happens when brilliant people build profitable solutions to urgent problems. The future of food isn’t just about growing better tomatoes—it’s about creating entire ecosystems of businesses that make healthy, sustainable food the easy choice for everyone.

Ready to turn your climate anxiety into climate opportunity? Let’s build something together.

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1. Happy Earth Day! Take a moment of gratitude for all nature provides you today.

2. Downland is in the final days of its crowdfund. Folks around the world can invest starting at $100. Learn mo…

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1. My company Downland was recognized by Rabobank in its 2024 End of Year Report for sustainable business models. Read the full press release here.

2. Downland joined Kroger Health, University …

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But then it gets light again.

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