- In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady talks to Cloudera CEO Charles Sansbury about remote work and Gen-Z.
- The big story: Trump wants Gaza.
- The markets: The S&P 500 is back above 6,000.
- Analyst notes from Goldman Sachs, Convera, and Wedbush.
- Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
Good morning. Now that Mexico and Canada have a temporary reprieve on tariffs—Sorry, China!—let’s talk about jobs. U.S. job openings hit a three-month low in December. Fewer layoffs means that those who have jobs may feel more secure. The challenge is creating jobs for young people, whose unemployment rate is more than double the national average. With the pressure on businesses to deploy AI for significant productivity gains, the people likely to suffer most are those in entry-level jobs where one develops the soft skills that are relatively immune to AI.
I’m a better journalist today than I was when I started in my early twenties. I still remember the pause after asking an analyst to define ‘P/E ratio’ when reporting on the Hong Kong stock market. But that’s how we learn and grow. We gain mentors and experiences that enable us to become leaders ourselves. But among leaders I talk to there’s a nagging fear. Are employers creating on-ramps for the next generation of leaders in this era of AI? Are they designing career paths to develop skills and experiences that won’t be displaced by technology?
I spoke earlier this week with Charles Sansbury, CEO of Cloudera, a Santa Clara, California-based enterprise software company that went private in a $5.3 billion deal four years ago. He’s worried about Gen Z. In addition to coming of age in a time of seismic technology shifts, many started their careers during the pandemic when the workplace was redesigned around workers, allowing for flexibility that shaped expectations in a way that can sabotage early careers. One danger with remote work, in his view, is that “you effectively become a faceless factor of production” and risk “not building a sense of community or long-term skill sets.” The more invisible the worker, the weaker the connection and the easier it is to sever that connection when there are jobs to cut.
Sansbury encourages all of his 3,000-plus employees to get into the office as often as possible to establish those connections and community. He also believes it’s important to create a learning culture in this time of rapid change as the path to promotion and success is less clear.
“There’s kind of an air pocket right now for this current generation, where they’re coming to what should be a formative phase of their careers without the kind of certainty that ‘if I do this now, it will pay me benefits in three or six years.’”
The same could be said for employers, as internships and entry-level employees help create a mentoring culture that no digital agent is likely to match.
More news below.
Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady, diane.brady@fortune.com, LinkedIn.
