Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said the bank could hire fewer new employees over the next few years as AI reshapes operations.
But don’t call this an employment apocalypse.
In an interview on Bloomberg’s “Odd Lots” podcast published Thursday, Solomon said Goldman’s off-campus hiring could “shrink a little bit” over the next three years. Still, he predicts the company will continue to hire thousands of interns and graduates.
“We’ll probably see some subtle changes over the next few years that will reduce the number of people participating in the first place to some degree, but probably not what you or I would call dramatic,” he said. “We will continue to hire many non-academics.”
Mr. Solomon said Goldman is hiring an estimated 2,400 to 2,500 interns this year. He added that the company has been hiring a similar number of new full-time employees since July. This is roughly in line with pre-pandemic levels, but is below the more than 3,000 people it hired in 2021, it added.
Asked how Goldman’s new hire mix has changed since the pre-ChatGPT days, Mr. Solomon said the firm has seen “subtle, nuanced changes.” He said the company has placed more emphasis on recruiting engineering talent over the past decade, and that mix is likely to change again “given the power of these tools and coding capabilities.”
The comments come as concerns about the impact of AI on jobs have sparked mixed reactions across the industry.
In Silicon Valley, AI leaders like Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei are warning that entry-level workers could be weeded out. Leaders in other industries, however, think this existential warning is more nuanced. Torsten Slok, Apollo’s chief economist, wrote that there is “zero evidence” that AI is driving layoffs, and Andrew McDonald, Uber’s chief operating officer, said it is becoming increasingly difficult to justify the amount of money needed to automate jobs with AI.
Solomon, who argued in a New York Times op-ed in late May that the AI employment apocalypse is overblown, is firmly in the latter camp.
Solomon said in the podcast that the bigger challenge is figuring out how to train young workers now that AI can instantly provide answers that once required hours of tedious work.
He recalled starting his career as a banker at a time when there were no digital tracking devices that measured stock prices minute by minute. To compare stock performance, he said, he looked at microfiche, pulled prices from the Wall Street Journal, drew graphs on graph paper and did the calculations by hand.
Although it took time, he said he was able to develop useful critical thinking skills.
“Now you can ask for it and get it,” he said. “Is your brain really able to absorb what is actually happening?”
Operating in a world where entry-level interns have answers at their fingertips means Goldman needs to rethink its skills training, Solomon said.
Still, his advice for young bankers in the age of AI was clearly outdated. It was “pick up the phone and talk to people.”
“A phone call with someone is 10 times more valuable than a text message or email,” Solomon said. “My daughter says it’s an unverified statistic, and I know that to be true.”
Goldman did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.