The typical American plan to study for 22 years and work for 40 ‘is broken,’ VC CEO says. Thanks to AI, employees can’t coast after graduation anymore

Top consulting and venture capital leaders say the idea learning ends after college is outdated in today’s AI-driven economy.

While many assume formal learning is limited to a bachelor’s or master’s degree, both the CEO of VC firm General Catalyst, Hemant Taneja, and McKinsey’s top executive, Bob Sternfels, say that’s not the case anymore.

Employees must skill and re-skill constantly to stay afloat, said Taneja, whose VC firm has invested in companies such as Anduril and Anthropic. Taneja discussed this during  a live taping of the All-In podcast, hosted by entrepreneur and investor Jason Calacanis Tuesday at CES 2026, a massive annual tech trade show in Las Vegas.

“This idea that we spend 22 years learning and then 40 years working is broken,” Taneja said.

Yet, in a workplace where AI agents can be trained quicker than employees, workers don’t only need knowledge, they must find ways to stay relevant, said host Calacanis, who himself made early investments in trading app Robinhood and Uber.

“You’re going to have to show chutzpah, drive, passion,” he said.

McKinsey’s global managing partner, Sternfels, said he’s seen first-hand how AI is transforming the workplace. McKinsey has used the tech to grow client-facing consultant roles by 25%, simultaneously cut the same number of jobs in non-client-facing roles, all the while increasing its output 10% overall.

McKinsey will have just as many AI agents as it has human employees by the end of the year, Sternfels said. Currently, its human employees outnumber AI agents 40,000 to 25,000.

“Our model has always been synonymous that growth only occurs with total head count growth. Now it’s actually splitting,” Sternfels said. “We can grow in this part, the client-facing side, and we can shrink in this part and have aggregate growth in total.” 

AI job anxiety

McKinsey’s stark results from incorporating AI agents play to the heart of workers’ fear about how AI will disrupt their jobs as adoption increases. Some could argue young workers have a right to worry. 

A study by the Stanford University Digital Economy Lab in November found early career workers between the ages of 22 to 25 in occupations at most risk of disruption have experienced a 13% relative decline in employment levels since 2022, when OpenAI released ChatGPT. Another study by Gallup from last year found 37% of workers claimed their workplace had implemented AI.

As Sternfels and Taneja said, the added pressure of AI means learning and evolving is more essential than ever. Yet, some have pushed back on the idea that more AI means entry-level workers don’t matter.

Despite the increased push by Amazon CEO Andy Jassy to implement AI at the company, Matt Garman, the CEO of subsidiary Amazon Web Services, has repeatedly said entry-level workers are essential to a healthy organization. Without entry-level workers, “you have no talent pipeline,” Garman told Wired.

Thus, replacing entry-level workers with AI is “one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard,” Garman said on the Matthew Berman podcast last year.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com