11 Nov 2025

Episode 0: We Changed Our Name Because "Orchestration" Implies Someone's In Control

Hello, Doers, Builders, and Shapers of tomorrow—welcome to Workestration.

If you've been here since the beginning, you know us as "Internet of People." We started exploring the future of work when Web3 was all the rage. Then 2022 happened. ChatGPT dropped. And suddenly, the timeline for "the future of work" compressed from "someday" to "next quarter."

So we're doing what any reasonable podcast would do: changing our name and leaning into the chaos.

Why "Workestration"? (Because Nobody's Actually Orchestrating Anything)

"Orchestration" implies someone's conducting from a podium, everyone's reading the same sheet music, and the performance goes as planned.

What we're actually seeing? Jazz improv with occasionally questionable solos.

Workestration is the messy, active verb of making this transition work in real time. It's not polite. It's not planned. And it's definitely not waiting for permission.

What We're Actually Trying to Do Here

The Workestration podcast explores three fundamental questions:

Where is work and technology headed, and what forces are driving these changes?
How can we make work better—more equitable, more sustainable, more human?
What concrete steps can we take to navigate this transition and create a future that works for everyone?

We're not claiming to have all the answers. We're asking better questions and bringing together the people who might actually know something: Doers (HR pros, leaders in the trenches), Builders (entrepreneurs, consultants creating new models), and Shapers (economists, ethicists, technologists with the big-picture view).

Our goal? Tangible insights. Real conversations. Making work better along the way—even when we're wrong about the predictions.

What's Happening Right Now (While You're Reading This)

Team Human: Politicians Are Finally Paying Attention

Sen. Mark Kelly just released his "AI for America" plan, proposing an AI Horizon Fund—paid for by tech companies—to support union-led apprenticeships and coordinate worker retraining.

His quote says it all: "We do not want to find ourselves in a situation where there are 10 million people that lost their jobs through AI and they don't have a good option. That's not good for anyone."

Meanwhile, Republicans are taking a different approach. Sen. Ted Cruz's AI SANDBOX Act wants to give developers space to test AI "without being held back by outdated or inflexible federal rules." He's also working to kill state-level AI regulation entirely.

So we've got one side building safety nets and the other clearing the runway. Fun times.

OpenAI dropped Sora on September 30th—the first social platform where everything is AI-generated content. It's wild. It's fun. It's also a glimpse into a very strange future.

Oh, and if the U.S. government shuts down? The Bureau of Labor Statistics halts operations, delaying jobs and CPI data. Because nothing says "stable economic planning" like not knowing what's actually happening in the labor market.

The Career Ladder Is Missing Its Bottom Rungs

Here's the data that should keep you up at night:

Klarna replaced 700 customer service jobs with AI in February 2024[1]
Entry-level white-collar job postings are down 8% year-over-year while senior roles stay flat[2]
Junior positions in software, marketing, and finance are getting hammered

This isn't just automation. It's the career ladder losing its bottom rungs.

The uncomfortable question: If companies won't hire juniors because AI is "good enough," where do future senior people come from?

Everyone's Delayering, But Nobody Mentions the Cognitive Overload

Meta, Amazon, Google—all cutting middle management 10-15% since 2023[3]. The average large company had 9 management layers in 2000. Now it's 7[4].

Flatter organizations sound great on paper. Until you realize the cognitive load on remaining managers just tripled. AI tools promise to help manage the workload. But do they? Or are we just adding "manage the AI that replaced your reports" to an already impossible job description?

What You Can Expect from This Podcast

Real pilots. Actual metrics. Honest failures.

We're not here to make confident predictions about 2030. We're here to help you survive in 2025.

Each episode brings together different perspectives to translate between the people doing the work, building the tools, and shaping the policies. We'll tackle the hard questions, challenge conventional wisdom, and maybe admit when we don't know the answer.

Because here's a secret: Nobody has this figured out yet. But together, we might have enough pieces to see the picture.

We Need Your Stories

Send us your pilots, your policy drafts, your nightmare implementation stories. Tell us about the people we should interview and the topics we need to tackle.

Specifically:

What AI tools are your teams actually using (not just buying)?
What entry-level work disappeared? What replaced it?
What management assumptions broke when you went flatter?
Who should we be talking to?

Where to send: stela@workestration.ai or donna@workestration.ai

Or hit us up through our website. We're building this conversation together—and we need your field reports from the front lines.

Who gets to shape the world of work and how?

Will it be the tech companies moving fast and breaking things? The policymakers trying to build safety nets? The workers demanding a seat at the table? The managers drowning in cognitive overload? We can learn this all together.

Ready to Make Some Music?

Rehearsal's over. The performance has already started. The only question is whether you're conducting, playing along, or still reading the program notes.

Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes drop when... we manage to do it (we still have jobs and projects)

That's your sheet music. Now go orchestrate.

Want to join the conversation? Email us at stela@workestration.ai or donna@workestration.ai. Find more resources and research at workestration.ai.