Chris Simmance
|
August 4, 2026
A.I. Won't Take Your Job, It'll Take Your Promotion

The Bank of England is wargaming what happens if 500,000 knowledge workers can't pay their mortgages. Chris Simmance, founder of AI orchestration platform Orca and author of "The Next Rung," explains why this isn't a distant hypothetical - it's already happening, one graduate role at a time. In this conversation, Chris breaks down why A.I. isn't just boosting productivity, it's quietly dissolving the bottom rung of the career ladder entirely, and why the fallout could be worse than 2008.

The Guest

Founder | Orca

Chris Simmance founded Orca, an AI orchestration platform that unifies a founder's calendar, inbox, CRM, and research into a single operational workflow. He personally designed, built, and maintains every integration in the product, and uses it to run multiple businesses simultaneously.

Director | The OMG Center

Chris directs The OMG Center, an organization supporting digital agency leaders through coaching and mentorship on growth, leadership, and operations. He is known within the agency world as "The Agency Coach," having conducted extensive interviews and advisory sessions with agency founders and CEOs.

Co-founder | Huxley Advisory

Chris co-founded Huxley Advisory, running it alongside his other ventures as part of a portfolio of businesses he operates using AI-augmented systems. His work across these organizations centers on applying AI orchestration to real operational bottlenecks rather than theoretical use cases.

Author | "The Next Rung: Why AI Is Breaking the Career Ladder"

Chris is the author of "The Next Rung," a book examining how AI is dismantling the traditional career ladder for knowledge workers, from entry-level roles upward. The book, slated for publication in January 2027, is built on his firsthand experience building AI systems that automate the same entry- and mid-level work he argues is disappearing.

15+ Year Digital Marketing & Agency Leadership Veteran

Chris built and exited a digital marketing agency before spending over 15 years scaling agencies and leading teams across the industry. His background spans agency management, EdTech, and hands-on AI systems development.
The Interview

AI Job Displacement | Chris Simmance explains why AI's 80% competence in white-collar tasks is already reshaping how many people companies need to employ.

Orchestration Layer Explained | Chris breaks down the difference between physical labor, knowledge shuttling, and the orchestration roles now most exposed to AI replacement.

Data Analyst Dilemma | Chris unpacks whether AI makes data analysts more valuable or economically unnecessary, and why the answer depends on business demand, not skill.

Vanishing Career Ladder | Chris describes how graduate hiring cuts at major firms are quietly eliminating the bottom rung of professional career paths.

The Next Rung | Chris discusses his upcoming book and why, unlike past labor shifts, there may be no new career tier waiting to absorb displaced workers.

Economic Collapse Scenarios | Chris outlines three possible futures for an AI-disrupted economy, from neo-feudalism to a fundamental redefinition of work itself.

Advice For Young Workers | Chris shares his honest guidance for students and early-career professionals navigating a job market being reshaped by AI.

Chris's Daily AI Workflow | Chris walks through the Claude-based skills and tools he uses every day to run pattern recognition and business intelligence.

Multi-Agent AI Systems | Chris explains how specialized AI agents that check each other's work solve real business problems faster and more reliably than a single model.

AI Consciousness Debate | Chris weighs in on whether AI could ever become sentient, and reflects on what that would mean for humanity.

Listen On Spotify
The Show Notes

00:00 - 04:10 | AI Orchestration Is Reshaping Business Structure

04:10 - 08:20 | Knowledge Workers Face Mass Job Disruption

08:20 - 12:30 | Are Data Analysts Obsolete Or Essential

12:30 - 16:40 | The Corporate Career Ladder Is Vanishing

16:40 - 20:50 | Why The Next Rung Doesn't Exist

20:50 - 25:00 | Three Futures For An AI Economy

25:00 - 29:10 | Career Advice For The AI Generation

29:10 - 33:20 | Inside Chris Simmance's Daily AI Stack

33:20 - 37:30 | Building AI Agents That Check Agents

37:30 - 41:48 | Persistent Memory And The Question Of Consciousness

The Links
Website:
thenextrung.co
Linked In:
https://uk.linkedin.com/in/chris-simmance
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/7w1NtHFOzN6uAuC9pjD7oy?si=X-PTbcKvR0ShwgDUqNB2wg
  • "That's worse than 2008 as a financial crisis."
  • "So, in the UK, the Bank of England is running like wargaming on what would happen if 500,000 knowledge workers in the UK couldn't pay their mortgages."
  • "Now, if you've got no juniors, how do you ever have seniors?"
  • "KPMG have dropped a third of their graduate roles in the UK."
  • "It's almost certainly not going to be a paralegal in a legal firm aiming to be a lawyer in a few years, that kind of thing, because the role just won't exist as it stands right now."
  • "So you need to be the person that sells the thinking and not the doing."
  • "We're doomed if it thinks it's helping and by helping it gets us out of the way."
  • "I don't think consciousness and awakeness is connected to how much compute you can have and how much reasoning you can do."
  • "For $79 a month, you're there tomorrow."
  • "So we're talking about a job category change."
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