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At first, AI was a scapegoat. It was the reason Mark Quinn was laid off from his role as vice president of operations and responsible AI at DeepScribe<\/a>, a Silicon Valley startup focused on automating medical documentation for doctors.\u00a0<\/p>\n When Quinn joined DeepScribe after a four-year stint at Waymo, his goal was to build and run a 3,000-person supervisory organization for the startup\u2019s AI. His team would watch, train and help collect data to build AI, overseeing a system that listened to doctor-patient conversations and converted them into medical records.\u00a0<\/p>\n He signed on in October 2022. Within months, the ground shifted. ChatGPT came out in November 2022, and by March 2023, GPT-4 marked a major leap forward in computing.<\/p>\n That leap was devastating to the operation he was hired to scale.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt took us about a month to realize that it essentially made the operation I was building out almost moot, almost completely redundant,\u201d Quinn says in a new interview with Entrepreneur<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Quinn tried to pivot inside the company, but the writing was on the wall. He was laid off in early 2024; he says he and the company \u201cmutually agreed\u201d it was time to part ways.<\/p>\n The layoff wasn\u2019t an abstract \u201cAI disruption.\u201d It was personal; it was his organization, his career, his identity as an operations leader. \u201cFrom there, it was an epiphanic existential wake-up call,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n The most striking chapter in Quinn\u2019s story is how AI not only displaced him, but also later convinced him that he was the right candidate for a job he almost ignored.\u00a0<\/p>\n Shortly after he left DeepScribe, he built a career buddy AI agent, a custom agent he seeded with several books and resources he trusted. He fed it his detailed career profile, his LinkedIn and his resume. The result was an always-on career coach.<\/p>\n \u201cI could search for jobs. I could give any job to it, [and] it would help me assess my candidacy. It helped me prepare,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n That agent changed the course of his career when he stumbled across a posting for a role as senior director of AI operations at Pearl<\/a>, a marketplace connecting individual consumers with experts.<\/p>\n \u201cI originally passed on it,\u201d he admits. \u201cBecause on paper it didn\u2019t look anything like my previous roles or what my experience would normally qualify me for.\u201d<\/p>\n Weeks later, Pearl reposted the role with a different title. This time, curiosity won.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI figured, well, they don\u2019t know what it is,\u201d Quinn says. \u201cMaybe I don\u2019t know what it is. And so I gave it to my career buddy GPT, and it came back, and this is no embellishment. It came back and said, \u2018Hey Mark, I bet you think that you are not qualified for this role, but let me tell you why you could very well be the perfect candidate.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The agent then did something many humans struggle to do for themselves: It reframed his experience.<\/p>\n \u201cIt kind of broke down my experience and applied it in a way that I hadn\u2019t really thought of before,\u201d Quinn says. He followed its lead. \u201cI thought, Fine, sure, write me a note to the CEO<\/em>. So it did, and I sent it, and that kind of opened up the doors to the conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n AI had once rendered his organization \u201calmost completely redundant.\u201d Now it was writing the cold outreach that got him in the door at the next opportunity.<\/p>\n It didn\u2019t stop there. Quinn says he used AI to refine his resume, rehearse interviews and tailor his story to different hiring managers. He asked it to give him feedback on his answers, point out holes and gaps in his experience and help him tell his story in the most effective way to still show up as a good candidate.<\/p>\n He would not fabricate his experiences. \u201cI never tried to embellish or over-rotate with my own experience or standing,\u201d he says. Instead, he treated the technology as a sparring partner, using it as a way to \u201cpregame\u201d the interactions and think through what might come up and how he could answer.\u00a0<\/p>\n He also put the follow-through on autopilot: \u201cI used it for writing cover letters, tailoring every resume and sending follow-up notes, pretty much everything,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n As a result of these efforts, Quinn got the job at Pearl. His current work reflects a more mature, nuanced approach to AI. At Pearl, he leads the company\u2019s first AI operations team and created the enterprise model for how the business adopts AI.\u00a0<\/p>\n Quinn says companies face a fork in the road. They can either use AI to reduce expense, or they can use AI to move faster and do more,\u201d he says. His litmus test for employers is: Are you \u201cusing AI to cut or to grow and unlock capability and innovation that you couldn\u2019t otherwise?\u201d<\/p>\n At Pearl, he found that leadership \u201cwas in that latter camp of using AI to grow.\u201d Internally, the mantra is \u201cAI plus human,\u201d not AI instead of human. \u201cIt\u2019s what the two imperfect things can unlock together, often enabling more capability than either could achieve on its own,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n Quinn is clear that if he had stayed in his previous role, at a company that is taking it \u201cslow and steady and very cautious with any new technology,\u201d he would have likely faced disruption anyway.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI have a feeling that if I had stayed on the path I was on, I would have been caught off guard,\u201d he says. \u201cI may not have been kind of shaken awake the way that I was.\u201d<\/p>\n Now, even if he ever goes back to a \u201ctypical\u201d operations role, he insists he\u2019ll never run it the old way. \u201cI would never pursue it the same way that I would have without going through the experience I did,\u201d he says. He would incorporate AI into his job early on.\u00a0<\/p>\n As someone who was laid off \u201cby AI\u201d and then rehired with AI\u2019s help, Quinn has become an informal coach to professionals getting the same email he once did: AI is impacting your role.<\/p>\n Thousands of people have gotten that email. This year alone, fintech company Block laid off 40% of its workforce<\/a>, or about 4,000 employees, while Meta cut 8,000 jobs and told employees that AI agents would \u201cprimarily do the work.\u201d<\/p>\n Quinn\u2019s first message to impacted workers is emotional. \u201cFirst is don\u2019t despair,\u201d he says. \u201cNo matter how much AI shows up in the world, it\u2019s truly still mostly populated by people, and you\u2019re not alone.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n He even turned to AI itself for perspective during his own low points. \u201cI had a chat with AI about it too. And it reminded me, \u2018Mark, it\u2019s not as bad as you think.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n His second message is pragmatic: \u201cIf you hadn\u2019t already, lean into AI. Go learn all those things that I\u2019ve talked about so far,\u201d he says. \u201cUnderstand the basics for your job and beyond. Know what the tools are.\u201d<\/p>\n In interviews, he advises candidates to understand \u201chow AI is now a part of the way you think and operate,\u201d because \u201cthe kid who knows how to do the job with AI is 10 times more valuable and capable than the one who doesn\u2019t.\u201d <\/p>\n Finally, he recommends doing what he did: Use AI to build a plan out of the disruption. \u201cThere are tools available,\u201d he says. \u201cYou can have a professional job coach or maybe a therapist to guide you in this moment for $20 a month. So get your ChatGPT Plus subscription and use it.\u201d<\/p>\n The technology that once automated Quinn\u2019s job is now the same thing he uses to future-proof his career. What started as the technology that took his job became the tool kit he used to build his next one.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n At first, AI was a scapegoat. It was the reason Mark Quinn was laid off from his role as vice president of operations and responsible AI at DeepScribe<\/a>, a Silicon Valley startup focused on automating medical documentation for doctors.\u00a0<\/p>\n When Quinn joined DeepScribe after a four-year stint at Waymo, his goal was to build and run a 3,000-person supervisory organization for the startup\u2019s AI. His team would watch, train and help collect data to build AI, overseeing a system that listened to doctor-patient conversations and converted them into medical records.\u00a0<\/p>\n He signed on in October 2022. Within months, the ground shifted. ChatGPT came out in November 2022, and by March 2023, GPT-4 marked a major leap forward in computing.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nFrom scapegoat to career coach<\/h2>\n
Revisiting the role\u00a0<\/h2>\n
Using AI in the hiring process<\/h2>\n
Reflecting on AI disruption<\/h2>\n
Coaching others through the same shock<\/h2>\n
Key Takeaways<\/h2>\n
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