These Nerds Will Actually Survive the Next AI Job Apocalypse
The next phase of AI needs fuel, here’s how to position yourself as a refiner
Data is the new oil, and if you know what you’re doing with it, the job opportunities will be there for you in 2026.
Throughout 2025, the most popular inbound ask for help I got was for help with data. In fact, on a recent consulting call, the CEO of a non-tech company asked me point blank how I would “structure [their] unstructured data.” In a light moment, I gave him an honest, maybe a little bit snarky answer.
“I want to say you can’t structure it, that’s why it’s called unstructured data. You have to build stuff around it, like scaffolding.”
I probably shouldn’t be writing his response, but it was funny.
“If I understood what you just said, I wouldn’t have to hire you.”
Yeah, I get that a lot. Let me explain.
In 2025, data became a very abundant new resource, like oil. In 2026, people who know how to wrangle data – and refine that oil into fuel – are going to be in high demand.
The Rise of the Data Nerd
I’ve never been the best software developer, the best entrepreneur, the best writer, or for that matter the best athlete. I don’t have the magic natural selection skills – body or brain – that would have rocketed me into the top one percent stratosphere of any of those pursuits.
But don’t get me wrong. While I’m genetically a proud member of the 99 percent, I would indeed put myself up against anyone in any of those areas. Well, not the athlete one anymore, I’d get stomped, but the rest of them, sure, because my superpower is that I’m a huge data nerd.
My love of sports grew out of a love of sports stats, and knowing outcomes gave me an edge where my physical attributes were lacking. You can scoff, but it’s really just the same way Alex Honnold works. It applies to tech and even business as well. I know there are huge pockets of revenue tucked away in massive sets of data, and software and “business” is what I use to tap those rich veins, like oil wells.
I’ve been saying “data is the new oil” for decades now, but the truth is, data was always oil, I just have to say that every time a flashy new technology wows everyone for months or years so they can get off of the fly-by-night stuff and realize that without data, all that new tech is just smoke.
Data is fire, always has been, and in 2026, the focus is going to swing back to it.
Here’s how to position yourself to drill for data in 2026.
The Unstructured Data Phase of AI Is Over
And the winners have already been picked. If you want to take on the giants like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Microsoft, you’re going to have to come up with a data concept so unique, it’ll be laughable.
And as a lifelong entrepreneur, I can tell you that the “laughed out of the room” period of every new venture is a lot harder to survive than it seems, especially when you’re excitedly scratching ideas onto the back of a napkin.
So if you’re thinking of chatbots or LLMs or scraping content and training models – and you’re not going super-niche in an extremely overlooked and undervalued market – you’re probably better off going to work for one of the giants than taking them on, at least at this moment in AI history.
But here’s the thing. That unstructured data is everywhere. The last few years have been like slipping on a pair of They Live glasses and looking at everything and seeing data.
Oh, that web-app, that’s data! That hardware, that’s a data-collection device! That credit card, that’s a gold mine!
I mean, OpenAI is getting into hardware. Why? Data-collection device.
Corporate America Owns Chatbots That Have Little To Say
One of the main AI-related issues we’ve run into at the beginning of 2026 is that every company in the world has their own chatbot now – or some other flavor of generative helper AI. But beyond some RAG tweaks or custom chunking and embedding, their pet chatbot has nothing to add to the conversation that the next chatbot over can’t also say – with AI-style false confidence.
Blah blah blah, hallucinations, chicanery, unmet promises, projects with no ROI, everyone hates AI now.
Anyway, with all that chatbot money spent, after all the hype and fear and FOMO, and with billions about to be dumped into data centers to make this swamp spread faster, we’re all starting to realize the same unflinching truth I discovered back in 2010.
When Automated Insights first started generating automated content in 2010, we were focused on what was being said, not how it was being said. In other words, we took customer structured data, millions and millions of rows of it scattered across hundreds of tables, and figured out how to mine critical insights from that data, those pockets of oil, and turn them into narrative, the fuel of our engine.
We were making data actionable, not conversational.
In 2026, you can literally just throw an LLM on top of unstructured data – like a face hugger in Alien (I’m on a sci-fi horror movie kick today for some reason), and churn out a decent conversation.
And that’s where it ends.
Until you have structured data to create the connective tissue between the insights.
Oh! Like The Thing! No wait, not like The Thing. That was gross. Kurt Russell was the bomb, though.
The Winners Of The Next Phase of AI
As my non-tech CEO client put it, the “structuring of unstructured data” – the refinement of this data oil into insightful and actionable fuel – is going to power not just the chatbots, but the next wave of AI automation, agentic action, and predictive analysis.
Right now, this unstructured data is everywhere, like toxic waste wanting to be avenged… sorry, like a commodity waiting to be tapped, but it won’t be long before the laws of scarcity start to set in for unstructured data, and whoever ends up the most wrangled structured data sets will have a pretty good shot to be first movers in the next wave of AI.
The bad news is that the next wave isn’t going to be another trillion-dollar-valuation-chasing moment. Sheer common sense, buyer’s remorse, and empty corporate pockets have all made sure that cooler heads will prevail this time around.
The good news is there are a lot of opportunities, across multiple sectors, untouched industries, vast fields of potentially rich data veins waiting to be tapped by people who know how to tap them. Everyone is going to need these refiners.
So data nerds – those of you who speak SQL as a second language and put decimal-point percentages on the odds of getting to work on time – 2026 is your moment. It’s your time to shine.
And if you’re not a data nerd yet, fire up everything from Sheets to SQL to Snowflake, because now would be a good time to get good at it.
Now would also be a good time to join my email list, a growing rebel alliance of professionals who want a different (and honest) perspective on tech and business.
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