Calm notes on AI, leadership, and the relationships it's reshaping. Written for working people, not pundits. New memo most weeks.
The latest memo
Entry-level hiring collapsed at AI firms — and grew at the giants
A fifteen-person AI startup has zero junior listings on its careers page. That looks like proof the first job is gone — until you check who's actually hiring.
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New here? Start with the most-watched memo: If you think the wealthy have a better AI, look again
Every memo
27 memos, newest first
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8:31 Here's why waiting for AI to settle down is the expensive move Someone you love asks whether they should finally go for it with AI, and you answer in four seconds. Your own version of that question has been sitting unanswered for a year. This one's about why the…
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9:20 Here's why looking professional stopped proving anything A guy in North Carolina made $8 million streaming AI songs that nobody was listening to — his real bet wasn't fooling a person, it was fooling the algorithm. So I went looking for the fakes myself…
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15:15 What I learned from 2,279 commits of AI mistakes If you want a system that runs itself, you don't design the safety net — you pay for it one failure at a time, and the trick is writing down the receipt so the same mistake can never bill you twice.
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9:44 Here's who really cut those game jobs The game industry laid off over 40,000 people in the past few years — and almost everyone blamed AI. But when you read what the companies actually said, AI barely shows up. The real story about AI in…
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8:48 Here's what AI is quietly doing to your traffic Everyone's arguing about whether AI can make a good ad. Meanwhile, AI search is quietly killing the free traffic that every marketing plan has run on for twenty years.
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8:50 What I found when I checked who's really raising your rent Everyone tells you an AI algorithm is quietly fixing your rent. But when I checked—looking at the lawsuit, the settlements, the actual numbers—I found something messier: an old piece of software with…
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8:47 When your boss calls it collaboration and means something else Your company's return-to-office mandate probably cites collaboration, culture, and belonging. When I looked at what the research actually shows — and what managers and executives admit when no one's…
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10:16 Here's why the office-mandate layoff trick backfires Return-to-office mandates sounded like a cost-saving strategy — force people back, skip the severance checks. Except the receipts show they're mostly a control grab that costs companies the talent…
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8:55 The Real Reason AI Music Is Draining Royalties — It's the Math Every headline about AI music wants you to watch the fraudster. The real story is the payout math — the accounting that makes a bot's four-second loop worth exactly as much as your favorite artist's…
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8:55 AI Agents "Run" Companies Now. Even Anthropic Won't Hire One. Anthropic put an AI in charge of a real snack fridge in its own office — real inventory, real money, a name and a title: Seymour Cash, CEO. Meanwhile, Salesforce cut support staff from 9,000 to 5,000…
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10:11 Anime Banned AI. Fans Caught It Anyway. By late 2025, the anime industry had built the most organized resistance to generative AI of any creative field — eighteen Japanese publishers demanding OpenAI stop, a government request, voice-actor…
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10:22 If your power bill jumped, here's who to thank The viral figure said a single AI prompt drinks a bottle of water. That number is off by roughly a hundredfold — and while everyone argued about it, the real bill quietly showed up on your power…
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8:45 If you think the wealthy have a better AI, look again The cliché says the wealthier you are, the better the AI you get. Go look — and the picture doesn't match.
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9:01 Here's where AI is actually hitting the job market Everyone's reading the labor data backwards. The "AI-resistant jobs pay more now" story is doing real work in career-advice columns — and the receipt people keep citing for it (the 56% premium from…
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9:09 Why the AI generation can't think without a chatbot — what two AIs did with the same homework A kid at the kitchen table types a five-paragraph essay prompt into ChatGPT. Eighteen seconds later it's done. From where you're sitting, that's the AI generation arriving. It's more complicated than…
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8:50 Stop trying to spot the fake — switch channels instead A finance employee in Hong Kong joined a video call with his CFO and five colleagues he recognized — and wired twenty-five million dollars to strangers. None of the people on the call were real.
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8:26 What I learned watching rich people use AI — They bought delegation, not better prompts If you've spent a Sunday afternoon perfecting a prompt template, this one's for you. The "rich people use AI smarter" discourse is selling you a personal-discipline answer to an infrastructure…
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8:48 If you keep starting over with AI — start one tab to the left If you've bookmarked an AI tool you swore would change your workflow and uninstalled it a week later — this is for you. Almost every "I'll try AI for productivity" attempt fizzles by week two. A…
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8:08 If you're burning out from AI — you got the smaller half If you're a high performer burning out from AI, the math you've been judged against is broken. The productivity windfall your boss priced in — the one that raised the bar on your year — went to the…
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8:32 If your team trusts AI more than they trust themselves — the talk won't fix it If a junior on your team keeps handing in confident, well-written, AI-assisted work that's quietly wrong — and you keep running the values conversation about it — the conversation isn't broken. The…
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8:36 If you're setting up AI for an aging parent — start with the boring stuff If you're standing in your aging parent's kitchen trying to figure out what to actually buy, here's the fork: a $1,500 AI companion robot with a press release that says it cuts loneliness by 95%, or…
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8:35 When your kid says they use AI "a little" — what that answer actually hides If you've asked your teen about AI and they said "a little," the research says the gap between that answer and what's actually happening is bigger than you'd guess — and the gap, not the AI, is…
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8:17 If you think AI power users are smarter, watch this — Four habits separate them, all learnable If you've watched someone get something brilliant out of an AI tool while you got back eight hundred words of corporate sludge, the reflex thought is that they're smarter than you. The evidence says…
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8:33 Here's why more AI training won't fix it — what the rollout won't admit You got the login. You sat through the training. And your week looks exactly the same as it did the month before. That's not because you failed the course — it's because the course was never going to…
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9:37 If your kid uses AI for homework, this is the one thing that matters If your kid uses AI to get the answer, they learn less than if they had no AI at all. Use the exact same tool to work toward the answer, and they're fine. The device isn't the variable. The way it's…
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10:37 AI Isn't Taking Jobs — Except From One Specific Cohort One week the headline says 300 million jobs are about to vanish. The next week a Yale economist says she can't find any disruption signal at all. Both pieces are sourced. Both are confident. They…
About Plain Memo
Plain Memo is calm, considered commentary on AI, and on the leadership and relationships it's reshaping. It is written for working people, not pundits: no breathless takes, no doomer panic, no consultant-speak. Each memo looks at what is actually happening, in plain language, and asks the questions you'd ask if you had a free afternoon.
Hosted by Reid Conlin. Reid is a mid-career working professional, not a venture capitalist, not a futurist, and not selling a course. He pays attention to the vocabulary nobody defines the same way twice, and says so when the words and the practice don't match. The memos are voiceover-led, no faces, and they run short.
Every memo takes the same shape: here's what I tried, here's what I noticed, here's what I'd do. If you're tired of being sold to, this is for you.
Questions people ask
What is Plain Memo?
Plain Memo is a YouTube channel of short, calm memos about AI and about the leadership and relationships it is reshaping. Each memo is investigation-led: here is what I tried, here is what I noticed, here is what I would do. It is written for working people, not pundits.
Who is Reid Conlin?
Reid Conlin is the writer and host of Plain Memo. He is a mid-career working professional, not a venture capitalist, not a futurist, and not selling a course. Reid is a pen name, and the memos stay about what he tried and noticed rather than who he is.
Is the voice on Plain Memo AI-generated?
The voice you hear is an AI clone of the host's own voice. The scripts are written by Reid Conlin; only the voice rendering is automated. This is disclosed on every video in line with YouTube's synthetic media policy.
How often do new memos come out?
New memos come out most weeks, often several in a week when a run is on. Every memo appears on this page within about half an hour of going live on YouTube, so this site is always the complete list.
How long is a memo?
Most memos run eight to ten minutes. They are voiceover-led with mixed visuals, no faces, and they do not waste your time. Chapters are listed on each memo's page so you can jump to the part you need.
How do I get in touch?
Email reid@plainmemo.com. Reid also posts on Bluesky as @plainmemo.bsky.social and on X as @reidconlin. For everything else, the YouTube channel is the home of the work.