“Digital native” is NOT an AI skill!! Speaking with ChatGPT daily shouldn't be a hiring metric.

71% of leaders say they'd hire AI skills over experience. The research says they're measuring the wrong thing.

After this, you’ll know what to measure instead (and how to defend experience): https://www.2ndorderthinkers.com/

- If you're measuring AI adoption → you're counting ChatGPT opens, not judgment → measure who catches errors instead

- If you're hiring "AI natives" → you're paying for fluency, not accuracy → test evaluation skills, not usage frequency

- If juniors ship 40% faster → they're also shipping 10× more security findings → ask: productive at what?

- If you can't articulate your AI value → you're underselling pattern recognition → use the self-assessment questions below

📖 Full write-up + sources

The full article lays out the studies, the arguments, and a checklist of questions you can use in performance reviews.

🔗 Links

Newsletter: https://www.2ndorderthinkers.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jing--hu/

Full article: https://www.2ndorderthinkers.com/p/why-your-20-something-colleague-is

⏱️ Timestamps

00:00 Performance reviews meet “AI integration”

01:03 AI use ≠ work quality

04:56 “Digital native” has weak evidence

07:48 Older participants write better with AI

09:22 Vendor productivity claims, missing quality

09:57 Coding assistants and security mistakes

12:21 AI boosts novice confidence, not novelty

14:26 The review questions that prove value

18:22 What to do next in 2026

💬 Question

Which matters more in your org right now: AI adoption rate, or AI error rate?

❤️ Read the full article + membership for the full write-up + sources + framework/checklist. ❤️

Comment with one example where your experience caught an AI mistake (or where it didn’t).

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