AI Killed His Job. Then He Built an AI Agent to Land the Next One

By Grace Kim

Mark Quinn signed on at DeepScribe in October 2022 to build a 3,000-person operation. By early 2024, he was laid off — because GPT-4 made that operation "almost completely redundant."

Quinn joined DeepScribe, a Silicon Valley startup that automates medical documentation for doctors, as vice president of operations and responsible AI. He came off a four-year stint at Waymo. His mandate: run a supervisory organization that would watch, train and collect data for an AI system that turns doctor-patient conversations into medical records.

Then ChatGPT launched in November 2022. GPT-4 arrived in March 2023.

"It took us about a month to realize that it essentially made the operation I was building out almost moot, almost completely redundant," Quinn told Entrepreneur.

He tried to pivot inside the company. It didn't work. He says he and DeepScribe "mutually agreed" to part ways in early 2024.

"From there, it was an epiphanic existential wake-up call," he says.

How did the laid-off exec fight back?

He built his own AI agent. Quinn seeded a custom "career buddy" GPT with books and resources he trusted, then fed it his career profile, LinkedIn and resume. The result: an always-on career coach.

"I could search for jobs. I could give any job to it, [and] it would help me assess my candidacy. It helped me prepare," he explains.

The agent earned its keep on one specific posting: senior director of AI operations at Pearl, a marketplace connecting consumers with experts.

"I originally passed on it," Quinn admits. "Because on paper it didn't look anything like my previous roles or what my experience would normally qualify me for."

Weeks later, Pearl reposted the role with a different title. This time Quinn ran it through his agent.

"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," the agent told him. Quinn insists that's "no embellishment."

"It kind of broke down my experience and applied it in a way that I hadn't really thought of before," he says. "I thought, Fine, sure, write me a note to the CEO. So it did, and I sent it, and that kind of opened up the doors to the conversation."

What else did the AI do in his job search?

Nearly everything. Quinn used AI to:

• Refine his resume for each application
• Rehearse interviews and get feedback on answers
• Identify holes and gaps in his experience
• Write cover letters and follow-up notes

"I used it for writing cover letters, tailoring every resume and sending follow-up notes, pretty much everything," he says.

One line he says he never crossed: fabrication. "I never tried to embellish or over-rotate with my own experience or standing," he says. He treated the technology as a sparring partner to "pregame" interactions.

He got the job. At Pearl, Quinn now leads the company's first AI operations team and built its enterprise model for adopting AI.

Cut or grow?

Quinn frames the strategic choice facing every employer in binary terms. Companies can use AI to reduce expense, or they can use it to "move faster and do more." His litmus test: Are you "using AI to cut or to grow and unlock capability and innovation that you couldn't otherwise?"

Pearl, he found, sits in the growth camp. The internal mantra is "AI plus human," not AI instead of human. "It's what the two imperfect things can unlock together, often enabling more capability than either could achieve on its own," he says.

What does he tell others getting the same layoff email?

Plenty are. This year, Block cut 40% of its workforce — roughly 4,000 people — and Meta eliminated 8,000 jobs while telling employees AI agents would "primarily do the work."

Quinn's first message is emotional. "First is don't despair. No matter how much AI shows up in the world, it's truly still mostly populated by people, and you're not alone." He even asked AI for reassurance during his own low points: "It reminded me, 'Mark, it's not as bad as you think.'"

His second message is practical: learn the tools. "The kid who knows how to do the job with AI is 10 times more valuable and capable than the one who doesn't," he says.

His third is cheap. "You 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."

Quinn says that if he had stayed on his old path, at a company moving "slow and steady" with new technology, he "would have been caught off guard." The technology that deleted his 3,000-person operation is now the one he tells laid-off workers to buy for $20 a month.