Why THIS skill will soon matter more than grades

People in Silicon Valley already know the truth most parents haven’t caught onto yet: the job your child thinks they’re training for today won’t exist in two years.

That isn’t hyperbole.

That’s Nancy Xu, one of the leaders behind Salesforce’s new AI agent ecosystem, explaining how fast things are changing inside the companies that will define your child’s future.

In her world, teams aren’t hiring based on what you’ve done.

They’re hiring based on how quickly you can learn the next version of the job — the version that doesn’t exist yet.

And that shift is already rewriting what employers value: not experience, not a polished résumé, but curiosity, adaptability, and the ability to collaborate with AI systems that operate like digital employees.

Here’s the part most parents miss:

Your child won’t be competing with other kids.

They’ll be competing with kids who know how to manage AI agents.

And those kids will outperform everyone else.

The New Job Nobody Warned You About

Nancy describes something you’re going to hear a lot about over the next few years: the rise of the “agent manager.”

It’s the person who directs AI agents to handle the work humans used to do — writing, coding, research, customer service tasks, analysis, logistics.

Think of it like this:

Yesterday: People were the workers.

Today: AI agents are the workers.

Tomorrow: Humans supervise, design, and orchestrate those agents.

What Exactly Is an AI Agent?

An AI agent isn’t just a chatbot or a tool.

It’s a digital worker.

It takes goals, breaks them into steps, executes tasks, and improves through feedback.

It can research, write, plan, code, summarize, build presentations, answer customer questions, and analyze data — all at once, and all day, without getting tired or bored.

Companies are already deploying fleets of these agents across departments.

And the person who succeeds in this world isn’t the one who does the work.

It’s the one who knows how to direct these agents with clarity, strategy, and judgment.

The Most Valuable Skills Your Child Can Build — Starting Now

Nancy reveals what companies seek in young talent today — and it’s precisely what most schools still don’t teach.

1. Relentless curiosity
   

   The drive to explore, ask questions, try things, and push past confusion.

   Curiosity is the strongest predictor of whether someone can keep up with the rapid cycles of new AI tools, workflows, and agent systems.
   

2. Problem-framing and objective-setting

   AI agents don’t magically know what you want. Kids must learn to define goals clearly, break projects into steps, and iterate — the same way a manager would direct a team.
   

3. Passion and persistence

   Nancy makes a subtle point: kids who care deeply about anything develop the persistence to keep working when things get boring or hard. In the AI era, persistence is the multiplier, because AI makes easy tasks easier and hard tasks harder.
   

None of this shows up on a report card.

But all of it determines who will thrive in the new AI world.

The Part That Should Make Every Parent Pause

When Nancy says, “Our jobs may be totally different in two years,” she isn’t predicting the future.

She’s describing what she sees inside one of the largest tech companies on the planet.

If the people building this future say everything is changing, then everything is changing.

Parents who wait for schools to catch up are setting their kids up to fall behind.

AI isn’t replacing kids.

AI is replacing kids who don’t know how to work with AI.

Before You Go… Ask Yourself This

How confident are you — truly — that your child is learning the curiosity, AI literacy, and problem-solving skills they’ll need to manage the agents who will run the future?

Would you like help figuring out where they stand?