Picture a woman stitching a gorgeous quilt by hand. She’s an expert, has been doing this for many years. Her quilts are works of art, and people pay top dollar to commission her to make them.
One day, a young man knocks on her door wheeling a heavy case. He tells her he can revolutionize her quilting. That hand-stitching is a waste of time. In the case? A sewing machine.
The woman feels like she’s being erased. Told that her craft no longer matters. She isn’t wrong. This is a real loss.
Just as it’s happened with every technical innovation, this dynamic is happening again right now with AI. Your craft is being automated.
You spent an entire career learning to code by hand, or design websites, or illustrate storyboards. You know there is art in what you do. You find joy from figuring out problems, and delight in the elegance of the solutions you create.
Now you’re being replaced by a tool that, six months ago, was like an eager but error-prone intern. But now, what it creates is working.
What You’re Actually Losing
Let’s say you’re a software developer who learned every programming language from Ruby to Rust. Just like our quilter, you love the slow and deliberate work of writing simple and functional code. You have the experience to head off a lot of bad ideas.
Plus, you get a lot of validation by being the person who does that one thing well. It fused with your identity so much that when you meet new people, you introduce yourself as a software developer, sometimes before your name.
That sense of mastery gave you a place in the world and affirmed your contribution. Losing that is a big deal.
Your autonomy takes a hit, too. You used your finely-tuned discernment and taste to differentiate good from bad. Now, you’re an editor of AI-generated code, and all you can do is tweak it if it’s broken.
And goodbye to the community you gathered to brainstorm novel designs, debate approaches, and argue over how best to keep customers at the center of your efforts. Your AI agents aren’t in on the team’s inside jokes and don’t remember the terrible holiday party last year.
Mastery feels good. You get a dopamine hit when something works and is beautiful all at once. Even if the thing that the AI creates ticks all the boxes, you didn’t make it. Not the same thing.
What Corporate Won’t Do
The corporate world is very excited by how much efficiency they’ll get and how much money they’ll save by adopting AI as fast as possible. They will invest there. They will not repurpose you in a thoughtful way. Instead, they’ll use the blunt tools of layoffs and role changes to squeeze people out.
In the pressure for you to stay relevant, your craft goes through a washing machine of new tools, making it impossible for you to do what you know is right.
Then there’s the gaslighting. Your company may present a new role to you as an incredible opportunity. They tell you to adapt, that you must increase your output because you have all these tools at your disposal. But “manage the AI agents” isn’t a pivot, it’s a different job that you didn’t sign up for. And aren’t you just training the AI to eventually eliminate that job?
Leave and Start Freelancing?
I’ve talked to a lot of people who want to leave their full-time jobs and start consulting. They’ll use the same skills, but not have to deal with the politics of a company. That can work well if you have in-demand domain expertise.
But if you’re a generalist who can tackle pretty much anything, a traditional path like contracting might be a tough road. Thousands of laid-off people are looking for work and may be ready to take less money for the job than you would.
What Actually Survives (and What You Can Build From)
Here’s what survives that no one can take away from you – not even a fleet of AI bots.
Discernment/judgment/taste. You know good from garbage, can spot artifacts that give AI away, and fix problems that were caused by mistranslations.
Problem definition. You can explain to someone why there’s a problem and which elements are involved. You can name the consequences and other things it might touch.
Context and experience. You understand systems, people, and politics. You know not to suggest a design with the color green because the CEO hates green. Or to be careful about the cultural impact of product rollouts.
What you love. You still contain a multitude of likes and interests, from what you loved when you were 12 years old to what you nerd out on today.
The New Playbook (That GenZ Already Knows)
Workers in their 20s have caught on to something that elder millennials and GenXers are still figuring out. They know not to expect loyalty from an employer and they definitely don’t give them loyalty back. They create side hustles to maintain outside of their main gigs, since they know the main gig could vanish at any moment. And they’re more comfortable having multiple revenue streams over one primary salary.
These people started their careers in uncertainty. We’re trying to adapt to it as fast as we can. Maybe it all feels new and overwhelming to you, but remember that you’ve adapted to everything you’re using right now. At one point it was all new. You figured it out.
What to Try
Before you decide that you’re being set out to pasture, there are a few things you can try. First, name everything you loved about the craft itself (not the job). Be specific. Maybe it included creating something beautiful. Or improving a system. Or learning through every mistake.
Your personal values are in there somewhere, too.
Once you know the qualities of your craft, you have a starting point for adjacent industries and jobs that could scratch the same itch. The thing you make might change, the tools might be different, but your skills and your values do not change.
What if you gave yourself permission to build something smaller and weirder than you did in your old career? Leaving corporate is your opportunity to create something of your own for people who will value your contributions.
Here’s one experiment you could try this week: choose five people, and describe the qualities of your craft without naming it. Ask them what industry, job, or domain they think you’re talking about. What they tell you might contain the nugget of something new.
The craft isn’t gone. It just doesn’t live in the corporate world anymore. What you build next won’t look like what you had. And honestly, it might take a while to figure out what that looks like. That’s ok. But start now.
Burn the map. Build what fits.
