As someone further along in their career, the best advice I can say is just put one foot in front of the other and let providence take care of the rest. Trying to optimize a long-term path in a rapidly changing future is a fool's errand, so your intuition to pursue what gives you energy is wise.
If anything, the advent of AI has crystallized the reality the we're not as in control of our destinies as we thought, and this hits harder for a portion of the population that hasn't typically had to wrestle with that truth.
It is fascinating to see how hellbent people are on using AI to "get ahead" while it diminishes their critical thinking skills to the point that they willl inevitably fall behind. A modern day story of Oedipus
I can’t get over the “is the talent Salmon?” line 😅. Clearly, no one really knows anything about what the job market will look like in the next few years. As you allude to, the only way out of the turmoil is to channel our uncertainty into doing things, but so much is directed by fear and we are ending up with a bunch low leverage sh*t. Wonder if we flipped the narrative, that AI can help us do things we actually want, what would get built then (it’s hard when most people’s sense of security has evaporated obviously). Basically, we need a reverse article of what Citrini research put out.
I can’t stop visualizing cracked salmon swimming upstream 😂
And yes the promise was always for AI to automate the low value work and make space for the high value work, but is that promise being delivered on?? Or are we just increasing our throughput of menial tasks as our critical thinking skills slowly atrophy, rendering us less and less able to do high value work independently…
thank you both for writing this! have been going through those existential spirals and this was a good reminder/gut check check of focusing on ourselves at the core
We love that it had that impact on you!! No matter how fast the world is moving right now, taking a moment to slow down and figure out what’s important to you will help you navigate these “fast moving talent dense waters” 😂❤️
great piece!! i've struggled to stay with myself in the midst of this all - stanford is such a unique place in that it feels like the center of the world but also insulated from it. it feels like i talk about ai all day without properly getting to the heart of it (especially with non-tech ethics folks). i think many of my peers don't want to face the scary parts, which is totally understandable.
but still it's important to remember what this is all for. i have two years left + already know it's not nearly enough. what an interesting time to be a newly minted adult. :)
we really resonate with this...a symptom of being surrounded by people who should know, but don't and can't (in many cases). the thing we can strive to do with the time we have left is to ask sharper questions, about the implications ai has for ALL people (not just those in our bubble), and to stay willing to update our beliefs as those answers come into view
Yes, AI has created Schroedinger's job market where many jobs exist and don't exist in a state of superposition until applied for, at which point they will definitively cease to exist.
I loved this read! I'm always ranting to my friends about the need for more founders to think through the 5Ws (who, what, where, when, why) before they start building with AI. Who benefits from this, what actual problem for people are you solving, where (geographically) are you solving for, why are you solving it, and why is today the right time to build it. Turns out I learned that framework in middle/high school history :)
I have read this piece of yours and it feels like it was written by someone who never witnessed a chicken being decapitated. There is much to learn from the way the body tumbles in the dirt and the axe.
okay this is both the most hilarious and humbling comment we've received. you're not wrong -- there is much to be learned from the way the body tumbles in the dirt
I suspect what's happening here is that the author and her colleagues don't know what work is. Like they looked at what people do to land an airplane and believed that it's about waving your arms and wear silly headgear like the indigenous Melanesians (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult). How will we ever get a job landing planes if someone invents a robot that can wave it's arms? And it's technically true, you don't need a person to wave their arms anymore. But as the Melanesians learned (or did they?), waving your arms wasn't what got the planes to land there in the first place.
I was chatting to another young dad at the park earlier today. He worked at LADWP. USC MBA, undergrad EE. He noted that there's a dearth of folks applying for skilled trades jobs like electricians to work the high voltage lines, linemen to fix things up on the power poles and the like. A lot of friends, even those sorta drifting through their twenties and thirties towards the permanent underclass ish sorta not really in so cal suburbs more like missing key life markers, don't want those types of jobs for whatever reasons.
I wonder if something similar is going on at Stanford where there's a desire not to just have a stable (boring!) career but to hitch a ride on a venture that will change the world tm! And solve one's existential ennui while at it.
really interesting datapoint--thanks for sharing this!
and it's a great question you ask. a lot of the most interesting companies coming out of Stanford right now do fit this shape: robotics, climate, defense tech require patient capital and don't fit the venture return profile. but they still attract VC funding because they've become part of the zeitgeist. the truly unsexy version (search funds, industrial services businesses) still has a thin pipeline, and the ennui likely comes from whether we can get excited about something that will never be on the cover of TechCrunch
As someone further along in their career, the best advice I can say is just put one foot in front of the other and let providence take care of the rest. Trying to optimize a long-term path in a rapidly changing future is a fool's errand, so your intuition to pursue what gives you energy is wise.
If anything, the advent of AI has crystallized the reality the we're not as in control of our destinies as we thought, and this hits harder for a portion of the population that hasn't typically had to wrestle with that truth.
A good reflection on navigating ambition, AI disruption, and self-awareness
It is fascinating to see how hellbent people are on using AI to "get ahead" while it diminishes their critical thinking skills to the point that they willl inevitably fall behind. A modern day story of Oedipus
I can’t get over the “is the talent Salmon?” line 😅. Clearly, no one really knows anything about what the job market will look like in the next few years. As you allude to, the only way out of the turmoil is to channel our uncertainty into doing things, but so much is directed by fear and we are ending up with a bunch low leverage sh*t. Wonder if we flipped the narrative, that AI can help us do things we actually want, what would get built then (it’s hard when most people’s sense of security has evaporated obviously). Basically, we need a reverse article of what Citrini research put out.
I can’t stop visualizing cracked salmon swimming upstream 😂
And yes the promise was always for AI to automate the low value work and make space for the high value work, but is that promise being delivered on?? Or are we just increasing our throughput of menial tasks as our critical thinking skills slowly atrophy, rendering us less and less able to do high value work independently…
thank you both for writing this! have been going through those existential spirals and this was a good reminder/gut check check of focusing on ourselves at the core
We love that it had that impact on you!! No matter how fast the world is moving right now, taking a moment to slow down and figure out what’s important to you will help you navigate these “fast moving talent dense waters” 😂❤️
Soooo true
great piece!! i've struggled to stay with myself in the midst of this all - stanford is such a unique place in that it feels like the center of the world but also insulated from it. it feels like i talk about ai all day without properly getting to the heart of it (especially with non-tech ethics folks). i think many of my peers don't want to face the scary parts, which is totally understandable.
but still it's important to remember what this is all for. i have two years left + already know it's not nearly enough. what an interesting time to be a newly minted adult. :)
we really resonate with this...a symptom of being surrounded by people who should know, but don't and can't (in many cases). the thing we can strive to do with the time we have left is to ask sharper questions, about the implications ai has for ALL people (not just those in our bubble), and to stay willing to update our beliefs as those answers come into view
sharper questions are a great start to shifting the culture. trying to make a tiny dent in my time here. :)
i help organize speaker events on-campus. would love to organize something for u to share your insights if you’re interested!!
i am currently getting an MBA and i think about this a lot... all the time, in fact. i have no solution.
Yes, AI has created Schroedinger's job market where many jobs exist and don't exist in a state of superposition until applied for, at which point they will definitively cease to exist.
I loved this read! I'm always ranting to my friends about the need for more founders to think through the 5Ws (who, what, where, when, why) before they start building with AI. Who benefits from this, what actual problem for people are you solving, where (geographically) are you solving for, why are you solving it, and why is today the right time to build it. Turns out I learned that framework in middle/high school history :)
I have read this piece of yours and it feels like it was written by someone who never witnessed a chicken being decapitated. There is much to learn from the way the body tumbles in the dirt and the axe.
okay this is both the most hilarious and humbling comment we've received. you're not wrong -- there is much to be learned from the way the body tumbles in the dirt
I suspect what's happening here is that the author and her colleagues don't know what work is. Like they looked at what people do to land an airplane and believed that it's about waving your arms and wear silly headgear like the indigenous Melanesians (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult). How will we ever get a job landing planes if someone invents a robot that can wave it's arms? And it's technically true, you don't need a person to wave their arms anymore. But as the Melanesians learned (or did they?), waving your arms wasn't what got the planes to land there in the first place.
I was chatting to another young dad at the park earlier today. He worked at LADWP. USC MBA, undergrad EE. He noted that there's a dearth of folks applying for skilled trades jobs like electricians to work the high voltage lines, linemen to fix things up on the power poles and the like. A lot of friends, even those sorta drifting through their twenties and thirties towards the permanent underclass ish sorta not really in so cal suburbs more like missing key life markers, don't want those types of jobs for whatever reasons.
I wonder if something similar is going on at Stanford where there's a desire not to just have a stable (boring!) career but to hitch a ride on a venture that will change the world tm! And solve one's existential ennui while at it.
On a secant, why aren't you all building these sorts of businesses? https://anastasiagamick.substack.com/p/companies-that-should-exist
really interesting datapoint--thanks for sharing this!
and it's a great question you ask. a lot of the most interesting companies coming out of Stanford right now do fit this shape: robotics, climate, defense tech require patient capital and don't fit the venture return profile. but they still attract VC funding because they've become part of the zeitgeist. the truly unsexy version (search funds, industrial services businesses) still has a thin pipeline, and the ennui likely comes from whether we can get excited about something that will never be on the cover of TechCrunch
Cool piece, you captured a certain vibe in the tech-adjacent zeigiest very well
Thank you so much, Siddhesh! We appreciate your reading :)
Fun read! Nice work. Love the “go swimming” charge.
Go swimming is the new touch grass
This is really beautifully written
Thank you so much for reading, Tanya ❤️