Your Job Is Not What You Think
Modern work demands knowledge transfer: the ability to apply knowledge to new situations and different domains.
David J. Epstein, Range
Bob was looking forward to graduation.
Unlike his classmates, he already had a job, not a job as much as a business.
Bob started developing websites for small businesses as a sophomore.
His background in graphic design gave him an advantage over other developers.
But his most valuable skill was his ability to make webpages run fast and smooth.
His pitch was, “Hate slow webpages? So do your customers. We make yours fast and sharp.”
But about a year ago, his competitors started closing the gap. New software was doing the optimization that Bob excelled at. It still wasn’t as good as he was, but it would soon be even better.
Luckily, Bob discovered a new opportunity.
While his competitors were optimizing sites that resided on their clients’ servers, he was learning how to take advantage of this new thing called “the cloud.”
His new sales pitch sounded like this, “Are you confused about all this talk about ‘the cloud’? You don’t need to be because we know how to use ‘the cloud’ to help your business serve your customers better while you focus on what you do best.”
But just as Bob mastered the cloud, a new thing called AI hit, giving Bob the opportunity to develop an entirely new advantage.
Instead of writing code, he became an editor of the code written by this new AI software.
His blurb now was, “Isn’t AI great! Great as it is, you can’t trust it to develop your online presence.
Sure, it’s better than Fred who cut his teeth on COBOL back in the day. But you need someone who knows how to get the most out of AI. And that someone is us.”
Many of Bob’s classmates are worried about the new tech just around the corner.
Bob, however, is excited about the opportunities it will bring.
He remembers how hard he worked to learn HTML back in high school. Now he never uses it.
But what he does use is the skill of simplifying a process to make it work faster and more reliably.
He used to call himself an HTML Guru.
Just a few months ago he realized what his true title should be: “Professional Learner.”
To his surprise, his side interests have also been useful in his business. Even his weird passion for Ancient Mesopotamian Archeology might prove useful someday. Who knows?
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