Now What? If The Robots Can Do My Job, What Do I Do?
How I'm getting myself unstuck in an age of Gen AI
I don’t know about you, but over the past few weeks I’m feeling… Befuddled? Puzzled?
Even though I struggle to find the right word to describe whatever I’m feeling, I know exactly what the triggers were!
In my day job I’m getting heavily involved in our AI testing strategy
I took part in the panel “How Automation Engineers Are Using AI to Get Ahead” at Test Automation Guild 2026
I took part in the Leaddev panel “How to measure the business impact of AI”
Block letting 40% of their folks go with AI cited as the reason
Read a few articles about our AI-powered future
Now these things are on my mind:
Working with AI feels mandatory at this point
That is exhilarating and daunting all at once
If I automate away as much of my job as possible, what does that leave?
Will that be valuable enough to make a living?
What could I pivot to?
What should I pivot to?
How do I do that?
This newsletter is me working my way through the above questions.
Panic Stations?
It was important to realise I’m not “broken”.
I have a tendency to overthink, ruminate, and generally get in my own head. If some people have a bias for action, I have a bias for thinking. It’s neither good or bad, it just is.
Not this time though.
Now my overarching feeling was: move. I felt like I was being passive. I needed to do something.
The problem was I wasn’t sure what.
Emotions
When I’m in a “bad” mood, I make bad decisions.
So before doing anything, I unpacked the feelings I mentioned earlier:
Exhilaration. I’m a nerd at heart. I like Sci-Fi, comics, fantasy, video games, all that stuff! Including technology, science, and computers. So AI in general, and Gen AI specifically, is inherently fascinating. I’m excited to start playing with it across different areas of my life.1
Daunted. There is a sense of urgency that heightens everything. There’s short-term pressure from my day job, and there’s long-term pressure from the industry/economy. Coupled with not being technical2 not feeling technical enough, and my default position of wanting to knowAllTheThings before embarking on something new, it’s not comfortable.
I feel like a starting gun has been fired, but I don’t know what race I’m in, who I’m competing against, or where the finish line is.
Existential crisis. Two recurring themes in the zeitgeist seem to be “Faster at all costs” and “Automate all the things”. That’s a big bloody problem for a bunch of reasons:
I have a bias for thinking, and on the surface, the desire for speed doesn’t lend itself well to that.
If I do the task analysis on my job, what does that leave? Things that people don’t value (or maybe they don’t value… again… yet?). Then what?! How do I make a living and support my family?
Being good with wetware (aka humans) feels like it’s being devalued. Big yikes 😳
I think it boils down to this: Being a provider is important to me, and that feels under threat.
Identity crisis. Listen, I love what I do. I describe my job in a bunch of different ways. One of them is that I feel like the character Ando Takahashi from the TV show Heroes. Here’s why:
…he acquires the ability to massively amplify the power of any posthuman he touches.
In other words, he doesn’t give people the potential to be great, but he does amplify it. That’s what my job feels like. I help people become more awesome.
BUT… if the people I amplify are being replaced by agents, who am I amplifying?
Overwhelm. So… Much… Data… My perfectionism is kicking in big time. And perfectionism is procrastination in a fancy suit. I either have no options or tons.
No options feel like a Chess player facing imminent checkmate.
Train the agent to do my job? Adios Vern 👋🏾
Don’t train the agent to do my job? Adios Vern 👋🏾
Too many options feel like:
Nope out of the whole thing
Pivot to a new career
In tech?
Out of tech?
String it out for as long as possible (whatever “it” means)
Play a new game
But which game?
Questions that led to questions that led to moar questions. The way through was prioritisation.
And for THAT I needed to run inventory.
What am I working with?
Let’s lighten the mood, shall we?
Try this thought experiment: Imagine you woke up in a new location, with no idea where you were or how you got there.
What would you do?
You’d look for clues and create options!
Check your immediate surroundings
See what things you have on
Look for landmarks/points of reference
What familiar things can I see/hear/smell?
It’s the same, but for your career.
So I did. I listed everything I’ve built up and leant on over the 20 years. Skills, domains, character traits, industry insights, achievements, opportunities, opinions, happenings. All of it. Don’t be shy with yours.
A couple of important things I noticed along the way.
First, some of the skills on my list are less valuable going forward. That’s ok. This is a clear-eyed assessment, not a catalogue of inadequacy.
Second, I had to get honest about my values too. What principles do I have? How do I want to live? Who or what am I trying to serve, and what am I trying to accomplish?
After all that I had three things:
Inventory. Skills, experiences, etc
Relative position. Where am I in my career, the market, and my life?
Values. What motivates, guides, pushes, and pulls me.
Now it’s decision time.
Decisions decisions…
Inventory + Relative position + Values = Decision time
Taking action, even something small creates momentum. It also generates data, insight, and choices. With all that thinking and organising, a way ahead presented itself.
Here are some things I realised:
I really enjoy what I do. Now, truth be told I knew that already. I suppose what I mean, is that I better understood what I loved.
I get to build shit. This has been a bit of a recurring theme for me. I’ve always had ideas of things I could build, professionally and personally. Now I have the opportunity to learn how to do it for real.
I can still add massive value. Output is increasing. When it comes to programming, I’m calling it the Tsunami of Code. What are the consequences of that for the humans in the business? That’s where I can help, but I might be getting ahead of myself a little… More on that later.
I also like reading, so when the algorithm started showing me articles and posts about AI and how it’s impacting delivery, I read as much as I could. (My tabs are in shambles right now. Send help. Or RAM. Or both)
So what did I decide to do? And why?
Short answer: Stay put, get my head around this new reality and start to add value where only I can3
Long answer: That’s next week’s post 😊
If you’re still here, thanks for indulging me. I think you’d agree, this process is a nice, clean, and methodical way to get yourself unstuck if you have anything like the same things on your mind. There’s only one caveat.
It was anything but nice, clean and methodical!
It was messy. I looped back and forth. I was all over the place.
Importantly though, I think it worked. I have a direction now, and the paralysis is gone. The next part will be equally messy and bonkers. Probably more so.
But I’ll have more to say on that next week.
I can hear people like my buddy Bradshaw, the legend Kelsey Hightower, and others telling me off already! But I have to be honest, while it isn’t true, I still experience doubt and worry about it a lot.
Experts in content creation put it like this: “You need to say the things that only you can say”. Which I love because it reminds me that it isn’t just about information or knowledge. It’s about your know-how PLUS your perspective, the way you articulate, the things you see that you think are important, and so on.