Everyone’s talking about AI killing jobs. Here’s a framework nobody’s using.
It’s called the Lindy Effect.
The longer something has survived, the longer it’s likely to continue surviving. A book read for 2,000 years will probably be read for another 2,000.
I think the same applies to jobs.
Ancient jobs (5,000+ years old):
Healing, teaching, building, selling, storytelling, law etc. These survived every platform shift. The form changes but the function doesn’t. A healer became a surgeon. A bazaar merchant became a luxury retail advisor. These survive AI too.
Industrial-era jobs (200 to 500 years old):
Accounting, engineering, banking etc. Already partially automated, but they persist because they carry physical-world accountability. AI reshapes them, but they’ll last another few hundred years.
Digital-era jobs (10 to 50 years old):
Software engineering, product management, data science, UX design, SEO? These were created by the limitations of previous technology. Software engineering is literally “translating human intent into code.” That’s exactly what AI does now. Largely gone or unrecognizable within 10 years.
People assume prestige equals safety. It doesn’t. There are two kinds.
1) Lindy prestige: Doctors, lawyers, architects.
A doctor’s authority comes from the ancient act of taking responsibility for a human body. That’s not going anywhere.
2) Bubble prestige. The $400K staff engineer, the VP of Product.
These salaries exist because of a temporary scarcity. AI is dissolving it in real time.
A Simple test..
if your job existed in ancient Rome, you’re probably fine. If it only existed after 1995, that high salary might be a signal of fragility, not importance.
The counterintuitive career advice for the AI era:
” Invest in the oldest skills, not the newest ones”