A question your life depends on (Part 2)..how to chose a career
My last post about the Lindy Effect and jobs got a polarizing response. That’s good. It means the idea has teeth.
The biggest pushback: “But ancient jobs changed too. Chariot drivers don’t exist anymore.”
That actually proves the point..
Chariots died around 84 CE. Chariot drivers became horse cart drivers. Horse cart drivers became taxi drivers. Taxi drivers are still here. The function survived. The implementation didn’t. Lindy applies to functions, not job titles.
But here’s what I didn’t say last time. The practical career advice.
If I were choosing a career path today, I’d go barbell.
Pick one of two extremes.
Extreme Lindy: Medicine, law, teaching, sales etc. These functions have existed for thousands of years. They will exist for thousands more. The tools will change. The function won’t. You will always be employable.
Extreme Cutting Edge: Work at the frontier of what’s emerging right now. AI research. Robotics. Biotech. Quantum. The people building the next platform shift, not the people operating on the current one.
What I would not do is pick the middle.
The middle is disciplines that emerged 20 to 30 years ago and are already being automated. Software engineering. Product management. Data science. UX design.
These are yesterday’s edge. They feel safe because they paid well for two decades.
But that’s the trap. You’d be investing years mastering a discipline that is actively being absorbed by the technology it was built to serve.
Think of it this way. Learning software engineering today is like training to be a switchboard operator in 1970. The job still existed. It still paid. But the writing was on the wall.
Go ancient or go frontier. The middle is where careers go to die.