The Catch-22 of High Tech Careers

I read an article recently about TSMC suing one of its former execs who jumped to Intel and it got me thinking about my own position and career.

I’m in possession of similar types of knowledge, and even I had a recent scare when a new hire from a competitor arrived on the scene with their version. It was only a few days, but those days found me thinking in circles about whether I was going to be potentially fired or replaced. So I fretted and fidgeted in my mind as the monkeys went berserk with thoughts of being booted out on my ass again — a decade after that first wonderfully public one — and began idly toying with my options.

Then, I had a chat with that person and was a bit surprised.

As it turns out, it was nearly as precarious as I thought. The methods were solid for the test they had been doing, but it wasn’t quite as consistent as the methods that I had developed. That, and the person had been the only one there with that task.

I breathed a sigh of relief. I wouldn’t be packing it up and leaving after all.

But a scare like that was enough to remind me of the risk that we all, as high tech workers, face (AI or no). We are potentially expendable. Replaceable. Interchangeable. Our expertise is not as niche and rare as we’d like to think. What makes us valuable to society is not our skill set. The fact that there are plenty of us to go around and do things to perpetuate the system and keep the lights on is.

When you begin to see the way everything works, you can’t unsee it. It’s why governments around the world are salivating at the idea of a complete surveillance state and succeed at it to varying degrees. Civilization requires a certain structure, a subscription to the construct, to continue. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with being a part of something larger, but the rules are there so that the majority of participants contribute so that a few can reap the lion’s share of the rewards.

If we are to play the game and rise above it to a degree, we need to understand the rules more thoroughly. Only then do we have a choice in how we navigate it.

So the Catch-22?

We need to have high-level skills in order to provide for our families. Those same high-level skills are worthless in the larger context beyond our roles in our careers. We specialize and narrow down our area of expertise to become seemingly indispensable in our careers, only to find out somewhere down the road that we are only as essential to the corporation for its bottom line.

You can be the world’s premier basketweaver until the invention of tupperware. Then, your years of service and skill are worthless, and you’ll have to pivot or start from scratch.

From where I stand, that’s a sh*t deal.

You have two options: 1) diversify in your skill sets and keep your eyes open for new opportunities or 2) climb the corporate ladder and/or “fail upwards”. Either you become untouchable and fluid in the system or you become ever more subservient to its inner workings.

There’s gotta be a third option, though…one that allows for a level of flexibility and freedom. That’s where this is all leading for me.