It’s almost impossible to talk about careers right now without talking about AI.
Will AI take away jobs? Which skills will matter? What should we learn? What should our kids learn? How do we make sure we stay relevant?
There is a lot of excitement, but there is also a lot of fear.
And I get it. Things are changing incredibly fast. Some of the things we spent years learning to do can now be done in minutes. Jobs will change. Some roles may disappear and completely new ones will show up.
But I have been thinking about this a little differently.
What if this is also a time when we need each other more?
We talk so much about the relationship between humans and AI. How do we work with AI? What do we let AI do? What should humans continue to do?
But what about human + human?
When I think about my own career, some of the most important moments didn’t come from a course or a certification or even from having a perfectly thought-out career plan.
They came from people.
Someone who saw something in me. Someone who gave me an opportunity. Someone who shared what they had learned. A conversation that made me think about something differently. And sometimes just knowing someone else had gone through a similar transition made the next step feel a little more possible.
AI can give us access to an incredible amount of knowledge. It can help us learn faster, explore possibilities and probably do things we haven’t even imagined yet.
I find that exciting.
But I don’t think it takes away from the value of human experience. If anything, I think it makes sharing that experience even more important.
And that brings me back to something I started several years ago.
It was called MyTechLadder.
The idea was pretty simple. There are so many people around us who have learned something from their careers that could help someone else. So why not create a community where people are willing to share some of that experience?
I called them Career Champions.
I still love that idea.
What I am not so sure about anymore is the word ladder. 😊
Because careers really don’t work like that, do they?
We don’t always keep climbing neatly from one rung to the next.
We move sideways. We try something new. We take a break. We get an opportunity we weren’t looking for. Sometimes we make a choice and sometimes life makes the choice for us.
We learn things in one part of our career that suddenly become useful somewhere completely unexpected.
And at some point, we may realize that growth isn’t only about the next title. It can also be about learning, exploring, creating, giving back or helping someone else along the way.
The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea of a career arc.
An arc can change direction.
It can have several chapters.
And you don’t necessarily have to know where it ends when you start the next one.
That feels especially relevant now.
AI is changing the landscape around us, and I don’t think the answer is to pretend that nothing will change. But I also don’t want fear to become the way we approach our careers.
I’d rather approach this moment with curiosity.
What can I learn?
What experience do I already have that becomes even more valuable?
What could I try that I might not have considered before?
Who can I learn from?
And maybe just as importantly, who can learn something from me?
So I am bringing MyTechLadder back in a new avatar.
MyCareerArc.
The idea of Career Champions remains at the heart of it. People with different experiences and perspectives sharing what they have learned with others who are figuring out their own next step.
I don’t want this to be a place where someone tells you they have figured out the future of work.
I’m not sure anyone has. 😊
I’d much rather it become a place where we figure some of it out together.
Where we talk honestly about what’s changing, without making everything about fear.
Where someone’s experience can help someone else see a possibility they hadn’t considered.
And where we remember that even as AI becomes a bigger part of how we work, humans are still a very important part of how we grow.
Maybe the future of work isn’t just about humans learning how to work with AI.
Maybe it’s also about humans getting better at helping other humans navigate what comes next.
That’s the idea behind MyCareerArc.
Let’s see where this arc takes us. 😊