Career Advice for Surviving AI Outsourcing

Developer Tea

This episode addresses the fear surrounding industry changes, such as AI and potential outsourcing, and offers actionable advice for engineers, managers, and leaders to navigate these challenges. You'll learn why shifting your focus from just developing skills to embracing ownership and responsibility is crucial for long-term career resilience and agency.

• Understand the fear and concern that traditional skills may lose value due to industry changes, including AI and potential layoffs.
• Discover the critical shift needed in your career focus from solely developing skills towards embracing ownership and responsibility.
• Learn why responsibility and ownership are becoming increasingly valuable and are difficult to outsource or export, contrasting with skills which may become more fluid.
• Explore how human agency, including judging success, setting goals and direction, and translating inputs into action, complements or supervises work potentially done by machines or outsourced teams, with the human taking ultimate responsibility.
• Gain practical advice on how to apply this shift by discussing where your responsibility, accountability, and ownership can grow in conversations with your manager.
• Recognise how focusing on increasing the things you are personally accountable for builds trust and reliability, qualities that extend beyond your technical skill set.
• Understand that accountability, ownership, responsibility, and reliability are becoming core behaviours for a good engineer as skills become more fluid.
• Find support and discussion with other engineers by joining the Developer Tea Discord community.

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