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Career Advice for Surviving AI Outsourcing

Summary

The episode opens with a personal story about the host’s wife ending her tenure at a startup, framing the current job market as volatile and filled with fear about skills being devalued by AI and outsourcing. The host acknowledges the anxiety many engineers feel but emphasizes the need to confront this reality rather than predict the future.

The core advice presented is to shift career focus from skill development to ownership and responsibility. While skills remain important, they are becoming more fluid commodities as AI advances. The host argues that what’s difficult to outsource or export is human accountability—the ability to take responsibility for outcomes, judge success, set direction, and be the accountable person in the loop.

The practical application involves having conversations with managers about expanding one’s scope of responsibility and accountability rather than just adding technical skills to a portfolio. By building trust through reliability and ownership, engineers develop qualities that extend beyond any specific skill set and become more valuable as skills become more interchangeable.

The episode concludes with encouragement to pursue clarity, perspective, and purpose in one’s career, suggesting that focusing on these human qualities will continue to provide value even as the technological landscape changes. The host invites listeners to join the Developer Tea Discord community for support and discussion.

Recommendations

Communities

  • Developer Tea Discord — The host recommends joining the Developer Tea Discord community for support, discussion with other engineers, and asking questions about the industry. He mentions being available for direct messages there.

Topic Timeline

  • 00:00:00 — Introduction to job market fears and personal story — The host introduces the episode by discussing the difficult parts of engineering careers and shares that his wife recently ended her tenure at a startup. He acknowledges the widespread fear in the industry about skills losing value due to AI and market changes, setting up the context for the advice to follow.
  • 00:03:42 — The core advice: shift from skills to ownership — The host presents the main advice: shift focus from skill development to ownership and responsibility. He explains that while skills have traditionally been rewarded in careers, they’re becoming more fluid commodities. The valuable hire will be someone who can take responsibility for outcomes, even if the actual work is done by AI or others.
  • 00:07:14 — Why responsibility is difficult to outsource — The host elaborates on why ownership and responsibility are hard to export. He discusses how AI can augment skills but cannot truly be held accountable. A human in the loop is critical because they take ownership for finishing the job, setting goals, judging success, and being the accountable party when things need correction.
  • 00:10:01 — Practical application with managers — The host provides concrete advice: in your next one-on-one with your manager, drive the conversation toward where your responsibility, accountability, and ownership can grow. Focus on expanding the scope of what you’re personally held accountable for rather than just adding technical skills to your portfolio.
  • 00:11:29 — Conclusion and encouragement — The host concludes by acknowledging the somber moment in the industry but encourages listeners to keep pushing toward their values, seeking perspective and purpose. He reiterates that qualities of accountability and ownership will become core behaviors of good engineers as skills become more fluid.

Episode Info

  • Podcast: Developer Tea
  • Author: Jonathan Cutrell
  • Category: Technology Business Careers Society & Culture
  • Published: 2025-05-15T07:00:00Z
  • Duration: 00:13:09

References

Podcast Info

Transcript

[00:00:00] In today’s episode, I want to take a moment to talk about some of the most difficult parts

[00:00:22] of our job as engineers, as managers, as leaders.

[00:00:30] I want to share a vulnerable event that occurred in our lives.

[00:00:37] Last week, my wife ended her tenure at her role in the startup that she was working in.

[00:00:50] And she is like many who are listening to this podcast right now.

[00:00:57] And there’s a lot of fear.

[00:01:01] There’s a lot of concern that the industry is changing, that what we used to bring to the table

[00:01:07] may lose its value.

[00:01:11] That the skills that we’ve fought so hard to learn, that we’ve practiced and refined over the years,

[00:01:20] that those skills are going to become less valuable, that they’re going to be replaced

[00:01:27] somehow will not be in demand any longer.

[00:01:31] And I’m not going to sit here and tell you how the industry will change.

[00:01:36] I don’t have a crystal ball in front of me.

[00:01:39] But what I can do is give you the best advice that I’ve heard.

[00:01:45] And it applies to everyone, every job, especially those that are in knowledge working roles.

[00:01:55] Okay.

[00:01:56] This, this,

[00:01:57] this advice is the best advice that I’ve heard for combating these kinds of issues.

[00:02:07] Whether your job is being threatened by, you know, some, some form of AI, some kind of LLM.

[00:02:15] Maybe your job is being threatened by layoffs.

[00:02:20] Maybe the company is just trying to save money or maybe the requirements of the role are shifting.

[00:02:27] Some skill set that you don’t necessarily have.

[00:02:32] The advice that I have for you should help prevent more of those situations.

[00:02:40] Before I go any further, I do want to say that we are doing just fine for anybody who would be concerned for us,

[00:02:50] for our family, for any reason.

[00:02:51] We’re, we’re going to be perfectly fine.

[00:02:54] But I know that that’s not necessarily true.

[00:02:57] For everyone who’s listening to this.

[00:02:59] Okay.

[00:03:00] So I hope that you will take what we’re saying to heart here, but also know that we have deep empathy for you in your situation.

[00:03:12] If you want to talk about anything, if you want to talk about your job situation, if you want to get advice from other engineers,

[00:03:21] the developer, the developer T discord is a good place to do that.

[00:03:26] Developer D.com slash discord.

[00:03:27] I’m in there.

[00:03:28] You can directly message me on discord and I will do my best to, to get back to you.

[00:03:34] This is one of the more volatile times in my working life that I’ve seen in the job market.

[00:03:42] And so I believe this advice that I’m going to give you today is perhaps more appropriate than ever.

[00:03:49] The advice is not groundbreaking.

[00:03:51] You probably have heard this advice before, but hopefully we’re going to give it a little bit of a different framing.

[00:03:57] In today’s episode.

[00:03:58] And then you’ve heard it, uh, you know, put, put to, or put in a different frame than what you’ve heard this put in before.

[00:04:07] And here’s the advice.

[00:04:08] Okay.

[00:04:10] We, most of the time in our careers have been rewarded for our skill development.

[00:04:20] Okay.

[00:04:20] So think about this as, you know, the thing that we end up getting our dopamine reward.

[00:04:27] We learn a new skill and therefore those skills are marketable and we can pick up a new job because we can do a new thing, right?

[00:04:38] So, um, think about this as the early days when you were a software engineer and you develop skills.

[00:04:45] Um, you know, maybe you learned a coding, uh, coding language.

[00:04:48] Maybe you learned, uh, how to design.

[00:04:50] Maybe you’re, uh, you know, heavily knowledgeable about a particular subject matter.

[00:04:57] And you wielded this in order to get jobs.

[00:05:02] And so our resumes are littered with these skill areas, right?

[00:05:08] They’re, they’re littered with, uh, you know, long lists of buzzwords very often.

[00:05:13] But I want you to shift your focus from skills to ownership and responsibility.

[00:05:25] Shift away from skills.

[00:05:27] Into and towards ownership and responsibility.

[00:05:31] Now, am I saying that skills are no longer necessary?

[00:05:35] Not, uh, not directly.

[00:05:37] Okay.

[00:05:38] That’s, that’s certainly is not an assertion I’m going to make right now.

[00:05:41] But as we see skills become a more fluid commodity.

[00:05:48] Okay.

[00:05:48] This means that, uh, instead of, you know, directly writing every line of code.

[00:05:54] Uh, you know, what we’re going to see.

[00:05:57] most likely, as AI continues to advance, we will see that the person that is responsible for that

[00:06:06] code, right, that will be the valuable hire, somebody who knows how to take responsibility.

[00:06:15] Now, very often, in order to take responsibility for that, you do also need the skill set,

[00:06:21] right? In other words, you know, you either need to be able to do the thing yourself so that when

[00:06:29] you are supervising the thing being done, whether that’s by another person, maybe it’s outsourced,

[00:06:34] maybe it’s a collaboration with a machine, whatever is doing the work, you can take

[00:06:41] responsibility for it. You’re able to verify it, right? But that’s not a strict requirement

[00:06:47] for responsibility. Taking responsibility for something does not

[00:06:51] necessarily mean that you are delivering it. It means that you are willing to put yourself

[00:06:58] as the accountable person. You are taking responsibility because you know how to achieve

[00:07:06] whatever it is that needs to be achieved, or you’re willing to take the risk of figuring it out.

[00:07:14] So, the skill itself may not necessarily come to bear. You may be able to

[00:07:21] outsource that skill to something else. And you may need to import skills that you don’t necessarily

[00:07:28] have yourself. Now, again, I should be clear. I don’t believe that all skills are easily exported

[00:07:36] to a machine. I don’t buy into that narrative currently. I do believe that many of our skills

[00:07:46] are augmented pretty significantly, right? Pretty significantly by the advances in artificial

[00:07:55] intelligence. And we have to reckon with what that means. Regardless of how you feel about that

[00:08:02] reality, we do need to reckon with it in order to figure out what to do next, right? So what I’m

[00:08:11] recommending for you to do is to confront that reality,

[00:08:16] okay? And try to figure out what exactly is valuable in your human agency. What is hard to

[00:08:28] replace? What is difficult to outsource, to export? Responsibility is difficult to export.

[00:08:38] The human ability to judge whether something has succeeded or not, to set goals, to set direction,

[00:08:46] a lot of that stuff is difficult to export. Certainly the ability to listen to multiple inputs

[00:08:55] and translate those into action. But ultimately, the most difficult thing to export, the most

[00:09:04] difficult thing to outsource is ownership and responsibility. You could try to hold, let’s say,

[00:09:13] an AI coding assistant accountable.

[00:09:16] You could try to hold them to some level of ownership. But at the end of the day,

[00:09:22] if the quality of the code that is written by the LLM is not very good, it’s extremely unlikely

[00:09:30] that you have a clear escalation path, right? That you can hold the LLM accountable.

[00:09:36] What it would take is doing the work again, doing it over. At some point, a human,

[00:09:46] in this loop, is critical. It’s critical because the human will take ownership. They will take

[00:09:54] responsibility for finishing the job. Okay, so this is a little bit abstract. How do we make

[00:10:01] this practical? In your next one-on-one with your manager, drive the conversation towards

[00:10:08] where your responsibility, accountability, and ownership can grow.

[00:10:16] Where can you expand the scope of those things? Instead of just focusing on what technical

[00:10:25] training or tutorial or what kind of tech tool you could add to your portfolio, none of those

[00:10:34] things are necessarily bad. But focus instead on where can you increase the number of things that

[00:10:42] you are personally held accountable to. This is where you can expand the scope of those things.

[00:10:46] You will build a sense of trust that you are reliable and able to get things done.

[00:10:55] Those qualities extend beyond your skill set, right? Those qualities are going to be

[00:11:02] the kinds of things that you’re looking for in up-leveling your engineering organization.

[00:11:09] And they’re going to become more and more important, right? As our skills become more fluid,

[00:11:16] those

[00:11:16] qualities of accountability, of ownership, of responsibility, those behaviors will become

[00:11:23] kind of core behaviors of a good engineer. Thank you so much for listening to today’s

[00:11:29] episode of Developer Tea. I understand that this might feel like a somber moment in the industry,

[00:11:37] but I know the people that are listening to this show that you care about your career.

[00:11:41] I know that you care about doing the next best thing that you can,

[00:11:46] about becoming a little bit better today than you were yesterday, and the same tomorrow.

[00:11:55] And I believe that if you keep pushing towards the things that you care about,

[00:12:00] towards your values, towards seeking perspective and seeking purpose,

[00:12:06] that will ultimately lead to more of what you want in your life. I won’t even say necessarily

[00:12:14] career success, because I don’t think that’s going to be the case. I don’t think that’s going to be the case.

[00:12:16] I don’t think that’s going to be the case. I don’t think that’s going to be the case. I don’t think

[00:12:16] that’s not always everybody’s ultimate goal, right? But if you’re seeking clarity, perspective,

[00:12:22] and purpose in your career, then I feel very strongly that those pursuits will continue to

[00:12:32] pay you back. Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode of Developer Tea. Again,

[00:12:39] if you need support, if you are looking in your journey as an engineer, if you’re looking

[00:12:44] for other engineers to discuss things with, to talk about the industry, to ask questions of,

[00:12:54] join us on the Developer Tea Discord community. That’s at developertea.com

[00:12:58] slash discord. Thanks so much for listening, and until next time, enjoy your tea.

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