Instead, that time is invested somewhere that may not carry forward.

Opportunity cost does not show up clearly. There is no invoice for it and there is certainly no line item in your personal balance sheet that says what could have been. But it is no less real. Four years on the wrong path is not just four years lost. It is four years not spent becoming excellent at something else.

At the system level, this matters even more. We talk a lot about shortages of talent in critical roles, namely skilled trades and other technical fields; the operational positions that keep systems running. At the same time, we have people investing heavily in paths that they will not stay in.

That is not just an individual issue. It is a misalignment of talent across the entire system. The question is not only how many people choose the wrong path but how much progress is delayed because of it.

This is one of five articles in a series called “The Hidden Tax of Guessing Your Career.” We’re not just wasting time and talent, we are misallocating it at scale and it is time to put a better voice to this issue so we can find a better way to address it.

But here, we’re not just discussing a food or a hobby. We’re talking about a career, one’s livelihood that exists deeply integrated with others. Thus, there is often a broader effect that often goes unnoticed.

Every time someone enters a path that they will not complete or will leave shortly after, there is an impact beyond that individual. A seat in a program is taken by someone who may not stay. Another candidate who would have completed that path does not get that opportunity. Training resources are allocated, time is invested, and then that investment is lost when the individual exits early. Employers bring people in, spend time recruiting, onboarding, and developing them, only to see them leave before they can contribute at scale. Teams are disrupted. Work has to be redistributed. The process starts again.

This shows up in the military. It shows up in other public service roles. It shows up in corporate environments. It shows up in professional schools. It is not just one loss rather a chain of inefficiencies that build on each other. When you multiply that across thousands of decisions every year, across multiple industries, you start to see the magnitude.

This is not a small issue at the edges. It is a structural inefficiency that affects how talent flows through the system and it raises a simple question. How many opportunities are we unintentionally blocking or delaying because we are not helping people get aligned earlier?

This is one of five articles in a series called “The Hidden Tax of Guessing Your Career.” We’re not just wasting time and talent, we are misallocating it at scale and it is time to put a better voice to this issue so we can find a better way to address it.

A law degree. An MBA. A specialized certification. Each one comes with a real cost: tuition, time out of the workforce, and (more often than we can realistically continue to endure) debt that follows for years.

And here is the part that does not get enough attention. Many of these decisions are made before the individual has truly experienced the work they are preparing for. Not the idea of the work; the actual work. The pace. The pressure. The repetition. The tradeoffs.

So the investment is made first, and the clarity comes later. In some cases, it works out. In many cases, it does not. You see it with lawyers who leave the profession within a few years. You see it with people who complete advanced degrees and then pivot entirely. You see it with individuals who finish training only to realize they have no interest in doing the job long term.

The degree did what it was designed to do. It signaled something. But the system allowed a large investment to be made before the person knew if the role was right. That is the inefficiency. And the cost does not sit with just one person.

Families often help carry the financial burden. Employers absorb the downstream effects. Institutions continue to operate within a model that assumes this level of misalignment is acceptable. When you step back, it becomes clear. We are spending a lot of money to discover things that could have been learned much earlier.

This is one of five articles in a series called “The Hidden Tax of Guessing Your Career.” We’re not just wasting time and talent, we are misallocating it at scale and it is time to put a better voice to this issue so we can find a better way to address it.

We tell people to follow their passion. Then we give them almost no real understanding of what that actually looks like in practice. So they guess. Our kids choose a major, a friend selects a training path, or we pursue a new career direction based on what we’ve heard, what sounds impressive, or what they/we think one is supposed to do. Sometimes it is driven by family expectations. Sometimes it is driven by money. Sometimes it is the absence of better information. And far too often, it is simply the pursuit of fantasy. I have called this pursuing a romantic ideal or understanding of what something is.

No matter what it is, at the heart of it is a guess.

And then they commit years of their life to this guess. Not learning a trade in a real environment nor building momentum through doing. Merely, committing to an idea of a career without ever really seeing it up close. What does a junior lawyer actually do on a daily basis? Not in the courtroom, but at a desk at 9:30 at night. What does a first-year consultant actually spend their time doing? What does it feel like to be in the middle of a long shift as a firefighter when it is quiet, repetitive, and physically demanding? We rarely show this part. We show the outcomes. We show the titles. We show the highlights.

So people optimize for something that is not real. Then, eventually, they run into reality. Sometimes that happens during training. Sometimes it happens after years of education. Sometimes it happens after they have already entered the workforce. And when that happens, the realization is simple but expensive. “This is not what I thought it would be.” At that point, the cost is already there.

Years spent moving in a direction that may not fit. Years that could have been used to build skill, income, and momentum somewhere else. This is the first hidden cost; the time spent guessing instead of experiencing. And it does not just stay with the individual, it carries forward into everything that comes next.

Historically and to a large degree today, we talk about career changes as failures, detours, or reinventions. This is language that implies something went wrong when, often, nothing did. Merely an adaptation to real changes in one’s life and environment.

Our sytems and our language have not caught up. Education, hiring, and professional identity still assume linear progression. Pauses are penalized, transitions are questioned, and lateral moves are discouraged. Perhaps we could choose to view these as deliberate acts reflecting learning, growth, and matrutiy. Normalizing career switching is not celebrating instability. It means acknowledging that adaptability is now a core capability.

In a changing economy, the ability to change direction thoughtfully is a form of resilience.

Like a boomerang, here we are again.

So let’s retire the idea that there was ever a truly easy path. There wasn’t. There was only the illusion of one and for a time, that illusion was comforting and affordable.

Reading the Room

Nobody knows what the future looks like. Plenty of us love guessing. What we can do is read momentum and direction. Right now the momentum is obvious.

Easy, repeatable office work (or remote office work) is dying or shrinking. The jobs that survive are doing more with less. The market for average is becoming fiercely competitive in a way it has never been. People havent changed or gotten worse, the floor for “good enough” was raised by a machine that never sleeps, never asks for a raise (yet), and never has an off day.

The middle, competent, dependable, average, used to be a destination. You could build a life there. A career, a mortgage, a retirement- a white picket fence one could say.

The middle is now a waypoint. You cannot afford to stop there anymore.

Skill One: The Expert

The first person who thrives in this world is the one who goes deep.

Not just knowledgeable. Not just experienced. Credible. Genuinely, specifically, undeniably expert at something the world cannot function without. AI makes them more powerful rather than redundant.

Think about the ER doctor. The structural engineer. The master electrician standing inside a problem nobody else can diagnose. The risk is the high stakes. Their name is on the outcome. When they’re wrong, something breaks, someone gets hurt, the consequences are real and traceable back to them.

That accountability is their moat.

AI will not remove these people. It will make them more precise, more efficient, more capable. But the human stays in the equation because the cost of removing them is too high. You still need someone to own it when it goes wrong.

The expert isn’t safe because their industry is safe. They’re durable because they went deep enough that replacing them is genuinely hard and has real consqequences.

Skill Two: The Adapter

The second person who thrives looks almost nothing like the first.

They don’t own one deep skill. They own the ability to acquire skills. They read where things are moving, position themselves ahead of the curve, and build before the market tells them to. They’re not waiting for permission or a credential or a clear job title. They’re creating something. That something is a product, a service, a solution, and constantly adjusting as they go. There is no perfect.

This person doesn’t panic when the paradigm changes, the paradigm barely matters. Delta is their native environment.

In a world that keeps rewriting the map, the adapter doesn’t need the map. They navigate by feel, by momentum, by an instinct trained through years of building and failing and building again.

They are not a jack of all trades. That’s the trap. They are a master, the strategic generalist that’s wide enough to see around corners, focused enough to actually execute.

Here’s what few will say.

These two people need each other and the ones who truly thrive find a way to be both.

The expert without adaptability becomes obsolete the moment their domain slightly shifts. History is full of brilliant no-named specialists who couldn’t survive a technology change they never saw coming.

The adapter without depth eventually runs out of surface. You can only pivot so many times before you need something solid to stand on. Range without roots is just spinning wheels.

The unstoppable combination is depth in something real paired with the range to see where it fits in a changing world. Expert enough to be trusted. Adaptable enough to stay relevant.

A true apex human.

The North Star

So what do you do with this if you’re 18-24, staring at a job market that looks nothing like what you were promised?

Stop looking for safe or easy. It was never really there for anyone.

Read the momentum. Figure out what the world will always need or will need. What has real stakes, real consequences, real humans at the center of it. Then start, and go deep as you can. Commit. Or figure out what’s changing faster than people can keep up with. Become the person who can keep up, who can build in that chaos. Someone who thrives in the chaos. That’s ROI.

The one thing you cannot afford is to be interchangeable. Average expertise. Average adaptability. Easily replaced. Fragile.

The middle was a destination. Now it’s a flashing warning sign.

Pick a city. Build something real. Fail. Learn. Fail more.

The world will always have room for the person who went all in and learned something valuable along the way.

Education is most certainly valuable. I’m a big fan. It can broaden perspective, build foundations, and teach people how to think. But preparation is something else entirely. Preparation is about readiness for responsibility. It is about understanding how work actually functions in real environments, under real constraints, with real consequences.

For a long time, the distinction didn’t matter much. Roles were stable, transitions were slow, and credentials served as reasonably reliable proxies. Today, that gap has widened into a fault line.

Many people leave formal education having learned a great deal, but having never been accountable for outcomes that mattered beyond the classroom. They are educated, but not prepared. At the same time, many roles that demand judgment, adaptability, and responsibility remain undervalued because they don’t fit traditional academic pathways.

Preparation comes from exposure, practice, feedback, and responsibility over time. Education can support that but it cannot replace it. Confusing the two has left people credentialed but uncertain, and systems surprised when theory fails to translate into practice.

I was taught to wear a belt anytime a pair of pants had belt loops and not because my pants needed it. It was a small act that said: show up with care, pay attention to the details. That idea matters more today, not less.

Enduring Values in a Changing World

We live in a world obsessed with speed, shortcuts, and credentials. But most of the work that actually keeps the country running, fields like aviation, energy, logistics, manufacturing, infrastructure, tech operations still depend on something older and more durable than titles or algorithms. It depends on people who take responsibility.

Gray collar work sits at the intersection of hands-on skill, technical fluency, and judgment. These jobs don’t just reward what you know. They reward how you carry yourself:

• Do you take pride in the basics?

• Do you respect the craft?

• Do you show up prepared, even when no one is watching?

That’s the belt.

Craft Still Recognizes Character

You can’t fake competence for long in gray collar work. The system breaks. The plane doesn’t fly. The network fails. The line stops. And when things go sideways, what matters isn’t how you branded yourself, it’s whether you built habits that hold under pressure.

Wearing a belt is about discipline. About standards you carry with you, not ones imposed from above.

The best technicians, operators, and leaders I’ve known didn’t need to announce their values. You could see them in how they treated tools, people, time, and responsibility.

They wore the belt; literally and figuratively.

What We Owe the Next Generation

When I tell my son to wear a belt, I’m not teaching him about clothes.

I’m teaching him that some values endure even as the world changes:

• Take pride in your work

• Respect the room and the responsibility

• Do the small things right, especially when they’re easy to skip

Gray collar work is progress anchored to character. And in a world moving fast and forgetting fundamentals, those anchors matter.

Sometimes the most modern thing you can do is carry the values that still work.

That infrastsructure assumed that jobs are stable, roles are well-defined, and fit can be inferred from credentials, titles, and past experience. They assume that if we optimize matching speed and volume, good outcomes will follow. For a long time, that approximation was good enough. In the AI economy, it isn’t.

Work is changing faster, roles are more fluid, and the cost of poor matches is higher on both sides. Workers don’t want to churn through jobs that don’t fit. Employers don’t want to absorb the cost (financial, operational, and cultural) of constant turnover. Endurance matters now, not just placement.

Gray collar roles make this especially clear. These jobs often require certifications and relevant education, but they also depend on something harder to capture: judgment, interest, adaptability, and personal ethos. They succeed when the work aligns not just with what someone can do, but with how they prefer to work and what they are willing to be accountable for.

Today’s infrastructure struggles with this on both sides. Workers have little support in developing real insight into themselves and the kinds of careers that would suit them over time. Employers struggle to ask for, interpret, and trust anything beyond surface-level signals. Conveying this kind of insight, honestly and credibly, is difficult for everyone involved.

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We will try to retrofit existing platforms and processes. Some improvements will help. But these are partial responses to a structural shift.

The demands of the AI economy require new beginnings, new ways of understanding people, new ways of describing work, and new connective tissue between the two. Without that, we will keep optimizing systems that no longer match the reality they are meant to serve.

Let’s treat this as a signal that something new needs to be built.

Sniff and Scurry never really settle in. They spend a part of every day continuing to seek out new cheese - just in case. But Hem and Haw see no reason to leave. They believe after a time that they are entitled to this cheese. Of course, one day, they saunter back to their pile of comfort and abundance to find that it’s gone. The mice kind of shrug and just go looking for new cheese. Hem resists, complains, and wants things to go back to the way they were. Haw is afraid at first, but eventually realizes that adapting is better than staying stuck.

Don’t be Hem.

That’s the moral. You aren’t entitled to any cheese, and you should be grateful for the cheese you find, but don’t just take it for granted. You have to constantly be seeking new sources of cheese. There are so many examples of this in business - we get complacent about marketing because sales are strong. We stop upskilling because we believe our job will always be around. We don’t invest in innovation because we have a product moat. Then, inevitably, somebody moves the cheese. We lose a big customer, get displaced, or have a competitor come out of nowhere with a better product that takes our market share.

But the same applies to life in general. We make a plan, execute, and then life throws a curveball at us. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to change course. It’s never fun, but to sit back and demand “why me!?” doesn’t change what needs to be done.

Adaptability is a learned skill. It’s a muscle you can exercise, and each time, it gets a little easier. Did I mention it’s never fun? It is, though, the one skill that is innate in us humans. We’ve been adapting to geography, ecology, economies, and culture. So, take some time to survey the landscape to predict what damage the AI tsunami will bring and expand your horizons.

We told factory workers, “Learn to code!” as though that was an obvious transition. It may be time to look at reversing that advice. Coders are quickly going to find themselves in three camps. The first will be those who know AI and how to work with it to create value for their employers. The second will be those who use their skills to start new companies on their own, now that bringing a viable product to market is MUCH cheaper and faster than ever before. The third will be those who need to reskill and find another way to create value. Maybe that’s a gray collar career. Maybe it’s something else, but employers are going to need 90% fewer coders. Anthropic just released this chart. (h/t, )

What it shows are the theoretical percentage of tasks that AI can do in 21 career groups in blue and the percentage currently being done in red. It shows the “AI resistant” careers in stark relief.

Opportunity no longer knocks

We al know the old saw. But it seems like it no longer applies. Opportunity isn’t out there knocking on doors anymore. Today, it’s doomscrolling Instagram and can’t be bothered. So, you have to knock on Opportunity’s door, and maybe it will answer.

For newer job seekers, I cannot stress enough how futile it will be to spam your resume to employers. There are hundreds if not thousands of applicants for each job. Your best bet is to choose some target companies and network your way in. “Sure, Don, just call the hiring manager and smooth talk her?” No - find employees doing the job you want. Ask them how they like working there. Ask them what their day is like. First, you may find that the company you thought was perfect is kind of a dysfunctional mess. Maybe that’s just in your department, or maybe it’s company wide. Talk to the salespeople. Talk to anyone in that company that you can find. It takes work. Finding a job is a full-time job.

One of my partners recently invited a recent aerospace grad that I know to a pitch event, just to network. I introduced him to an amazing guy doing really cool work in drone engineering, and Ryan wound up with a job the next day. I don’t even think it’s hit him how fantastic this opportunity is to grow, even though it’s not paying what he thought. He’s young and can pay his dues, but this experience will be transformative. All this after months of sending out resumes and following up by email. Times have changed.

was going to pursue an engineering career, and after she talked with someone about the job she wanted, she changed her mind, and so she founded a company called Perspectiv (getperspectiv.com) that teaches kids about what it’s really like to work in a given job. She’s passionate and dedicated, and she never looked back.

The big takeaway here is that the old rules are obliterated. The job market is tough. Times are changing. I know that creates anxiety, but one of the best ways to mitigate that is taking control. It’s not complicated - but it is uncomfortable and can be hard work. Part of that is assessing where you planned to be and whether that’s going to be useful in the future. If you’re in school for a subject that’s heavily blue above, ask yourself some hard questions.

• Do I even know what my job will be like?

• Am I suited for this work, and passionate about it, or am I pursuing pay or status?

• Would I be happier in a job where I’m creating a tangible work product - a physical thing?

• What could I learn to do with my personality and skillset that employers would pay me to do?

There are a lot of questions along these lines, but the cheese has been moved. Life is not going to come to you.

If you’re a parent coaching your child through these discussions, talk about this article with them. Wipe the slate clean of what ‘the plan’ was and look objectively at the landscape. Don’t be afraid to let go of the old paradigm, because it no longer serves.

I wish that weren’t so, but it is.

The hopeful message here is that there are tons of paths forward that can bring satisfaction and meaning - it just may not look like you thought it would.

That panel was the first time I articulated, publicly, the connection between the Industrial Revolution, its lasting impact on work and education, and what artificial intelligence might mean beyond efficiency and automation.

What struck me then and still does now was how deeply the logic of the Industrial Revolution had shaped our thinking. We talked about productivity, scale, and optimization almost instinctively. But very little was said about what had been lost along the way: judgment, craftsmanship, responsibility, and the human presence that gives work meaning.

I remember arguing that AI represented more than a technological shift. It represented an opportunity to reverse part of that legacy. If machines could take on what is mechanical and repeatable, whether physical or cognitive, then humans could move back into roles that are innately human. Roles that require context. Ethics. Empathy. Accountability. Judgment. True human creativity.

That idea was framed as an evolution versus nostalgia or resistance to progress.

The question I posed then is the same one I carry now: What if technology doesn’t dehumanize work further, but instead gives us the chance to re-humanize it? By being intentional about where humans remain essential and why. At the time, such a perspective felt early. Today, it feels unavoidable.

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AI has arrived faster and more broadly than many expected. The choices we make now in how we design systems, prepare workers, and talk honestly about work will determine whether this moment deepens the abstractions of the past or helps correct them.

That panel wasn’t a prediction or a waring, per se. But it most certainly was an invitation. We still get to choose what kind of future of work we build.

That narrow, moving boundary where speed meets control. Where you’re pushing the machine as hard as it can go but not one inch further. Cross the line and you lose traction. Blow the engine. End the race.

In the AI economy, there is also a line.

On one side is human judgment: context, values, accountability, ethics, creativity, restraint. On the other side is machine capability: scale, speed, recall, pattern recognition, tireless execution. Your job and your advantage lives on that line. But, you can’t find the line if you don’t understand the machine.

People who treat AI like magic never find it. People who treat AI like a threat never approach it. Only those who learn how AI actually performs (how prompts shape outcomes, how data shapes decisions, how automation amplifies both excellence and mistakes, etc.) develop the instincts to stay right on the edge. GET CURIOUS.

This is why gray collar work matters, now and well into the future as we see more displacement.

Accepting the Gray Collar paradigm is not about resisting technology. We love technology. Gray Collar is about pairing human judgment with machine capability in a way that endures. Gray Collar is about workers who know when to let the system run and when to intervene. When to automate and when to apply discretion. When to trust the output and, very importantly, when to question or challenge it.

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The faster you understand the machine, the faster you find the line. The faster you find the line, the faster you establish your role. And once you establish your role, you’re no longer replaceable. YOU ARE ESSENTIAL.

Learn how to drive and freedom abounds.

It began with a near mistake.

I dropped out of The Ohio State University as an aerospace engineering major with no real plan—just a vague sense that something didn’t feel right. In what I can only describe as a very arbitrary pivot, I moved into the film industry and spent over a decade working on big-budget movies in Hollywood. It was exciting, creative, and at times surreal—but eventually, I began asking deeper questions about purpose and calling.

In search of something that felt meaningful and more fulfilling, I decided to return to school to pursue engineering. Aerospace had always felt prestigious and important—the kind of career that served a greater purpose than what I had found in film. I was ready to commit years of my life and tens of thousands of dollars to what I had long thought of as “the road not taken.”

Then one conversation changed everything.

While applying to programs, I had the opportunity to speak with a young aerospace engineer working in the field. Her résumé was impressive. She had done everything “right.” The catch? She wasn’t happy. As she described her day-to-day work, I felt something shift. The reality of the job—the actual tasks, the rhythm of the work, the environment—was nothing like the story I had constructed in my mind.

I had romanticized the career. I had projected onto it everything I felt was missing in my own life. That’s when it hit me: I was preparing to pour time, energy, and money into a new career without truly understanding what the job entailed.

That brief, honest exchange saved me from making a costly mistake.

It also exposed a much bigger problem.

Most students never get that conversation. They choose a path based on prestige, pressure, assumptions, or incomplete information. They commit time, money, and identity to careers they barely understand. And when the reality doesn’t match the expectation, the consequences ripple outward—financial strain, dissatisfaction, burnout, fractured families, disillusionment.

Perspectiv was founded to interrupt that cycle.

At its core, Perspectiv is a career exploration platform built on authentic, in-depth interviews with real professionals. We don’t offer surface-level job descriptions or generic summaries. We sit down with people who are actually doing the work—plumbers, surgeons, ice farmers, taxidermists, entrepreneurs, blacksmiths, wind turbine technicians, FBI agents, lawyers (just to name a few)—and we ask them to tell the truth.

What does your day-to-day actually look like?
What misconceptions do people have about this profession?
What do you wish you had known before starting down this path?
What advice would you give someone who is considering this career?
What do you love most? What are the tradeoffs?

Students deserve more than vague encouragement to “follow their dreams.” They deserve clarity.

Perspectiv is not anti-college, nor is it anti-any particular path. It is pro-awareness. Pro-agency. Pro-purpose. There are countless high-paying, high-demand, deeply meaningful careers that don’t require a four-year degree—and many that do. The goal isn’t to push students in one direction. It’s to equip them to make deliberate decisions grounded in reality rather than assumption.

Along the way, I’ve learned that career decisions are rarely just about work. They shape identity, community, family life, and long-term fulfillment. When more people find work they feel called to do—not just a job—the ripple effect is profound. Families are stronger. Communities are more stable. Individuals are less anxious and more confident.

If a single honest conversation saved me from years of misalignment, imagine what access to hundreds of those conversations could do for a generation.

That’s the world Perspectiv is building.

Perspectiv and The Gray Collar share a core belief: people deserve the truth about work before they stake their future on it. Gray Collar is reshaping the cultural story around real-world, resilient roles. Perspectiv makes those roles visible through honest conversations with the people actually doing them. In a shifting economy, with growing concern over AI displacement, this conversation is bigger than any one platform—and I’m honored to be part of it. If this resonates, subscribe to The Gray Collar Collective, share this with someone navigating their next step, and explore the professionals telling their stories at getperspectiv.com.

I’ve got a buddy who still wakes up every morning at 4:45. Nobody’s making him. He just runs that way. Some habits get baked in deep after the military. The house is quiet, coffee’s on, boots by the door. He served twelve years. Deployed. Worked maintenance and logistics. Not glamorous work, but the kind that keeps everything else from falling apart.

These days he repairs MRI and X-ray machines for hospitals.

By 6:30 he’s walking into a trauma center somewhere in the Southeast, tool bag in hand. If you’ve ever been around one of those machines, you know they carry a certain weight. When they’re down, the whole building feels it. Diagnoses get delayed. Surgeries get pushed. Families sit in waiting rooms staring at the floor. It matters.

A nurse met him not long ago and said, “We’ve got a problem. It’s down.”

No panic. No drama. Just urgency.

The military wired him for that kind of moment. He pulls the panels, runs diagnostics, traces wiring, checks boards. He listens to the machine the way he once listened to engines. There’s always a reason something fails. You just have to be steady enough to find it.

Before lunch, the MRI was back online.

Nobody clapped. Nobody made a speech. A tech gave him a quiet thank you and rolled the next patient in. That’s how most important work goes. Quiet. Necessary. Unseen.

He’ll clear close to six figures this year. No traditional four-year degree. Certifications, hands-on training, long days, and a willingness to master complex systems most folks never think about. When those machines don’t work, people don’t get answers. He knows that.

He doesn’t wear the uniform anymore.

But he’s still serving.

We spend a lot of time in this country arguing about white collar and blue collar. Office jobs versus hard hats. College versus everything else. But there’s a whole group of men and women who don’t fit neatly in either lane. Highly trained. Technically sharp. Calm under pressure. Mission first.

A lot of them come out of the military already built for this kind of work. They just don’t always know where it fits.

I do.

It’s gray collar.

And if you ask me, it’s some of the most honest work left in America.

The great drivers weren’t great because they were reckless. They were great because they understood the machine. They could feel it. They knew how it worked, where it was strong, where it was fragile, and exactly how far they could push it without breaking it. They didn’t fight the car. They partnered with it.

That’s mechanical sympathy.

In the AI economy, we are surrounded by machines more powerful than anything most workers have ever encountered. Systems that can reason, generate, predict, summarize, automate, and scale faster than we can. And yet, most people are being told one of two things:

1. Don’t worry, the machine will take care of it.

2. Worry deeply, the machine will replace you.

Both miss the point.

The real advantage belongs to the people who understand how these systems actually work. Not at the level of buzzwords or demos but at the level of behavior, failure modes, constraints, and tradeoffs. What AI is good at. What it is bad at. Where it breaks. Where it hallucinates. Where it needs human judgment to stay on track.

Mechanical sympathy for AI means knowing how to push these systems hard without losing control. It means understanding latency, context windows, data quality, bias, drift, automation risk. It means knowing when to trust the machine and when to slow it down.

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True today, but especially so in the Gray collar jobs that are yet to be defined, this kind of understanding is vital. Understanding does not come by titles and not by (most) degrees alone. It comes by the ability to work with intelligent systems in a productive, insightful way.

If you don’t understand the machine, you can’t find the edge. And if you can’t find the edge, you don’t control your role. Mechanical sympathy is foundational if you want to be a world-class, or at the very least - competitive, driver.

Studied hard. Checked the boxes. Climbed the ladder. Now the skills you learned are being automated, and suddenly you’re told there’s no room for you anymore.

Software developers. Accountants. Paralegals. Associates billing 2,000 hours a year. The labor market is shifting and you’re feeling it in your bones.

The Brookings Institute has some good visualizations for this.

Their research highlights careers most exposed and the adaptability of workers within those roles. It’s pretty fascinating to look at. But that doesn’t help you right now.

Craig talks about the fear many are feeling right now, and more certainty can help mitigate that.

The Workforce They Never Talked About

We said this in these pages so many times, I feel a little silly repeating it but it’s true. For decades, America has taught one story:

Go to college → get a safe job → climb the corporate ladder.

But that story assumed we’d always need more white-collar workers. Or college grads. Or desk jockeys.

We won’t.

Meanwhile, there’s a huge chunk of our economy that has always powered real progress: people doing work that can’t be automated because it happens in the real world. Field work. Technical work. Skilled, thoughtful, necessary work — in healthcare, safety, infrastructure, science, and industry.

These aren’t “lesser” jobs. These are critical jobs.

Physical therapists — about 267,000 strong in the U.S. — earn north of $100k a year on average and have projected growth well above average. (Wikipedia)

Elevator installers and repairers regularly crack six figures. Skilled trades like electricians and HVAC techs show strong wages and expanding opportunity. (WifiTalents)

The skilled technical workforce — the people with high technical skill who may not hold a bachelor’s degree — is a pillar of economic stability, yet it often goes unseen. (CSIS)

Even more important, as the US reshores its manufacturing, we face a shortage of skilled workers.

Meanwhile, the Narrative You Grew Up With is Being Rewritten

A recent labor market analysis shows something almost no one predicted: trade and vocational workers with associate-level credentials have, for the first time in decades, had lower unemployment than college grads — even as AI begins to thin the ranks of white-collar work. (The Washington Post)

We trained two generations to think that reality happens behind a desk. Now the real world is calling. And Peter from Office Space* summed it up nicely:

“I guess I sort of like it.”

*(I obviously need another frame of reference, but Office Space is perfection, IMO)

You Don’t Need a New Résumé. You Need a New Lens.

If AI is disrupting your job, you won’t find solace in a better resume. You might, though, find it in exploring the thousands of jobs no one ever told you about - the ones that provide value to your community, work that happens in the real world.

And here’s another piece most people miss:

The same AI that is disrupting your job can help you pivot

• To discover which certifications match your strengths,

• To map a training path that doesn’t take four years and six figures in debt,

• To outline a business around your skills, not your title,

• To find your first clients and build momentum.

AI isn’t your enemy. Ignoring it is your risk.

ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, Gemini - they are all AMAZING resources if you really engage with them. You can talk them through what you like, don’t like, and your experience, and they can surface some interesting thoughts. But you have to treat it like a conversation, not a search. “Give me 6 jobs that pay $300k or more” won’t yield meaningful results.

You Are Not Your Job Title

If you love the work you do now and you can use AI to do it better, deeper, faster; that’s great. Fight for that future. Become one of the few who operates at a level machines can’t touch.

But if your heart isn’t in it, if this felt like a ticket to comfort rather than meaning then this is your invite out of the default.

The cost of switching careers only feels high when you treat your past choices as sunk costs. They aren’t. You have choices now. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but you do.

At my last job, which I held for ten years, I never felt like I could leave. I wasn’t getting promoted or challenged. It was frustrating. But I wound up in that job after several whole career changes. Several of my colleagues got laid off, and to a person, they were relieved. They felt free to find something less… well, whatever was going on in their department at the time. Many of you know that feeling.

Many of us introduce ourselves AS our job. “I’m a [job title].” You are not. You are a daughter, father, brother, volunteer, cyclist, aspiring K-Pop star - whatever! But at least, you are someone who “does a thing for a living.” It’s a subtle distinction, but an important one. When you lose that job - and can’t find another with that title, you don’t have to lose your identity.

You can now consider things you wouldn’t have before; not because they were beneath you, but because they were hidden from you.

You ever meet someone who has a fascinating job that isn’t out of your skills realm (like a theoretical physicist or something), but they backed into that job in a weird way? Guess what? Now's the perfect time to look at yourself holistically and ask, “What value do I want to contribute to the world?”

What Really Matters

Work that is grounded in real outcomes, real environments, real people.
You can help people get healthier. You can keep buildings safe. You can help systems work instead of pushing pixels. Those jobs matter.

And unlike many office roles, these fields aren’t shrinking - many are growing, with projected openings and wage stability that most white-collar workers can only dream about.

This Is a Movement

We’re naming what’s been missing from the conversation about work:

It’s not white collar. It’s not blue collar.
It’s gray collar — and it matters.

If you’re feeling the ground shift under your feet, you’re not alone — and you’re not out of options.

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This is the fork in the road. The real world still needs real people. And the future rewards those who step into that reality, not away from it.

People are afraid of being left behind. Afraid that the work they trained for won’t matter. Afraid that a single wrong decision will close doors they can’t reopen. Afraid that technology is moving faster than they can adapt.

That fear didn’t come out of nowhere.

For decades, we told people that if they followed the rules (get educated, work hard, stay on the path, etc.) the system would meet them halfway. When that promise started breaking, trust broke with it. AI didn’t create that fear. AI simply arrived at a moment when the ground was already shifting.

The mistake is treating fear as either irrational or something to be eliminated. Fear is information. It tells us that the signals people rely on no longer feel reliable. What matters is what we do next.

We can feed the fear by framing the future as a zero-sum contest between humans and machines. Or we can be honest about what’s actually changing - the nature of what people are needed for, not whether or not people are needed.

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Fear subsides when clarity increases. When people understand where human judgment still matters. When pathways are visible. When responsibility is offered instead of withheld. Our goal should not be a promise of certainty. That would be another lie. The goal is to replace vague anxiety with grounded understanding and to build systems that give people a fair chance to adapt.

Fear doesn’t mean people are weak. It does mean the system stopped explaining itself.

That’s fixable.

I also see the downsides.

Technology doesn’t arrive in the abstract. It arrives inside organizations, workflows, and lives. It changes how decisions are made, how responsibility is distributed, and how people experience their work. Ignoring that reality is negligent.

I don’t fear artificial intelligence. I work with it. I invest in it. I push it forward. But I also know that efficiency is not the same as progress, and automation is not the same as understanding. Used carelessly, powerful tools can narrow judgment, distance accountability, and quietly strip meaning out of work long before anyone notices.

That’s why I’m involved in this conversation.

AI is already adopted so this is not a “should we” question. The real question is where it belongs (and where it doesn’t). What decisions should be automated, and which ones must remain human? Where does speed matter more than context, and where does context matter more than speed? Who is accountable when systems fail, behave unexpectedly, or cause harm?

These are operational questions that cannot be avoided nor ignored.

In the environments I work in, the most effective systems are not the ones that replace people. They are the ones that clarify the human role. Where machines handle what is mechanical and humans remain responsible for judgment, ethics, and outcomes. When that balance is clear, technology amplifies capability.

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I care about this because I don’t want a future where technology quietly dictates the shape of work without intention. I want one where we are deliberate and where people understand how these systems work, where their judgment still matters, and where responsibility doesn’t disappear behind dashboards and algorithms.

This is about honestly understanding innovation, not slowing or limiting it.

If we want technology to serve society rather than hollow it out, we have to be clear-eyed about its role in work. That means designing systems that respect human judgment, preparing workers for the responsibilities that remain, and refusing the false choice between progress and dignity.

I believe this type of intentionality is my obligation as technology CEO.

I can vividly remember spending an entire angst filled day at Whiteman Air Force Base passing with, excitement, dread, anger, and happiness while the slides of Blue to Gray flipped in the background of my attention. For those of you who have already received your DD214 you may recall a similar feeling, and for those who have yet to be discharged, it’s pretty much the same feeling you had going into MEPS. I joined the military shortly after high-school in 1994 with a small car-payment and left the military 4 years later with a nice stereo, a closet full of clothes, an even larger car-payment, and every ounce of overconfidence that our nation’s military requires the enlisted to hold. TAP (the Transition Assistance Program) was outwardly helpful and the Career Transition Workshop was meaningful, but both were staffed by enlisted personnel, or spouses of military personnel who did not fully know how to transition themselves. Regardless, I did manage to land with both feet on the ground, all the way down at the bottom of the food chain… again.

I was, however, very fortunate to have the skills and experience drilled in to me by the Air Force. Nondestructive Testing (NDT) was an excellent career to learn and almost directly translated to an external position, but I found out shortly that all the confidence in the world would not grant me a Level 2 certification: otherwise known as a Journeyman. I still had to study, work hard and acquire more experience to earn that position. The reward for which truly paid-over several times from my initial 4-year investment of enlistment in less than 4 years after my separation. I doubled down on my investment with an engineering degree paid for by the Montgomery G.I. Bill, which paired extremely well with the NDT experience which acted as a springboard for my career path. I am now a Responsible NDT Level 3, equivalent to Master Craftsman, for a very large company that will remain anonymous because I would never use a company I work for to lend credit towards may name. I am by no means a rockstar, but those who know me would consider me a success story, especially those who knew me before the military. I would not be where I am today without that life changing experience; it truly was and is the absolute best fraternity ever.

To my military brethren who feel anxious or lost in your transition. I know there are some of you who did not have a great experience and are fed up. You are not alone or abandoned without a path. There is a very good chance that there are jobs in gray collar areas that could correlate directly or can relate to your experience with a little bit of retraining. For instance, even you crazy AO guys don’t have to worry about how ordinance handling or disposal could cross over into civilian roles when there are IPC J-STD soldering certifications you could obtain with little to no effort. For Supply and Logistics personnel, by spending less than $1k, you can become a Certified Calibration Technician where you can join any company’s metrology team and start climbing the corporate ladder through a quality department who will absolutely appreciate your attention to detail. For less than $3k, any one of you can take an online class that will prepare you for certification testing towards a Certified Quality Inspection position, or even an ASQ certification as a Certified Quality Engineer (No Degree Required!).

If you are not happy where you are careerwise, use your TAP or VA benefits to learn what is available to you. Don’t let them convince you that you’ll only find success in college. For me, college was fun and useful but not necessary. A degree is comparable to a box of tools; it is only useful if there is a need for them, and worthless if you don’t know how to use them. It is up to you to determine your success, and you can start by using or expanding the toolbox you’ve already earned. Success is not a tangible thing; it is a path or a goal you reach. Only you can define your own path from Blue (or Green, if you will, for the less fortunate branches) to Gray successfully.