The Importance of Following Your Passion in an Age of Disruption
I’ve always been a planner, a thinker. To a fault, no doubt.
Measure twice (or 5 times) and cut once. Look both ways, and up and down before your leap.
That mentality has served me fairly well up to this point in my life, but it feels more and more like overthinking and caution is holding me back.
In my family, I was raised on the importance of survival and security. Hard work, discipline, and frugality along a proven career path for a baseline of security and survival.
These are all great traits to embrace, but the latter concept of a clear and secure career path feels more and more like a notion for generations past.
Conversely, taking action on my dreams and passions are what led me to break out of my default risk averse and security seeking behavior leading to some of the largest advancements in my life and career.
The idea of a proven path is easier to accept since it supposedly addresses our dislike of uncertainty, but it is more and more becoming an illusion.
The Concept of Career Security Is Eroding
In the span of a generation concepts like pensions, strong unions, job security and employer loyalty have eroded away along with the American Dream of owning a home, retirement support with Social Security, and affordable healthcare.
It is true that economic cycles ebb and flow, but there are greater forces at work with this overarching trend and it’s heading in the wrong direction.
For younger generations, the house with a picket fence and 2.5 kids is more difficult than ever to achieve financially.
For all the greater forces happening in economics and politics that are causing these trends, the x-factor on the horizon is the rapid advancement of technology and the exponential effect that it will continue to play on economics and job market.
For the first time in history the hallowed intellectual careers of doctors, lawyers and engineers, all of which take a significant investment of time and money in schooling, are at risk of disruption by artificial intelligence.
Coupled with the aggressive profit seeking nature of modern capitalism, the traditional roles of higher education white collar positions are even more a target for automation due to the cost of labor.
And the confidence in security of these career paths are for the first time losing resolve.
Reflections on My Career in Tech
This past week the social media tech sphere was shaken up by the release of a new product called “Devin”, which touts itself as the world’s first AI software engineer.
Devin is an autonomous model that can plan, analyze, and execute complex code and software engineering tasks with a single prompt: basically build entire apps with a text prompt.
As can be imagined, it went viral and had software engineers everywhere (myself included) feeling job insecurity for the first time in their lives.
Tech has always been my through-line of security as I pursued more passionate endeavors in the hours after work. For my entire career it has been a lucrative path, and I am extremely grateful for that.
During my career, tech has continually evolved and I’ve always adapted to keep up. It’s the nature of the industry and being ever curious, it suits me pretty well.
But something in this new era of evolution feels different as advancements are now unfolding at an exponential pace.
I’m confident that the evolution will continue and I will again adapt to use my diversity of experience in creativity and broader digital media to find work in changing markets, but it is an interesting thought to consider what I would do for a career post tech to earn a living.
I love the question, “What would you do with your time if you didn’t have to worry about money?” For me it’s always been pretty easy: create and perform music, travel, and tinker around with new tech to create.
I’m lucky that I get to do some of those things pretty regularly with the security of regular programming work for other companies to keep me stable.
But because of that comfort and safety, I haven’t really pursued those other passions as aggressively as I could have. Certainly not enough to making a living off of them.
What if I needed to make money off of those things? How would I approach them differently? Would it be possible? What new opportunities might be arising in those areas because of technology?
It’s an easy and natural reaction to feel fear and unease when considering that our security might be disrupted, but with disruption also comes opportunity.
It has me starting to think of my other strengths, my diversity and passion in creativity, and my ability to adapt.
Perhaps I’ve gotten too comfortable anyway.
As the notion of security of old career paths erode, it feels more and more like its time to start taking my passions more seriously and double down on finding ways to earn a living off of them.
Domain Expertise
Another perspective to the thought of finding your strengths and opportunities in the evolving era of AI came from something Jensen Huang, President of GPU manufacturer NVIDIA, said recently regarding the need for programmers in the future.
In a recent speech, he addresses the trend happening over the last decade or so of our society encouraging people to learn to code and get in to software development as a lucrative career path.
Instead, he says the opposite: it is their job (the leading creators of AI) to create computing technology such that nobody has to program, and that the programming language itself is human.
“Everybody in the world is now a programmer”, says Huang.
He goes on to stress the concept of having “Domain Expertise” and how developing AI technology will directly serve in helping to find solutions to such domain problems in manufacturing, biology, education, farming and more.
That concept really struck me.
It made me realize that programming and technology in general are not actually domain expertise, but tools and processes to support higher level industries that serve our needs.
This led me to think: What is my domain expertise?
I initially want to say programming and tech, but after what Jensen said, those are abstractions, not actual domains.
As I reflect, it’s a little crazy for me to think that music and creativity are a couple of my strongest areas of domain expertise, along with user experience and marketing (the parent industry of tech I’ve mostly worked in).
The exercise really has me looking at the rest of my career in a different perspective and provides some excitement and motivation from news that was initially difficult to accept.
I encourage you to ask yourself the same questions.
What is your domain expertise? Does it align with your passions?
How could technology advance your knowledge and opportunities in those areas?
Passion Boosts Adaptability and Reveals Opportunity
The proliferation of technology and artificial intelligence is creating massive opportunities for creators and entrepreneurs who have a vision and the courage to take action in pursuit of their ideas.
Job security and predictable career path are more and more becoming a concept of the past.
To stay ahead and take advantage of disruption, we must embrace adaptability and the adoption of new technologies and processes to aid in achieving our goals.
As creators and dreamers we’re well equipped for this kind of future, but we must recognize and believe in our strengths and most importantly, take action.
The fire of our passion and compass of our curiosity provide the fuel for iteration and exploration of ideas in this dynamic time.
We must abandon the false notions of security that bind us to our safe routines and embrace our passions to capture the breadth of opportunity looming on the horizon.
The skills of the future are abstract: adaptability, critical thinking and creativity; all these things are greatly amplified by passion and curiosity and following that will lead to great opportunity.
Believing in Ourselves as Leaders
I can’t count how many times I’ve looked to others for validation and approval on my skills and the passions of my heart. I found myself doing it again this past week.
Almost asking permission to pursue the things for which I hold a fire inside me.
Is it ok to be a musician? Is it ok to be creative and express my thoughts and individuality online and in my career?
I know what I want to do, but is that accepted? Is it ok?
It’s all procrastination and self-doubt and fear and I get angry at myself ever time I catch myself doing it.
The truth is, as creatives we have skill, we’re adaptable and we have great intuition. These things have been proven time and time again, yet I still lack belief in myself.
Most of my creative friends and some other people that I admire are the same. Multipotentialite, motivated people with greater vision than rest of the populace, consistently doubting themselves by trying to measure up to the old path of societal security that no longer even exists.
It’s time to stop that. The future is coming too quickly.
It is as uncertain as ever and it needs leaders with vision to show us the way.
It’s a precarious time to be hedging bets for safety when it’s becoming clear that your passions can take you much farther.
There is work to be done, and those of us who have passion and vision need to reveal the path.
We can’t afford to waste further energy on doubt and awaiting permission to unleash the power of our full potential.
~ Michael
Exciting (or Terrifying 😅) Tech of The Week
Devin - AI Software Engineer
https://www.cognition-labs.com/introducing-devin
The app that broke the hopes of a million devs. Devin is touted as the world’s first AI Software Engineer.
Devin is more than mere software; it embodies a pioneering AI persona skilled in the realms of software engineering, from coding and debugging to crafting apps and websites. Born from the innovative minds at Cognition under Scott Wu's leadership, Devin marks a transformative stride in integrating AI into the domain of software development. This AI marvel is revolutionizing the approach to software engineering tasks, heralding an era of AI software development.
Devin's capabilities include:
AI-Powered Software Engineering: Devin independently manages coding, testing, and deployment across various programming languages.
Continuous Learning: With every project, Devin hones its skills, becoming more efficient and adept.
Human-AI Collaboration: Devin is designed to support, not replace, human engineers, thus amplifying overall team productivity.
Practical Applications: Devin's prowess extends to real-world projects, from website design and app development to software testing, showcasing its practical utility and potential.
The future is coming quickly and it will be interesting to see what future versions of Devin and similar AI models will be able to accomplish. I’ll be doubling down on my other areas of domain expertise in the meantime 😅
My Creative Updates
I’ve been sneaking in work on some music as I prepare for an upcoming live show with a bunch of friends. I’m working on some new covers and ironing out some originals to perform. As I practice the originals I’m locking in parts for eventual recording and hope to make that process much quicker by having the songs well performed and practiced.
I’m also making progress finishing and exploring tech and features for the Niche Creator app which continues to be an exciting endeavor that I will continue to share more about as we go.