Work & AI
What were my fifteen years for?
A tool produced in minutes something that resembles work you spent years learning to do. The question is not rhetorical. The useful answer is not a defence of those years. It is a way to find out which lessons in them are still worth something to somebody else.
A first orientation
The years gave you problems you recognise, questions you have learned to ask, and lessons you have used often enough to trust. That is not the same thing as the output a tool can now produce quickly.
There is a way to find out what one of those lessons is worth without arguing about it. Take a problem people already ask you for help with, write down the questions you ask, and let one person try it on something small. What they actually do with it, and where they get stuck, tells you more than any prediction about AI can.
The distinction
- Something you know
- Something someone else can use
The path
Work through this question
Watch, read, use, and verify. In the order that suits you.
AI Is Changing Your Job. Build Your Second Door.
One lesson from your experience, a small first version, and someone willing to try it.
Take one lesson from your experience, turn it into something another person can try, and learn how to improve and share it.
The Second Door Plan
Turn one lesson from your experience into something another person can use.
A five-step practice for taking one problem you already help people with, making a small first version of your method, letting someone try it, improving what fails, and sharing what you learned.
The Second Door Plan Worksheet
Notice, Build, Test, Improve, Share
A worksheet for turning one lesson from your experience into something another person can try. Five steps with prompts you write into directly, a worked example, and an optional place to note what comes next. Use it in the browser, print it, or download the PDF or the editable copy.
Verify
Evidence notes
Working paper · 2023-04
Generative AI at Work
Erik Brynjolfsson, Danielle Li, Lindsey Raymond · National Bureau of Economic Research · NBER Working Paper 31161; later published in The Quarterly Journal of Economics
Evidence
What the source supports
- In this setting, a generative AI assistant increased average productivity, measured as issues resolved per hour.
- The gains were concentrated among novice and lower-skilled agents. Experienced, high-skill agents saw minimal improvement.
- The authors interpret the tool as spreading the practices of more able workers to newer ones.
Boundary
What it does not establish
- That experienced workers in other fields will see the same pattern. The study covers one company and one kind of work.
- That AI assistance makes experience worthless. The tool learned from the experienced agents' own behavior.
- Any claim about job loss, wages, or long-term careers. The study measures task performance, not employment outcomes.
Interpretation
What Sougata is doing with it
Sougata uses this as context for why Episode 1 exists: in this setting the visible output gap between newer and more experienced workers narrowed quickly. That is the situation the Second Door Plan responds to. The paper does not evaluate the Second Door Plan, and nothing in it supports a claim that writing a lesson down and testing it produces any career outcome. The connection between the two is Sougata's reasoning, not the paper's finding.
Working paper · 2023-09
Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier: Field Experimental Evidence of the Effects of Artificial Intelligence on Knowledge Worker Productivity and Quality
Fabrizio Dell'Acqua, Edward McFowland III, Ethan Mollick, Hila Lifshitz-Assaf, Katherine Kellogg, Saran Rajendran, Lisa Krayer, François Candelon, Karim Lakhani · Harvard Business School · HBS Working Paper 24-013; forthcoming in Organization Science
Evidence
What the source supports
- AI capability is uneven across tasks that look similar in difficulty. The authors call this the jagged frontier.
- For tasks inside the frontier, consultants with the tool performed measurably better on speed and rated quality.
- For a task outside the frontier, tool use was associated with worse accuracy.
Boundary
What it does not establish
- That the frontier is fixed. The authors describe it as moving and hard to see from the inside.
- That professionals can reliably tell in advance which side of the frontier a task sits on.
- Any general claim about consulting careers, hiring, or the value of experience over time.
Interpretation
What Sougata is doing with it
Sougata uses this for one specific point: a tool's competence is uneven in ways that are hard to see from inside a task, so knowing where it fails is worth something. This is context about AI and work. It is not evidence that the Second Door Plan helps anyone, and the paper makes no claim about that method.
Continue the question
Next questions
Identity & Worth
Why do I feel replaceable when I still have my job?
Nothing has happened yet. The role, the pay, and the team are all still there. The feeling arrived anyway. That gap between the event and the feeling is worth examining on its own.
Uncertainty & Agency
How do I adapt when the target keeps moving?
Every piece of advice says adapt. Almost none of it says to what. When the thing you would adapt to changes every few months, adaptation as a strategy needs a different definition.
Identity & Worth
Who am I without the role?
For many people the role stopped being a job a long time ago. It became the way they were introduced, the reason they were consulted, and the shape of their days. Threats to the role land as threats to the self.