You Can Avoid the Career Meltdown

Don't worry. AI won't replace you.

Being born in 1979, I belong to the tail-end of Generation X. As a sandwich generation between Boomers parents and Gen Z or Alpha children, Gen X has seen a lot of changes. I grew up using the actual, physical encyclopedia if I had to look up something for my school work. Even in college, I went to the library to look for a book or reference articles to write a term paper. I had my first email account in college and started using Word processor for work, but still the majority of my day was offline.

Almost a half century later, now I use ChatGPT as my research tools. My works are mostly online, via Zoom meetings with clients and partners. I don’t remember the last time I went to the theater but I recently finished watching 16 episodes of When Life Gives You Tangerines and 4 episodes of Adolescence on Netflix.

Thinking of so many other examples of transformation Gen X experienced between 1990s and now, I can’t help but wonder: What happened to those who used to print and sell encyclopedia? What about the jobs of people who used to work in theaters?

The recent New York Times Article, “The Gen X Career Meltdown,” describes this drastic change that Gen X experiences with their work, focusing on careers in the advertising and media industry.

Gen Xers who started working in media or content production in the 90s such as magazine publishing, newspaper journalism, photography, graphic design, advertising, music, film, and TV, it’s likely they are doing something else for work now. These industries have shrunk or transformed themselves radically due to the technological changes and no longer need to hire as many people as they used to.

The media landscape Gen Xers experienced in their early adult years was similar to that of the 1950s: “a tactile analog environment of landline telephones, tube TV sets, vinyl records, glossy magazines and newspapers that left ink on your hands.” Nothing seemed too concerning when digital technology started dominating their lives with AOL email accounts, Myspace pages and Napster downloads.

But by the time they entered the primes of their careers in their 40s and 50s, they faced that much of their expertise or lifelong career skills had become mostly obsolete. Music or fashion magazines editors have to compete against so many “influencers” writing or talking about music or fashion on Instagram and Youtube.

Economically and culturally shut out, these Gen X creatives are struggling. One Gen X photographer who used to work with Anna Wintour of Vogue said in the article, “There’s no way you can survive anymore being strong at one thing.” Instead of grieving the loss of their heyday or resenting at what’s happening, some of them really try to reinvent themselves. But it’s trickier to do it in your 50s, especially after living with the idea of “one career for one life” to be successful and happy.

This story of drastic changes in relevant skills and careers doesn’t apply to the creative professions or Gen X only. This has been always happening across all jobs in various degrees and it will continue for future generations as well. The World Economic Forum reported in their 2025 Future of Jobs Report that workers can expect that 39% of their existing skill sets will be transformed or become outdated over the 2025-2030 period on average.

With the advent of the Generative Artificial Intelligence tools integrated in every part of our work activities—analyzing, writing, creating, coding, etc—it can feel extra scary and threatening. Hence, we see so many posts on social media about the extreme doomsday scenarios that all humans will become obsolete, as AIs and robots replaces all human jobs.

So what shall we do now?

Audit Your Work Tasks: Algorithmic? Or Heuristic?

The US Bureau of Labor and McKinsey worked on a research together about the nature of job tasks. They learned most jobs could be categorized into two types: algorithmic tasks and heuristic tasks.

An algorithmic task is a simple one where you follow a set of instructions to complete. Like computer code, an algorithmic task has a certain rule—“algorithm”—to follow to carry out a task, and it can be scripted. Algorithmic work usually involves transactional interactions. Cashiers at the department store and ride-share drivers are both algorithmic. The details of the job can be manualized, and anybody can do it as long as they follow the manual. Cashiers and drivers get paid for doing the job, over and over.

A heuristic task is the opposite. Codifying such tasks is hard; hence, it cannot be scripted. A heuristic task is more complex with many unexpected factors and nuanced contexts. Heuristic work involves tacit interactions and a high level of emotional intelligence. For example, coaching an executive who wants to reinvent themselves in a challenging time, pioneering a new category of industry, and creating a new virtual reality game are all heuristic. You have to test various options and create a new solution based on your experience and intuition every time.

In reality, all our jobs contain tasks of both categories. There are rarely jobs that are 100% algorithmic or heuristic. For example, take a look at medicine. In the US, doctors spend a lot of time on documenting and diagnosing and little time on building relationship with their patients. Documentation and diagnosis are algorithmic tasks; they can be more easily scripted and automated. However, relating to a patient and understanding their need as they go through the next round of chemotherapy requires more emotional engagement different for each patient. It’s a heuristic task. AI and mechanization won’t replace doctors; it’ll make doctors focus on heuristic side of their jobs.

Take another example of leadership coaching. As a coach, I see there are so many algorithmic tasks in coaching, too, from the initial onboarding of clients to helping clients to follow through their actions. During a coaching session, it’s a different story. Even though two clients might be in a similar situation, the coaching approach can be so different between these two clients. There is no “formula” in coaching. This part is absolutely heuristic. Unlike some claims that AI will replace human coaches, coaches can be better at their work to help clients learn how to lead themselves by delegating a lot of algorithmic tasks to AI tools.

So now, how about applying this to your work? Which part of your work are repetitive and routine algorithmic tasks? Which part requires you to be more creative and think deeply? If 80% of your work is heuristic, that’s great news. You must find it so meaningful as heuristic tasks speak to your intrinsic motivation. You find it challenging but deeply engaging.

But if 80% of your work is algorithmic, perhaps it’s worth thinking about whether you want to keep doing it. Algorithmic tasks tend to be boring and transactional, speaking to the extrinsic motivations; what makes us look good from the perspective of others. Perhaps you have been longing to do something else but you aren’t sure if you could do anything else.

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, between 1998 and 2004, only 30% of job growth came from algorithmic work, while 70% came from heuristic work in the US. Companies have already been streamlining and automating algorithmic work.

For those in the mid-career, this means it’s worth auditing our work regularly, like every five year or so, to see how much is algorithmic vs. heuristic. It’ll change from time to time. When the result of this audit shows that our work is more skewed toward algorithmic, we can take it as a signal that it’s time to develop ourselves or up-skill. Or perhaps it might mean that it’s time to delve into a new area that truly interests us, as the old work doesn’t interest us anymore.

Impermanence of Work

There are a couple of obvious truths; time goes by, human constantly develops new technologies, and we change too. From this perspective of pervasive impermanence, isn’t it actually odd to expect that our works will be the same?

Because impermanence is stressful for human mind, it’s understandable to be in a fight or flight mode with so many changes in the landscape of works, too. However, we don’t have to think of it as a crisis or have a meltdown about it, either. Rather, we can think of it as an opportunity to rethink of our work in various ways. Reviewing our work in the lens of algorithmic and heuristic tasks helps us pause and reflect on what we find meaningful. Ultimately, this will free ourselves from repetitive and mind-numbing tasks we find meaningless and work on more heuristic tasks, which require creativity and in-depth insights from our own experiences.

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