This is the 2nd time robots have tried to take my job; What I will and won't do to survive

Part 3 of my sabbatical journey

I'm going to do a thing I rarely see people do in career posts. I'm going to tell you how old I am.

There are two big reasons I'm going to share this (other than fishing for compliments about how young I look 😁). One of them was a big factor in my decision to take a sabbatical.

1. If you've ever worked with me, you know I tell everyone how old I am all the time. I do this because I think it's important to normalize seeing people of a certain age in the workplace. I, too, was in my 20s and 30s once and I remember thinking people over than 40 were dinosaurs. I probably assumed anyone over 50 was going to retire any minute. (Fun fact: Gen Xers can’t afford to retire.)

2. My age means that I have a longer career horizon than a lot of people who may be reading this right now. I've already seen my profession (content) go through catastrophic disruption once before.

I see it happening again now. And I intend to use the lessons I learned from my last job-mageddon to carry me through this current one. (This post is dedicated to you, fellow content peeps.)

What’s going on right now

If you’re not a content person, apologies for the inside-baseball speak ahead.

Three things are wreaking havoc on content creators at this moment:

• changes in Google’s search algorithm

• artificial intelligence

• turbulence in the tech sector (where lots of us make our $$$)

I’m going to dig into those first two things in more detail in a moment. But first, Grandma Trish is going to give you a little history lesson.

This shiz has happened before

Tip: If history and old people stories make your eyes glaze over, look at this section like a parable and see if you can spot the lesson.

Back in the early 2000s and looong before that, people used to have to pay to read stuff. So writers and editors (the precursors to today's content creators) had to work hard to make content worth paying for. That content either had to be exclusive (couldn't get it anywhere else), informative (the right depth of information for the right audience), and/or entertaining.

You probably knew that part.

Working as a B2B journalist right after the turn of the century, things were exciting and … weird. The internet was exploding. It was INCREDIBLE to have so much information at my fingertips. It made my job so much easier.

But that same information was also available to my readers. Often, for free.

That was OK for a while. Because I wasn't just spitting out info, I was doing analysis, talking about trends, and connecting dots. I made people’s lives easier so my words were still worth their money.

However, as more of their work was done online, my readers were less and less interested in getting a newsletter IN THE MAIL. (OMG, remember mail?)

So the publishing industry, whose last real technological innovation was the printing press, decided to meet readers where they were: their email inboxes. (Remember, this was pre-social media.)

But even back then, no one liked opening or reading stuff on a clunky .pdf.

Publishers were screwed. They not only lost subscribers, they lost advertisers.

Printed news, which had been incredibly important for centuries, began a long and painful slow-motion extinction. To this day, no one can figure out how to adequately and sustainably monetize news publishing. It’s a failed business model. (RIP to the fourth estate. I thank you for your service.)

If you want to start thinking about that parable, right now would would be a good time …

OK, I’ll just tell you: Things that you think will be around “forever” sometimes aren’t.

Which brings me to today.

Google is turning the internet into a feudal state

Hey, remember the day Google vowed to be the benevolent and impartial librarian for humankind forever and forever?

Me neither.

Google is causing bedlam in many corners of Content Land right now. By my estimates:

• 45% of content folks are panicking (“Chat GPT is taking our jobs!”)

• 45% are waiting for things to go back to normal (“Google just temporarily lost it mind and tanked our business, but it will come around…”)

• 10% (the folks at big brands) are enjoying their new status as the feudal lords of the SERPs.

Google’s latest algo updates have indexed so hard on domain authority that it was the search version of corporate welfare. Big brands are dominating every keyword they touch. Newer and smaller companies are all fighting for scraps.

So yay for the folks who are winning. For now. But I predict they’re going to take a hit, too. Because in the end, the company that Google cares about most is Google. A feudal state exists to serve the king, after all.

Let me ask you this: How’s your Google search experience lately? Mine kinda sucks.

The top of my search pages are chock full of sponsored results. And if you’re signed up for Google Labs like I am, you’ve probably seen how Google’s Generative AI results are taking up a lot of screen space.

My prediction: Google is going to work increasingly hard to keep people from clicking through to web pages, no matter how good those pages are. So companies will either have to pay for those clicks or find a way to get readers another way.

So why is King Google being such a selfish little baby lately? Wasn’t he already making plenty of dough?

Sure, but once upon a time, so were newspapers.

And now, someone else is trying to unseat the King.

ChatChad GPT: The Ken doll of technology

Chad GPT is my little nickname for Chat GPT and the entire fraternity of AI/chatbot dudes that are being hailed (in some circles) as the best writers ever.

I mean, they do have great abs. But you do not want to sit next to a Chad at a dinner party.

The Chads are the dumbest smart technology I’ve ever seen. Don’t take that to mean that I’m writing them off. I’m not. I think those gorgeous boneheads are likely to run the entire world some day.

Just not today.

There’s an inverted bell curve of things the Chads are good at. On one end, they can do lots of annoying, grunt-style stuff that people hate doing, like repetitive tasks, sorting big buckets of information, and making grocery lists. On the other end, they can also do lots of big, important things that currently take humans a long time to do, like simulate climate models, optimize supply chains, and make deepfake celebrity porn videos.

But a Chad can’t hang in the middle of the bell curve. The middle is the “mean.” It’s the normal zone. What’s one of the most normal things people do?

Talk. Use words. Communicate.

The Chads lack the ability to authentically communicate on a human level. Also, they’re often woefully incorrect. They’re adorable idiots.

But most of the people who pay for content don’t care. The Chads are stallions in terms of productivity. A Chad can pump you full of big words all night long and all day long and all night again. But, like his bro Ken, he doesn’t have the equipment to satisfy you on a human level.

OK, since I’ve come this far I’ll just say it: Readers will only let you dryhump them for so long before they get bored. At some point, you have to deliver.

So where does this leave me?

With King Google and the Chads glaring menacingly at each other across the bar, this seemed like a great time for me to slide out the side door and have a good long think about where I'd like to make a place for myself in the new normal.

But that place isn’t going to be kneeling in submission to AI and SEO and whatever other acronyms the tech lords deliver unto us upon stonedigital tablets.

Sure, we have to pay attention to these things. We’re not working in a vacuum and businesses have to make money. Sure, we should work WITH these things. They can be useful tools.

But we shouldn’t be working FOR them.

I’m damn good at three things that have nothing to do with SEO:

• I’m a helluva storyteller

• I know how to make people pay attention

• I’m really, really good at explaining complicated things

My next chapter is going to be all about playing to my strengths. I’m considering a few paths right now and some of them are probably not what you’d expect.

But I can tell you this: My life will not oriented around using one robot to write for another robot. Eff that noise.

Sorry, Chad.

(Also, I’m 52.)