Think about what is becoming cheap.
Code is getting cheap. Drafts are getting cheap. A plausible answer to almost any question is now close to free and available instantly.
When something becomes abundant, its price falls. That is simply how it works.
So the honest question for your career is the other one. What is getting rarer?
I think the answer is trust.
Not trust as a warm feeling. Trust as a practical thing. Someone believing that what you told them is true, and that what you said would happen is what will happen.
That has always mattered. It is about to matter enormously.
Because when output is everywhere and nearly free, the bottleneck moves to verification. Who checked this. Can I rely on it. Whose name is standing behind this number.
The person whose work you do not feel the need to double check becomes the most valuable person in the building.
Here is the good news and the hard news, together.
Trust is built out of completely ordinary behaviour, and it takes a long time.
You say you will have it Thursday, and on Thursday it is there.
You raise the problem yourself, before somebody else stumbles into it.
You say I do not know instead of guessing confidently, so that when you do sound certain, people can lean their weight on it.
You never pass along work you have not actually read, whatever produced it.
That last one is going to separate people over the next few years more than any tool you could learn.
Because it will be very easy to hand over things you did not really check, and the first few times, you will get away with it.
You will not get away with it forever.
A reputation for reliability compounds quietly, and it cannot be generated on demand when you finally need it.
Everything else on your CV can be copied by somebody.
Being the person whose word holds cannot.
Build that one.
– Asael Shinder
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