The Slowest Layoff in History

There’s a name for what we’re all doing with AI right now. It just took me a while to remember it.

A few years ago, I was a product manager at 500px. Great team. Good work. And then one day, a guy named Jonathan Seet started showing up to our team meetings.

Jonathan was sharp. Like, immediately obviously sharp. And I didn’t fully understand the politics behind what was happening — nobody sat me down and explained it — but I could feel it. The way you always can. Decisions had already been made. The story was already written. My job, whether I accepted it or not, was to help Jonathan get up to speed.

So that’s what I did.

I showed up. I shared context. I answered his questions. I introduced him to the team. And eventually, Jonathan took over, I moved to a different team, and that chapter closed.

I want to be clear: I have nothing but respect for Jonathan. We’re still very good friends. He’s awesome. This is not at all a story about bitterness. It’s a story about a feeling I’ve been having lately that I couldn’t quite figure out, until now.

We’re All in That Meeting Right Now

Here’s what I’ve been sitting with: every single one of us who is using AI tools in our work is essentially living out that experience on a loop.

We are onboarding our own replacements.

And the really uncomfortable part? We know it. We can see the face of the thing that’s coming. We’re the ones doing the training. And unlike Jonathan — who had his own career, his own ambitions, his own reasons to move on eventually — AI isn’t going anywhere.

There’s no “Jonathan gets promoted and you get your team back” ending here.

The Paradox Nobody Wants to Say Out Loud

Good professionals have always operated with a specific mindset: you bring people up. You coach. You share what you know. You try to get the people around you to a point where they can do your job better than you can.

That used to feel like a good thing. Because when you trained someone up, you got credit for it. You watched their career grow. There was a reward built into the system.

Now? The reward for training AI to do your job is... that AI can do your job.

I get why people are resistant. I genuinely do. It’s not irrational. It’s not ignorance. It’s a completely reasonable response to a situation where the traditional rules don’t apply anymore.

But here’s the thing: opting out doesn’t stop the clock.

The Race You’re Already In

If you’ve accepted that AI is here — really here, not “coming soon” here — then you’ve already entered the race. The only question is how you run it.

The way I see it, the people who are going to stay relevant the longest aren’t the ones who pretend this isn’t happening. They’re also not the ones paralyzed by it. They’re the ones who are clear-eyed about the situation and still show up anyway.

Like I did with Jonathan.

Not because it was comfortable. Not because I had all the answers. But because showing up with professionalism, even in an uncomfortable situation, is just what you do.

That’s the move. It was then, and it is now.

A Note on Jonathan

Shoutout to Jonathan Seet — genuinely one of the best I’ve worked with. If you ever read this: no hard feelings. You were great. The situation was just the situation.

That’s kind of the whole point.