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. It deserves a real answer about what those years actually built.
A first orientation
The years built four different things that usually get counted as one. They built the ability to produce the output. They built familiarity with the segment of the workflow where that output lives. They built judgment: knowing when the output is wrong, what it will cost, and who will pay. And they built a market price that was attached to the bundle.
The tool reproduced the first of those and part of the second. The third is what you use to check the tool. The fourth is now being renegotiated, which is painful, but it is a different problem from the years being wasted.
The distinction
- 01Output
- 02Workflow segment
- 03Judgment and responsibility
- 04Market price
The path
Work through this question
Watch, read, use, and verify. In the order that suits you.
AI Did in 5 Minutes What Took You 15 Years to Learn. Now What?
What experience is actually made of, and which parts of it a tool can reproduce.
A tool produced in minutes something that looks like work you spent fifteen years learning. This episode takes that moment seriously, separates four things that get counted as one, and introduces the Second Door Plan.
The Second Door Plan
Find, Verify, Extract, Demonstrate, Test
A five-stage method for taking one recurring problem that experience taught you to notice, making the judgment behind it visible, and testing whether it has another place to matter.
The Second Door Plan Worksheet
A ninety-minute first pass through Find, Verify, Extract, Demonstrate, Test
A structured worksheet for a first pass through the Second Door Plan. Five sections, one per stage, with prompts you write into directly. Use the printable web version or the PDF when it is available.
Begin with
Verify
Evidence notes
Working paper
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 · 2023-04
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.
What it does not support
- 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.
What Sougata is doing with it
Sougata uses this as evidence that the visible output gap between novice and expert can shrink quickly, while noting that the expert's judgment is what the tool was trained to imitate. That distinction between output and judgment is central to Episode 1 and is Sougata's synthesis, not the paper's claim.
Working paper
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 · 2023-09
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.
What it does not support
- 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.
What Sougata is doing with it
Sougata uses this to support one specific point: the segment of a workflow that a tool handles well is not the whole workflow, and knowing where the tool fails is itself a form of experienced judgment. The framing of workflow segment versus judgment is Sougata's, not the paper's.
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.