This is a question I get asked very often. And I always say — in my 20+ years of work, I’ve never seen a technology that has the potential to change the job market as much as AI.

To really understand why, you need to go a couple of layers deeper.

A job, at its core, is just a set of tasks. To do these tasks, you build certain skills over time. Traditionally, how quickly and how well you learned those skills decided how good you became in that role.

Now imagine something that disrupts this very idea of “skills needed to complete a task.” That’s exactly what AI is doing. And that’s why I believe AI will deeply impact the job market.

Not because it will replace people. But because it will start doing the tasks that make up a job.

So does this mean we won’t have jobs in the future?
I don’t think so.

Here’s how I look at it — jobs fall into two broad buckets:
âś… Those that rely on horizontal skills (e.g., communication, coordination, generic tools)
âś… Those that rely on vertical skills (e.g., deep technical or domain knowledge)

What I’m seeing is that if your role is only horizontal or only vertical, AI has a higher chance of impacting it. But the magic lies in the intersection.
That’s where complexity lives. And AI still has a long way to go before it can handle that.

Take an example — in the past, a product manager with no idea of engineering could thrive. So could an engineer with no understanding of the product. But today, AI can handle a lot of the repetitive or siloed work on both sides.

That means if your skillset lies only in one zone, your role might be at risk.
But if you sit at the intersection — say, you understand both product and tech — you will thrive.

The more intersections you build, the lower the risk of your role becoming redundant. In fact, AI becomes your ally — helping you get more done, faster.

Don’t compete with AI. Learn to collaborate with it.