So, What Do You Do?
Identity Crises in the Age of AI
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From Mine to Yours & Ours
Today we’re shifting gears from personal crisis to a brewing collective crisis. And it turns out it’s one I’ve been thinking about for a long time.
This is an excavated and revised piece I wrote in 2017. It’s particularly apt as I recover from another long-ish break from the workforce — a forced one this time. It’s one of three or four I’ve taken involuntarily since this was written. Chronic illness’ll do that to a girl.
And even if it’s now nearly ten years later, and even if culture is shifting about this stuff, also…kinda sorta not really?
This question still haunts me all the same.
It may soon come to haunt many of you, too. More on that at the end.
Without further ado…
So What Do You Do, V2
This morning I had the pleasure of starting my day by Skyping with a friend who moved to Amsterdam last year. I sipped coffee as she unwound from her day.
(Skyping! Imagine!)
We got to talking about taking breaks. Breaks from career, more specifically. I’ve been slowly re-establishing myself after a three month break. She’s about to take one.
The question I dread the most right now, I told Jess, is:
‘So, what do you do?’
You see, at this very moment I have no good answer for that.
I took my break to contemplate what I wanted this next decade of my work to be about. I knew I was ready for a big leap forward, but I haven’t quite landed on the thing that I can quickly tell people because I was incredibly burned out. I framed it as a contemplative sabbatical because, in hindsight, I needed a story to tell that made me sound like I was still productive, relevant and doing something worthwhile.
As Courtney Martin once said in my all-time-favourite On Being episode, “I’ve got one of those careers that doesn’t fit neatly on a business card.”
Mine also doesn’t fit neatly into a polite 5 minute get-to-know-you chat. It never really has, but it’s particularly acute right now.
I also just moved to a small town. I’m meeting tonnes of new people. I get asked this all the damn time. It gives me anxiety.
It’s really highlighted for me the total integration of Who You Are with What You Do.
And that’s fucked up. (Maybe.)
Think about it for a quick second: the first thing we ask a new person is: “So what do you do?”
We ask it like it's just small talk, but it’s actually a sneaky sorting mechanism in disguise.
Our brains love shortcuts. As quick as possible, we want to build a mental model of who someone is, what they care about, where they probably live, how much money they make, and whether we have anything in common.
It’s more than curiosity. It’s a status scan.
After all, when we answer this question, we answer with the phrase I am.
I am a carpenter.
I am a program manager.
I am the founder of an Uber for Dogs start up.
To say I am is to indicate position and identity. It tells people where to locate you. Except you are not indicating a physical place (like I am at the park), you are indicating an abstract one, where you belong in a social structure. In the pecking order. Among The Joneses.
As I fumble along figuring out my What’s Next, being dislocated in this structure is, admittedly, uncomfortable. It’s giving me a lot to think about. To be fair, this isn’t the first time I’ve thought about this, it’s just that it’s come into especially sharp relief as I transition purpose and place.
Perhaps some of this is more benign than I’m acknowledging.
When I probe deeper though, I’m not so sure.
What we are trying to do by asking this, I think, is to connect. What we are getting in effect though, is distance.
Back to the Future
Arguably this contemplation is even more relevant today than when I first wrote that piece.
The economy is a cluster fuck (again) and, if forecasts about AI displacement come true (spoiler: I think they will), a whole lot more of us are going to be wrestling with this soon.
Very soon.
In her troublingly excellent piece, You are not your job. And soon, you won't have one.,
tells the story of collapsing identities in a collapsing economy.
She asks us to consider how we’re going to react — especially those of us who have more fully integrated who we are and what we do — when AI takes our jobs and we’re not just out of work but perhaps permanently unemployable as that identity.
Because in this scenario, entire categories of work will become suddenly and unceremoniously obsolete.
For the uninitiated, not having an answer to this will feel like a sort of existential assault.
I know it can for me. Although, this iteration of displacement comes with an extra helping of humiliation: oh, what do I do? Full time recovery from a menty b. How about you?
Carmen describes the coming mass identity dislocation so incredibly well I’m giving her the last word today:
This is a story about all knowledge workers. Everyone whose job depends on reading, writing, planning, synthesizing, managing, creating, or communicating. The people we’ve historically called “white-collar.” The ones who were told that their degrees, careers, and salaries made them safe.
…the jobs AI is coming for first aren’t the ones most people assumed. They’re not manual labor or frontline retail. They’re not cashiers or delivery drivers.
They’re the people with resumes like yours.
And if you’ve built your identity around being useful, impressive, or indispensable at work?
What’s coming next is going to hurt…not just job loss, but identity collapse.
When I look at what's happening with generative AI and automation, I don't just see technological advancement. I see millions of people about to lose not just jobs, but the entire scaffolding of how they understand themselves.
Because the truth is, work isn't just about paychecks. For most of us, it's about belonging. Status. Purpose. The answer we give when someone asks, "So, what do you do?"
And we're frighteningly ill-equipped for what happens when that answer disappears.
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Preach!
Another great piece - thank you <3