Iāve stopped trying to be the smartest person in the room.
There was a time when my edge was knowing the answers: system architecture, upgrade paths, performance trade-offs. That kind of knowledge made you valuable.
But today? AI knows that stuff. Or at least sounds like it doesāand for many people, thatās enough.
So Iāve made a pivot.
I now let AI handle the heavy lifting of āwhatā and āhow.ā My value is in helping people figure out the āwhy now,ā āwhat if weāre wrong,ā and āhow will this land with the people who matter.ā
Because Iāve learnedāoften the hard wayāthat being right isnāt enough.
Years ago, during a system upgrade, I realized the team had planned for the wrong software version. I knew the correct one to meet the project goals, so I changed the upgrade on the fly. Technically? I was right. But I almost got fired.
My manager explained all the downstream impacts I hadnāt considered: testing schedules, integration dependencies, vendor support agreements. I made it workābut it couldāve gone very wrong.
AI wouldāve made the same call I did. And it wouldāve lacked the accountability to live with the consequences.
Thatās where experience matters. Thatās where trust matters.
And thatās where Iāve chosen to focus.