For a long time, the idea of a career path felt relatively solid. You chose a direction, gained some skills. You’d progress, step by step, towards something that looked more senior, more stable, more defined. Even if it wasn’t perfectly linear, there was an underlying assumption that if you made broadly “good” decisions, there’d be a career path tomorrow.

In the world of AI, that assumption is starting to feel less certain.

Careers haven’t suddenly disappeared, but the relationship between effort, skill, and progression are changing. As AI continues to improve, parts of work that used to define early experience, expertise, and advancement are being reshaped, automated in some places, compressed in others, and in some cases, removed entirely.

Which raises a question that sits underneath a lot of the anxiety people are feeling right now:

Is there even such a thing as a career path anymore or are we holding onto an idea that no longer reflects how work actually functions?

The structure that you might have relied on - i.e. the sense that you can map out a direction and follow it with reasonable confidence is arguably becoming harder.

And if that’s true, then the question isn’t just what path should I choose?

It’s whether “choosing a path” is still the right way to think about building a career at all.

If there isn’t really a career path no longer behaves predictably then a lot of traditional career thinking starts to break down.

The idea that you “choose a direction, build experience, and arrive somewhere stable” assumes a level of continuity that is becoming less reliable.

We all respond to this in different ways - some with trying to predict better, some wit more planning and analysis but ultimately, we need to be able to make better decisions in increasing uncertainty.

Most people focus on what AI might replace; jobs, tasks, industries (which makes sense), but we also need to focus on how this changes what a career is.

Which is why so many people now find themselves stuck, the old frameworks for choosing between them don’t feel reliable anymore.

We often want certainty. A clear option. A signal that one direction is safer than another but that’s not really available in the way it used to be.

So the question is - how do I make decisions about my career now those old frameworks don’t work?

And this is also where support starts to matter.

In my work as a coach, I’m not seeing people struggle because they lack information. They’re overwhelmed by it. We might ask ourselves:

In that sense, my coaching in this space isn’t about giving you a clearer map but about helping you navigate when the map itself is continually changing (and will continue to do so in really unknown ways).

It also means helping people see their work differently, not as a fixed identity, but as a mix of execution, judgement, and influence. Some of which is becoming easier to automate, and some of which is becoming more valuable as a result.

So if you’re trying to make decisions about your career right now, I get that the hardest part of all of this isn’t necessarily understanding AI. It’s still making decisions while no one can honestly tell you what the world will look like in a few years.

If you’re stuck between options, it often helps to stop asking which one is safest, and instead ask:

Which one puts me closer to decisions rather than just delivery?
Which one still leaves me useful even if parts of my current skill set are no longer useful?

If you’re facing a career decision and don’t know where to start then you might want to book in for your intro call below.

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Until next time,

Rebecca

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Keep showing up, keeping on and building something you love.

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