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The digital commonplace book of Marcus Verrall
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The Commonplace Book of Marcus Verrall

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How Did We Get Here?

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Pick a Hill and Then Carve Out Your Niche

Most super-talented and/or ambitious people want to be the front man; few play the consigliere role well, or even see the under-sung opportunities it offers. In other words, there's less competition and significant opportunity to be had as an all-star right-hand man.

The Startup of You (Revised and Updated)
p.52

Globalization and the tech revolution have undone traditional career assumptions. Technology automates jobs that used to require hard-earned knowledge and skills, including well-paid white-collar jobs such as paralegals and radiologists, to name just two examples. This erasure of certain positions will only continue with the Al revolution that is already sweeping across industries. Of course, technology also creates new jobs, but job creation tends to lag behind job displacement, and the new jobs usually require different, higher-level skills than the ones they replaced. If technology doesn't eliminate or change the skills you need in many industries, it at least enables more people from around the world (often cheaper freelancers) to compete for your job by allowing companies to offshore work more easily, knocking down your salary in the process. Trade and technology did not appear overnight and are not going away anytime soon. The labor market in which we all work has been permanently altered.

The Startup of You (Revised and Updated)
p.6

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