The future of work
In another universe, can I be LinkedIn’s top voice?
Dear friends,
My cousin gave me a bizarre stare as I told her daughter to register for an agriculture degree.
“What?” I told her.
“She asked for my advice in choosing a major amidst this AI craze. You think an accounting diploma will offer her a sustainable future?”
Feeling an urge to stand for my opinion, I took another cousin who graduated with a degree in veterinary medicine and now leads one of the pig farms belonging to Thailand's biggest private company as an example.
“Can AI generate pork? I hope not.”
Mother called me silly when I told her the story, hoping for an applause for being a considerate auntie.
“How can you call it career coaching?,” she bursted into laughter.
“Before enrolling in the agriculture university, your cousin had more than a decade of chopping banana trucks to feed pigs under his belt. Now look at your niece, I wonder whether she has ever deveined a shrimp,” mom said.
Despite her loosely relevant reasoning, I found myself at the loss of words. It’s difficult, or simply irresponsible to provide anyone with job advice at the moment.
What will they find after four years in college? A lucrative job today might be just taken by AI tomorrow.
“Don’t you think it’s a middle income trap?” I asked mom.
“What do you mean by that?” she replied.
“Is it a middle income trap to be born into a middle income family with middle income parents doing white collar jobs and having a comfortable middle income life before being thrown into real life with all these uncertainties?
“The last 30 years were full of hope and prospects. Now chirping words about innovations sound just so shallow.
“Shallow and threatening. The meaning of working, for a lot of these youngsters, is simply to not be replaced. However, not all of them want to do trade jobs.”
Words rushed out of my mouth, uncontrollably, as if I stopped, the unease condition of being human would not make any sense.
It should be easier strolling LinkedIn with career advice and inspiring updates than thinking about 1.35 million Vietnamese youngsters, aged 15 to 24, without jobs and training.
The unemployment rate of this age group, according to the General Statistics Office of Vietnam, is 7.93 per cent – “dropping but not considerably compared to the same period last year”.
It should be easier blaming this situation on their laziness than looking for its root cause.
My niece is still clueless of what she wants to pursue in higher education.
“Some jobs have not been invented yet. Don’t you think so?” she asked, sounding more like a self-affirmation.
“The only thing I know for sure now, is to get out of this small town,” she blinked at me before rushing out to a cram school.
Till next time,
T.
This week’s top picks
A movie – Triangle of Sadness
Joan Didion’s note on therapy
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/04/07/what-we-knew-without-knowing
Listened to this song last night and was reminded how much I used to love it
When friends complained about my “every corner sparks joy” apartment, did they mean it should have looked like Tiny Desk Concert studio?
So true, I struggle to sleep every night thinking my way out in this fast changing labour landscape. My current job did not exist 10 years ago and nothing guarantees that it would still exist 10 years from now.