19 Comments
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WilM's avatar

Thank you for this wonderful piece. As a leader of a team feeling an urgency to figure out how we evolve in this new age, so we can have a voice in shaping that - rather than having it imposed on us - this gives me hope. It puts words to something I have felt.

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Anu Atluru's avatar

Ty for the reflection! Understand the broader challenges and anxiety with these shifts, but always some timeless fine print that gets more obvious over time - fingers crossed

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Kevin Snyder's avatar

I love how well thought out this is. My newsfeed on X/Linkedin is nothing but leveraging AI articles/tools. Reading this makes perfect sense.

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Anu Atluru's avatar

I should check out LinkedIn more just to be current on the state of AI slop affairs …

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David Sasaki's avatar

Looking forward to part 2. It seems to me that most professional relationships are driven by a search for status and validation. (Every update on LinkedIn.) But at their best, they spark a kind of generative creativity that enables us to do things together we couldn’t do alone (eg. Jobs and Ive). Now that more people are creatively collaborating with chatbots, will most “relational labor” be a form of status games?

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Anu Atluru's avatar

Great thoughts and questions — agree that status and validation always play a part, I never expect that to go away regardless of the technological wave. But how you get status and validation can change, as you mention — the status levels of different roles tend to shift by the times. Creativity always ideal but harder to measure and price except in extremes. On to part 2…

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@zherring's avatar

This is something I realized in 2020 and periodically forget and then have to re-learn: What you build accounts for 50% of the pleasure. Who you build it with accounts for the other 50%.

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Anu Atluru's avatar

So very true, and I do think the pandemic isolation period and remote work was a period of reckoning for this re-realization

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Istiaq Mian's avatar

Really entertaining read. I believe the thesis in this essay.

"But as intelligence gets cheaper, presence gets more expensive. Real, earned, interpersonal trust will become the rarest currency." Already feeling this. I think that's why I need to get coffee with someone each week.

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Anu Atluru's avatar

Coffee / cafe culture is so much about ritual connection

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Aakarsh's avatar

Sheer eloquence. loved the piece.

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Anu Atluru's avatar

Ty for reading! 🤝

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ax3's avatar

Beautifully intuited and related. Your work is a study in insightful elegance!

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Anu Atluru's avatar

Ty!

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Harsha's avatar

This is so true of work but also life more broadly.

As Trivikram wrote in Nuvvu Naaku Nachaav “Manam gelichinappudu chappatlu kotte vallu, manam odipoyinappu bujam tatte vallu naluguru lenappudu, entha sampadhinchinaa pogottukunna emi teda ledhu”

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Anu Atluru's avatar

True. Took me a minute to parse that out but yes - and four is a great number.

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Bharat's avatar

Really appreciate you for publishing this piece. It beautifully articulates thoughts and feelings I’ve long held but struggled to express clearly.

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Genevieve M. Westerman's avatar

I'm reading this like a love letter, from one human heart to another. It's nourishing. Thank you for articulating this so eloquently. 😊

And I guess I'm just on a roll with confirmation bias the last couple of weeks 😂 seeing this as a confirmation I've been on the right track since I left the Finance & IT industries eons ago.

It's still people with a human heart working in these industries, though.

Maybe it's Enlightenment, Realism, & Romanticism 3.0 in the making? And Substack is catalyzing this societal change? 🤔♥️

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Shambhavi ♥‿♥'s avatar

Admirable thinking and writing

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