Last week, Jack Dorsey laid off nearly 4,000 people at Block. Not because the company was struggling. Revenue was fine. Growth was fine. He said a smaller team, using AI, could do more and do it better.

The stock jumped 24%.

That same week, the person who built Claude Code at Anthropic said in an interview that he hasn't written a single line of code by hand since November. AI writes all of it. He traced the curve: in February it handled 20% of his work, by May 30%, by November 100%. Eight months from useful assistant to full replacement.

Then he said something I think every senior professional needs to hear. He said: replace "coding" with whatever you do for a living, and you will see where this is heading.

I am not sharing this to scare you. If you are reading this, you are probably already thinking about what comes next. But I want to be direct with you about what I am seeing, because the timeline is shorter than most people realize.

I speak with senior professionals every week. People with 20+ years experience in finance, pharma, consulting, energy, law. People who have led teams, closed enormous deals, built things that mattered. Almost all of them are thinking about independence. And almost all of them are stuck.

One person I spoke with recently left a senior role and launched his own practice in a fast-growing industry. Within months, he had nine projects running. Sounds like a success story, right? Except he had no system, no plan, and $20,000 in invoices he simply hadn't sent because he was drowning in admin. He told me, "I don't have a good plan. If I continue like this, people with a better plan will overtake me. I feel like I'm losing my edge."

Another had spent months building a value proposition in his head. He knew what he could offer. He had shaped it. He had thought about it carefully. But he could not get past his own introspective, biased view, his words, to actually test it in the market. He told me, "Whether there is value or not, I do not know." This is someone with decades of experience saying he is not sure his expertise has value.

A third was watching his position at a major firm wind down. He knew he had three months, maybe less. He had ideas, contacts, a plan B involving a different country entirely. But nothing concrete. Nothing generating revenue. And he said something that stuck with me: "At my age, looking for a job in a situation where jobs are being reduced can be absolutely deadly."

These are not junior employees. These are accomplished people with serious track records. And they are all feeling the same thing: the expertise is real, but it is trapped. Trapped in their heads. Trapped in corporate structures they do not own. Trapped in scattered projects with no system underneath them.

This is why the Block story matters to you personally.

It is not about whether your specific employer will do what Dorsey did tomorrow. It is about what happens when every company around you starts doing this math. A venture capital investor I follow said last week that he spoke with three founders in 48 hours, all running companies with 500 to 1,000 employees, and every one of them was planning at least a 20% headcount reduction.

When that math hits your industry, the expensive senior person whose expertise lives inside the company but is not generating independent revenue is the most vulnerable. Not because the expertise is not valuable. It is. But because it is on someone else's balance sheet. They decide what it is worth. They decide when it is redundant.

One person I spoke with put it perfectly. He said, "I closed one of the biggest contracts in Europe last year for my company. My boss has a second elevator at his home. I can do nothing beyond this."

The value you create is enormous. The ownership you have over it is zero.

Here is what I would tell you if we were sitting across from each other right now.

If you are inside a corporate role and planning to leave in the next 3 to 6 months, do not wait for the perfect moment. The perfect moment does not exist. What exists is a window where you still have the salary, the savings, the breathing room, and the credibility that comes with being in motion rather than in crisis.

Start converting what you know into something you own. Not all of it. Not perfectly. Start with the one thing you do that people consistently come to you for, the thing that feels easy to you but is not easy for anyone else. Package it. Price it. Test it with three people in your network. That is enough to begin.

And learn where AI fits into your delivery. Not because you need to become a technologist, but because the person who can combine 25 years of expertise with AI-powered systems will deliver in hours what used to take weeks. That is your competitive advantage, if you own it.

The people I see thriving in this transition are not doing anything dramatic. They are not posting manifestos on LinkedIn. They are not quitting in a blaze of glory. They are quietly building something that belongs to them. And they are doing it now, while they still get to choose the timing.

Because the alternative is having the timing chosen for you. And when it happens, it will not come with a runway. It will come on a Tuesday, and the stock will go up.

Talk soon,

Salama

P.S. If you are planning your move out of corporate in the next 3 to 6 months and want a clear first step, I set aside time each week for 15-minute strategy sessions. No pitch, just clarity. Apply here.