Sideswiped by Extinction

AI is changing industries and creating new jobs while ending old ones. We’re learning and adapting, and this will continue. It’s a tectonic change, like the creation of fire, the printing press, and the internet. Yet, even while new opportunities are created, some companies will refuse to adapt, risking extinction for the sake of short-term comfort. It reminds me of that time a few decades ago when I lost a job powered by new technology to an industry trying desperately to cling to the status quo.

I was an early desktop publishing adopter, at least in my local market. I learned Mac OS in the late 1980s and became proficient with early versions of PageMaker and Quark Express. This opened up opportunities not only in my day job but also as a freelancer. I was young, not yet married, and was completing assignments for dozens of clients virtually around the clock — from restaurant menus to physician practice brochures, auto shop print ads, and foundation newsletters. It was lucrative and a lot of fun. These clients also needed words for their layouts, so I was able to provide them with copywriting services. A double win for me.

One of my best freelance clients was a small ad agency. For more than a year, I finished projects for a variety of the firm’s B2B and B2C accounts. This gig paid better than many of the smaller businesses I worked with. I also liked the owner and the team of designers and account reps.

This relationship lasted for almost a year. One day, the owner took me to lunch and told me he was tired of paying me as a freelancer. He wanted to hire me full-time. The salary he offered was significantly more than I was currently making at my hospital-based marketing job. I said yes. We shook hands. And my career and my life took a dramatic change, though it wasn’t the change I’d expected.

For a few weeks, everything worked out just fine. I was part of a talented team doing interesting work and even helped with a few successful new business pitches. I felt like I was a part of something that would grow. I even enjoyed the Friday ritual when the owner would arrive in the office just before lunchtime to hand that week’s check to each employee.

Then one Friday, he didn’t show up. We waited until the end of the work day before trying to call him. He couldn’t be reached. As I recall, it was almost a week before we saw him again, still with no checks in hand. Soon the company closed and I was out of a job.

Why did this small, but growing business, fail with both ample work and a growing client base? It turns out that the owner was using proceeds from our company to fund another of his businesses — a typesetting firm. Ask ChatGPT when the typesetting industry began to fail and it will tell you the decline began in the mid-20th Century and accelerated in the 1980s and 1990s with the advent of desktop publishing. Indirectly, I was a victim of my success.

As AI adoption accelerates, I think about those companies that try to hold on to legacy services and practices at their peril. It’s happening as I write this at a faster rate and higher level. I’m also confident there will be people and companies applying new AI tools to create miserable outputs and outcomes just like a lot of the bad desktop publishing that came out of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Those who succeed will continue to learn how to apply the tools with a fanatical focus on the audience and its needs at the center of their efforts.