When the Wave You’re Riding Becomes a Vortex
Part 2 of a Two-Part Series on Career Navigation in Tech Disruption
If you haven’t read Part 1 of this series yet, I encourage you to start there — especially if you're early in your career. It includes real stories from my own life when I had to hunker down during turbulent tech shifts and how those painful decisions later turned into incredible growth.
This article, however, is for those of us with 15+ years still to go — folks who have been around long enough to think we’ve “earned” some predictability. This piece is written for mid-career professionals — the managers, the senior ICs, the VPs — especially those working in big tech or companies with once-impenetrable reputations who now find themselves facing an uncomfortable question: “What if I’m next?”
A Conversation That Keeps Repeating
In the last few months, I’ve had dozens of conversations with folks affected by layoffs or at companies who've done layoffs — many of them from the world’s top companies. These are smart, accomplished professionals. But there’s a recurring pattern: offers are turned down because the title is smaller, the compensation doesn’t match their old package, or the role is in a new country and feels like a “step back.”
And let me say clearly — I respect those choices. We all have different constraints. But it also reminds me of when I had to make those tough calls, and I want to offer a perspective that may help someone sitting on the edge right now.
When I Took a “Step Back” to Leap Forward
There was a time in my career when I held a director-level role at a comfortable company in Ohio. I had the perks — platinum cards, box seats at Cavaliers games, and a house with a pool in the works. But I saw the shift coming. Cloud was becoming real. I realized if I didn’t learn how big tech built scalable systems, I’d be irrelevant in five years.
So I gave it all up. Took a job at Microsoft — not as a director or even manager, but as an individual contributor program manager(because I wanted to learn the end to end process ownership). No team. No title. No box seats. My colleagues were confused. But in that “step back,” I learned how to build systems at scale, how to ship globally distributed platforms. That move fueled the next decade of my growth.
Later, when I joined Amazon Prime Video, I had no team on Day One. But I built it from scratch — and learned data science and ML in the process. That knowledge became my foundation for understanding how AI would eventually reshape everything. I wasn’t just surviving the vortex. I was preparing for the next wave.
The Problem with Waiting
Too many seasoned professionals believe they can wait this out. That the disruption is temporary. That another round of layoffs won’t touch them.
But the AI shift isn’t a re-org. It’s a rebuild. And in a rebuild, the top floors get torn down first. The titles, the strategy layers, the “sounding boards.” Companies aren’t remodeling anymore — they’re rewriting the blueprint. People who've been at these companies too long in old products will be replaced by people who have new products elsewhere.
And here’s the brutal truth: if you’re not making proactive choices, life will make reactive ones for you.
Tough Decisions at Better Times Beat Easy Ones at the Worst Times
Some of the folks I’m interviewing today — incredibly talented people — are declining offers in Dubai or Saudi Arabia, saying the compensation doesn’t match their former Silicon Valley package or the region if not as sophisticated technologically. But I can already see what’s coming: by the time they’re ready to accept something similar, the market will have tightened even more, and that same offer will no longer be available. Also the emerging markets also provide opportunities to learn new skills but teach the ones you have. You're never getting that in your current role as the world around you is crumbling down.
It's not arrogance — it’s inertia. And I know it, because I’ve felt it too.
But titles, salaries, and zip codes can’t be the reason we stagnate while the world shifts beneath us.
What Mid-Career Professionals Need to Reflect On — Now
If you’re sitting on a decision — a job in a smaller market, a pivot to a new role, a downgrade in comp or title — consider this:
Do you still want to be relevant in 2035?
Can you afford to wait until the next wave makes landfall?
Is your resistance based on pride… or on data?
What skills have you added in the last 2 years that future-proofs your value?
Your past success doesn’t insulate you from change — it prepares you to face it better. If you're not changing, you’re just delaying the pain.
Final Thought: Vortexes Don’t Always Warn You First
In Part 1, I said a vortex could become a wave. In this second part, I’ll close by flipping that: the wave you’re riding could become a vortex.
No one thinks it’ll be them — until it is.
Make the hard decisions while you still have options. The future belongs to those who train for it now — not the ones who hope it stays the same.
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