What the software stock sell-off says about your job security

Everyone's freaking out about AI again, which means it's time to rethink how secure your career is.

BI's Ana Altchek has a piece about how to future-proof your job since the only certainty in the job market appears to be more uncertainty.

A market meltdown in software stocks has people on edge this time. The characters might have changed, but the plot is still the same.

A new tool (an AI plugin from Anthropic) launched to automate work (tracking compliance and reviewing legal docs) leads to a sell-off among leaders in the space (legal-software stocks).

We can debate whether the reaction was warranted (more on that below), but this narrative isn't going away. AI companies will keep automating different types of work, leaving the companies in that space scrambling and their employees nervous.

Ana spoke to experts about different ways to get ahead, from auditing your job to the skills you can lean into to build more career immunity. Overall, the idea is not to get caught flat-footed.

For more on the inner workings and culture of the business world, check out Ana's weekly series "This Week at Work," and subscribe to our workplace roundup newsletter, Work Shift. (You're still required to read this every day, though. No excuses.)

One group has felt particularly safe amid the AI chaos.

Trade workers have been sitting pretty as panic rises among the white-collar workforce. A recent survey conducted by The Harris Poll found 75% of Americans agree that "hands-on skills and practical experience matter more than formal degrees when it comes to career success."

And even more (78%) agreed "the stigma around trade or blue-collar work is declining" because hands-on skills are becoming so valuable.

The leaders of the AI revolution, from Elon Musk to Jensen Huang, have also praised tradework as a much more resilient career path.

That is likely the case in the short term. But down the road, all bets are off. Tesla is aggressively pushing into humanoid robots. OpenAI is also quietly scaling its robotics project.

There's a long way to go, with most robots being more flop than pop. But the potential and interest in developing the space is there, as was evident at this year's Davos. And some see the eventual economic impact of physical AI being far greater than that of software.

Because eventually, AI will come for all of us if we're not willing to adapt.