The Career Curve: August Edition
This month comes down to one tension many of you are feeling. Your investments are likely up this year. Your role may feel less secure than it has in a while.
The same force is behind both. Here is how I am thinking about it, and what I would do about it.
The market and your career are moving in opposite directions
Tech and AI valuations are near record highs, and earnings keep climbing. If you hold equities, your portfolio is likely up this year.
At the same time, AI has been the most-cited reason for layoffs for months, and many of those cuts are happening at profitable companies. In Canada, unemployment is near 6.5%, with weak hiring rather than mass layoffs. For senior marketers, that means fewer openings and longer searches.
The same force is raising your investments and lowering demand for your role.
There is a useful principle in investing. A stock price does not always reflect a company's real value. Earlier this year, the same companies now at record highs were down 20% on news about Iran and tariffs. The businesses had not changed. The price was reacting to headlines, and it recovered.
The job market is doing the same thing to experienced senior marketers. It is pricing you on a narrative that the function is being automated, so its leaders are worth less. That narrative is not the same as your value.
Your value is the revenue you have driven, the teams you have led, and the judgment you have built over 20 years. That does not disappear because AI can now handle routine tasks.
Three things matter right now:
Be clear about what you are worth, and have the evidence for it. Do not lower your ambition to match a bad market. Point your experience toward where marketing leadership is going, which is closer to AI, not away from it.
Markets recover, and so do careers. Your current position is not your ceiling.
Repositioning your experience around AI is the right move. Doing it under constant pressure is also one of the biggest sources of burnout I am seeing right now.
Learning to manage AI burnout in marketing leadership
Burnout among senior marketing leaders is not new. AI is not making it easier.
If you have 15 or more years in marketing, you are now expected to lead AI adoption across your team, upskill quickly, and explain to your board how you are using it. Often you are doing this while still learning the tools yourself. The gap between what you are expected to know and what you have had time to actually learn is a real source of pressure.
I spoke with Diel Gerber, CEO and Founder of Gerber Media, a Toronto-based paid media and growth marketing agency, about what she is seeing. On the gap between senior leaders and their teams:
"In many cases, the AI tools needed for day-to-day work are quite different from the tools given to them."
Senior leaders are usually a step removed from daily execution, so they carry the expectation to have AI figured out without the hands-on time to build real fluency. That sits on top of workloads that were already heavy. As Diel put it:
"Adding an extra layer of pressure ... on top of the burnout that's already there might lead to the opposite result."
Final thought: My view is the strategy, judgment, experience, and critical thinking you have built over your career are irreplaceable. Your job is to lead how AI gets used across your team. Bring in hands-on fluency where you need it, and protect your focus for the decisions only you can make. You do not have to master every tool yourself.
The pressure to keep up is real. Keeping up does not require doing everything yourself, including how to position yourself.
The Hidden Costs of High Performance
I will be co-hosting a free webinar with Kelly Benwell and Tammy McDonnell from Bliss Counselling+Psychotherapy. We will cover what sustained high achievement costs you, and how to keep performing without paying with your health. If the last two articles resonated, this is the next practical step.
September 9 at 1:00 pm ET - 45 minutes - Live on Zoom
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