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Your Experience Is Your Superpower

5 min read

Software Arch

You've seen systems fail. You've seen 'best practices' crumble. That pattern recognition is worth more than any AI's training data.

Eng Manager

You've managed through booms and busts. You know how people react. AI doesn't. Your people judgment is the moat.

Solutions Arch

Client relationships, constraint navigation, and 'I've seen this before' — that's 30 years in the room. Irreplaceable.

Your Experience Is Your Superpower

TL;DR

  • 35 years of shipping, failing, and learning creates judgment AI can't replicate. Speed isn't everything. Getting it right is.
  • Your value: pattern recognition, institutional memory, and "I've seen this movie before." That's not in any training set.
  • James doesn't need to compete with AI on typing speed. He needs to lean into what only decades can build.

James has seen COBOL, C++, Java, cloud, and now AI. He's seen projects that looked great on paper and exploded in production. He's seen "best practices" that aged like milk. That's not knowledge you can scrape from the internet.

What 30+ Years Buys You

  • Pattern recognition: "This feels like the time we tried X. It failed because Y." AI has data. You have scars. Different thing.
  • Institutional memory: Why that system was built that way. What we tried and abandoned. The political context. That lives in people. You're one of them.
  • Judgment under uncertainty: When the spec is vague and the timeline is tight, you've been there. You know the tradeoffs. AI suggests; you decide.

The Speed Trap

AI is fast. You're not here to be fast. You're here to be right. To spot the landmine before we step on it. To say "we tried that in 1998 and it didn't work." Speed without judgment is dangerous. You have the judgment.

Reframe the Narrative

"I'm old" → "I have pattern recognition no one else has." "AI is faster" → "AI is faster at the wrong thing sometimes. I'm here to catch that." "I might be outdated" → "I've seen more failure modes than any model. That's the asset."

Quick Check

James has 35 years. AI is faster. What's his REAL value that no model can copy?

'I'm old.' 'AI is faster.' 'I might be outdated.' You feel obsolete. You wonder if 35 years matters.

Click "Superpower" to see the difference →

Do This Next

  1. Write down 3 times your experience saved a project or prevented a mistake. Concrete examples. That's your value proposition.
  2. Identify one person who could benefit from that wisdom. Share a story. Make it normal to ask "what would James do?"