The 18-month Career Is Here

Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up to get it in your inbox.

If anyone is a prompt engineer, Michael Taylor is. He wrote an essential book on it. He writes an Every column about it. He's building Ask Rally, an AI startup that creates synthetic market research by modeling your target audiences—and he says prompt engineering is “most of the work.”

He also thinks he has about five years before the job disappears.

If the headlines are to be believed, five years may be too generous. Less than two years ago, the Wall Street Journal wrote about prompt engineering roles paying up to $200,000. By this spring, the same publication declared the job "already obsolete."

This is the whiplash of careers in the AI economy: entire disciplines rising and falling and getting folded into the knowledge worker skill stack faster than you can update your LinkedIn profile. Speaking as someone who recently swan-dived into a new job as an "AI operations lead," I'd be lying if I said it doesn't freak me out. If it's prompt engineering today, will it be AI operations tomorrow?

The answer is: Maybe. And I’m learning to be OK with that. The path started crumbling long before AI—think pandemic pivots, the freelance boom, the rise of portfolio careers. What AI does is accelerate the shift so dramatically that ignoring it becomes impossible. And when the ground moves this fast, moving with it might be where the opportunity is.

The brief, wondrous life of a bridge job

Mike's five-year plan makes more sense when you understand what prompt engineering really is: a bridge job...

Build your product, outsource the marketing page

You've got bigger things to worry about than website copy and dev timelines. Framer lets you vibe code marketing pages that actually represent your brand, with scroll animations, custom interactions, and conversion tools built-in. Focus on the work that matters.

Use code EVERY2025 for a free month of Framer Pro

Want to sponsor Every? Click here.

Become a paid subscriber to Every to unlock this piece and learn about:

1. The accelerating obsolescence of bridge jobs
2. Three principles for navigating new career paths
3. How skills don't die, but become baseline knowledge