The Rules Changed. Nobody Sent a Memo.

I was on Reddit last week, yes, I go there, and a post about the latest round of layoffs was going viral. GitLab. Coinbase. Amazon. Walmart. All in one week.

317 upvotes. 260 comments.

But one comment cut through all of it.

"It's cost cutting masquerading as AI innovation."

I sat with that for a long time.

Not because it's cynical. But because it names something that high performers everywhere are feeling and nobody is saying out loud, especially not in the building.

Here's what that comment is really saying:

The rules changed. And nobody sent a memo.

Here's what I know from nearly a decade at Google and years of coaching C-suite leaders and GTM executives through transitions:

The people who are genuinely okay right now, not performing okay, actually okay, are not the ones who figured out AI faster than everyone else.

They're the ones who stopped outsourcing their identity to an institution that was never building their career in the first place.

Your company has a strategy for your role.

The question is: do you have one for your life?

Because here's what nobody teaches you in any leadership program, any MBA, any performance review:

Your value is not contingent on your employment status.

The title is borrowed. The capability is yours.

Here's the reframe I use with every coaching client who's navigating this:

Your company is renting your time.

Not forever. Not unconditionally. Renting.

We've been conditioned to treat employment like a marriage, with loyalty, identity, and long-term commitment baked in on our side. But the relationship was always a lease agreement. A good one, hopefully. A fair one, ideally. But a lease.

And here's what that means for you:

If someone is renting your time, you better know what you're building with the proceeds.

I know because I was one of them, running on momentum I mistook for meaning.

That "renting your time" reframe is useful. But it's not enough on its own.

Because the deeper issue isn't the arrangement. It's the absence of a North Star.

When you don't know who you're becoming, every disruption feels existential. Every decision gets made from fear, or from default patterns, the strategies that worked in your 30s, for a version of you that no longer exists.

You've changed. Your strategy should too.

Sit with these. Really sit with them.

Not what's your next title. Who are you, as a leader, as a person, on the other side of whatever is happening right now?

Most people evaluate opportunities on the immediate: compensation, title, brand name. But the leaders who move with intention ask: where does this take me? Is this a stepping stone or a stopping point?

This one creates the longest silence in every room I'm in. Because most high performers have never given themselves permission to define what "enough" looks like. And without that, you're just running.

You don't have to answer these perfectly. But you have to have a direction. A rough North Star beats no North Star every single time.

Resources connected to this week's theme, curated for you, not just collected.

Fortune published a piece this month on what they're calling "professional identity purgatory," the disorienting space high achievers land in when AI disruption hits their sense of self. Uncomfortable and necessary reading. Read the Fortune article on “professional identity purgatory”

The "Happen to Your Career" podcast episode "Career Change Triggers: Why Most People Wait Years Too Long to Leave a Job" is worth your commute this week. The framing around why smart people stay in misaligned roles maps directly to the default pattern problem I wrote about above.

The Two Futures journaling exercise.

Take 15 minutes and write two versions of your next 3 years. One where every decision is made from fear. One where every decision is made from your North Star (If you don’t know your North Star, reply to this email with STAR, and I can help you with it).

Read them back to back. The contrast will tell you everything you need to know about where you are right now.

Block 20 minutes before Friday. No phone. No laptop. Just a notebook and the three questions above.

Write messy.
Write incomplete.
Write uncertain.

That's fine. The goal isn't clarity yet, it's contact. Getting your own thoughts on paper so you can start to see what's actually driving you versus what fear is driving you toward.

That 20 minutes might be the most important meeting on your calendar this week.

If you read those three questions and felt something shift, or felt resistance, that's information worth exploring.

Reply to this email with the word NORTH and I'll send you the Saboteur Assessment personally. It identifies exactly which internal voice is running your hesitation, so you can stop letting it drive.

Until next Saturday,