The Infinite Employability Moment
Observations as the founder of The Atticus Project and Chief Legal Officer of Infoblox
At The Atticus Project, we have long championed the philosophy of being an AI-first organization. Yet, as any leader will tell you, declaring a vision is easy; driving team adoption is difficult.
For a while, I remained the inevitable bottleneck, needing to review every document, edit every presentation, and make every final decision. But three months ago, when the team started using agentic AI tools, specifically, Claude Cowork and Claude Code, I witnessed a shift toward a path to true autonomy. With that path to autonomy comes a sense of pride, excitement, and wonder.
A month ago, we introduced Claude Code to my Infoblox legal and public policy team. The clearest sign of the same shift taking hold came in a few 1:1s with my team members last week. When I asked them how they felt about the rapid pace of change, I braced for the usual AI-era confusion and anxiety. Although many acknowledged experiencing an existential crisis while using agentic AI tools, they spoke of it with excitement and wonder, big smiles lighting up their faces.
Those smiles, where did they come from? As one of my team members put it: the sense of infinite employability.
What Is “Infinite Employability”?
We didn’t coin this phrase. We heard it from our Infoblox board member, Yvonne Wassenaar, who came to speak with our team during our last offsite. She told us about a pivotal moment early in her career when she realized she could wait tables, clean houses, and program in COBOL. That was her infinite employability moment.
With that moment comes the freedom from fear of having her career be subject to somebody else’s control. The skills themselves were the source of that freedom. Knowing that even if she lost her current job, she could leverage what she already knew how to do to find another one—one that played to her own strengths and put her back in the control seat.
Yvonne, of course, didn’t just wait tables, clean houses, or write COBOL. She built a fulfilling career as an accomplished management consultant, a two-time CEO and a board member of many technology companies, including Infoblox. The three-skill list was the foundation that gave her the confidence to keep pivoting to a new career at every turn.
My team members are making the exact same bet today, simply substituting COBOL for agentic AI. They are not abandoning their craft as lawyers, policy experts or data scientists. Instead, they are extending their skill set to include the new system that will shape the next decade of their work. This is what infinite employability looks like today.
The Path to Infinite Employability Looks Different for Everyone
The path to infinite employability looks different for everyone. The key is to lean into what you are good at, or, just as powerfully, into what you hate the most and want to get out of:
For one team member, the motivation came from frustration. He had never enjoyed the arcane, grinding choreography of redlining contracts or the performative theater of negotiations. His goal was always to remove that friction and get the deal done. Once he saw what agentic AI could do, he poured his energy into building a workflow that would let him sidestep the old-fashioned way, one contract at a time.
For another, the catalyst was a website she could not stand. While she wanted to fix it, she lacked the block of free time required for a traditional ground-up redesign. The project that finally broke through that barrier was using Claude Code to execute a full rebuild of the Atticus Project website.
For another, the path came not from frustration but from a gift. She has a rare ability to explain hard things in plain words. Teaching others turned out to be exactly how she learned it herself. By the time she had run a few sessions and with her coding skills, she had leapfrogged my AI fluency. Naturally, she transformed from a follower into my AI coach.
Deep down, everyone is seeking to learn. When that learning transforms into a tangible possibility, it is an exhilarating moment.
Takeaways
If you are feeling the weight of AI, here are a few reminders to help you cultivate your own sense of infinite employability:
Freedom from Fear: Start from a place of agency rather than fear. Your livelihood is not dictated by any single employer, role, or wave of technology. The skills you build belong to you, and they travel with you. Once you internalize that, every step that follows becomes easier.
Take a Leap of Faith: Acknowledge that the professional landscape has irrevocably changed. Commit to learning new agentic AI tools, understanding that this is a skill you can acquire, regardless of how non-technical your background may be.
Lean Into Your Own Strengths: Just as my team members found their footing through different paths, your AI journey will be most successful if you align it with the things you already do well and enjoy.
Give Yourself the Grace of Time: True transformation does not happen overnight. Give yourself the grace of 3-4 months to explore, experiment, and slowly weave AI habits into your daily work. Your proficiency will compound with practice; eventually, everyone can reach the summit, and every summit looks different from the other.
Looking at my teams today, armed with AI and a renewed sense of wonder, I believe I am watching a new generation of Yvonne’s philosophy emerge. They are ready to step into unfamiliar systems, decipher how they operate, and keep running regardless of the disruptions swirling around them.
And they are, indeed, infinitely employable.
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For more practical tips on AI governance and innovation, check out GenAI for the Legal Profession: Power User Edition, AI Strategy for Legal Leaders, Atticus AI Habits Workshop and my Fairly AI blogs. Interested in a 1:1 Claude Cowork coaching session? Contact us at aicoach@atticusprojectai.org.