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🎓Hi from TechWalk: Doubling down on a depreciating degree? Try this instead

Sunk cost spiraling isn't a strategy. Insight is.

Author

Cynthia Widjaja
December 14, 2025

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👋 Hello to our new newsletter readers! I’m Cynthia Widjaja - learning and development professional, data science nerd, digital marketing enthusiast, TechWalk Silicon Valley Chapter community member, and newsletter editor. I’d love your help with a few things:

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From the Founder’s Desk

Exploring the future of work, with takeaways and to-dos for the TechWalk Community

After much handwringing and prayers for shower-thought epiphanies, I’ve landed on an area of focus for this column: the future of work.

Writing about networking didn’t feel big enough. Basically, everyone needs to do it. In a way that feels authentic to them. End of story.

Writing about tech felt too big and better handled by people other than me.

But the future of work, in true Goldilocks fashion, feels just right. It is a topic I’m deeply curious about and an area where I can share what I’m learning and what I’m implementing, in hopes that we can take this journey together.

To kick things off, I listened to a podcast while wrapping Christmas presents, AI and the Future of Work, moderated by Tristan Harris of the Center for Humane Technology. The guests were Ethan Mollick, a professor at Wharton who studies AI and work, and Molly Kinder, a senior fellow at Brookings who researches how AI is already showing up in the labor market.

Thankfully, my first foray into listening, reading, learning, and discussing the future of work was surprisingly useful.

TIP: I’ll be using Apple Podcasts whenever possible because they consistently provide transcripts. I need to be able to read the episode after I listen. That’s just how my brain works.

The unease we’ve all been feeling was summed up perfectly by Ethan Mollick and provides an excellent launch into my takeaways and tips:

“There’s just the fact that even if everything works out great, living through industrial revolutions historically sucks. It’s a tough time in the early industrial revolution. Living standards fall before they grow up again.”
— Ethan Mollick, Professor, Wharton School

Key takeaways

1. The unease we’ve all been feeling has a name.
Living through an industrial revolution is uncomfortable by definition. Even when things work out in the long run, the transition period is destabilizing. It SUCKS. I’m choosing to embrace the suck, and get on with it. My job will never look the same again. Now what?

2. Adapt or die.
Now is not the time to double down on a career that is a guaranteed diminishing return. Many of us have spent a lot of money on degrees or time in careers that are going away or where the opportunity set is shrinking quickly. Don’t let sunk cost thinking paralyze you from taking a cold, honest look at the facts and being strategic about how and when you pivot.

3. If you do one thing, by yourself, diversify, ASAP.
If your job consists of doing one narrow thing largely on your own, think about diversifying your portfolio of skills and tasks as soon as possible. Don’t just automate, augment. What knowledge or talent do you possess that can be amplified, but only if you remain at the helm?

4. Be more human.
This is where it gets a little woo woo, and I think that’s fine. Lean all the way into your humanity. Try new things, in community, with other humans. Get back in tune with your senses, all of them. Move your body. Listen to your body. Create real digital boundaries. Maybe even a tech timeout a couple of times a week.

To this end, I’m doing a 30-day yoga challenge at UpDog Studios. I haven’t consistently practiced yoga in a long time. In a weird way, I’m looking forward to how bad I will be and for the chance for my brain to get good again at something new. If you want to join me for a class, let me know.

This is not about rejecting technology. It is about strengthening the parts of myself that technology cannot replicate.

“Be good at being a human. Relational skills, being influential, being able to speak, motivate, and connect with people. Anything embodied like that is not something AI is very good at right now.”

- Molly Kinder

Thoughts? Did any of these takeaways resonate with you?

Let’s have a coffee and talk about it

Until next week,

Christine

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Happy Walking,

Cynthia Widjaja

TechWalk Newsletter Editor