I recently wrapped up annual reviews with our team. I walked away from those conversations deeply grateful—and honestly, humbled. We have assembled a group of builders who are exceptional at their respective crafts. They are thoughtful system designers, creative thinkers, elegant coders, relentless debuggers. They sweat the details, they are unbelievable professionals.

But something else came through in those conversations that echoed something that Sam Altman and others have recently alluded to: as AI becomes both more powerful, and more embedded in their workflow, something is being lost. Everyone on our team is more productive than ever. They ship faster and solve harder problems in less time.

And yet, the pride they have always taken in building brilliant code and sharing their work with colleagues is disappearing. The quiet satisfaction of shipping code that was entirely, unmistakably yours is becoming rarer. Their jobs are shifting away from deeply considered thinking and rapid building to days of prompting, reviewing, refining. They are orchestrating and supervising AI, becoming managers of systems that generate code in seconds that would have once taken hours, or even days. Increasingly, the AI is not just faster—it is competitive in quality.

Our team trained for years to master a craft. They built identity around being excellent at a difficult skill, and found satisfaction in delivering new things to the world. And now, the locus of craftsmanship is moving, as they are no longer the primary author. Some may not be interested in ever managing people, but they find themselves nonetheless as editors, serving more as a quality control layer. Their skills and expertise matter greatly, but they are deploying it very differently.

Everyone on the team recognizes that AI is driving productivity up dramatically. The leverage is undeniable. But humans are motivated by meaning, growth and a pursuit of mastery. While much ink has been spilled about AI eating engineering, the conversations with our team felt bigger than just engineering.

This is not a new concept. Indeed, philosophers like Thomas Carlyle were thinking about the importance of finding dignity in work as early as the mid-1800s. As we progressed through the industrial age into the technology age, politicians of all stripes have found this concept important. Bill Clinton is perhaps most famous for speaking eloquently about this being a fundamental human need, not just a macroeconomic one. Leaders across the political spectrum understood the need for people to find a meaningful identity in the work they do. There is without question a sad, even dark, underside to a society where pride in work has eroded.

What I heard in our review conversations was a version of that same story. The challenge for leaders in moments like this is not to slow progress. AI is not going away. The productivity gains are real, and accelerating. The competitive advantages are indisputable. But how do you center people first?

For Ethosphere, if our engineers are becoming managers of AI, as leaders, we need to help define what mastery looks like in the new world. We need to celebrate and elevate craftsmanship that is no longer just code, but systems, judgment, architecture, taste. We also need to ensure that people still have room to build, to stretch, to create—not just supervise outputs.

For the retail customers we serve, this question extends far beyond software. By getting cutting edge AI technology into the hands of retail associates, brands can both demonstrate a desire to invest in their people, and get them excited about learning how to use AI to grow their careers and abilities. In every role in the retail ecosystem, technology can either diminish pride or amplify it.

The difference will always be leadership. The dignity of work does not come from doing tasks the slow way. It comes from contributing meaningfully, exercising judgment, and seeing your fingerprints on the outcome. As we lead through this next era of change, that must remain the north star.