The 18-month Career Is Here

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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. These roles show up when a new technology needs human translators. They’re essential at first, then absorbed once the interface gets easier.

In the 1950s, companies hired entire pools of typists. By the nineties, everyone typed their own emails. Webmasters were a hot commodity in the early internet days. Now, your marketing intern spins up a site on Squarespace in 20 minutes.