Ownership Will Neither be a Commodity nor Automated
In the marketplace of work, not all skills are valued equally. Some are rare and highly sought after, while others—once prestigious—have become so widely available that their individual worth declines. To understand why this matters for tech professionals, it helps to borrow a concept from economics - the commodity market.
A commodity market deals in goods that are essentially interchangeable—barrels of oil, bushels of wheat, rare earth metals, gem stones or ounces of gold. When something becomes a commodity, uniqueness disappears, and price becomes the main differentiator. Nobody buys your wheat because it’s more imaginative; they buy it because it’s cheapest or most accessible. The danger for professionals is clear - if your skills become commodities, you’re competing on price rather than expertise, and someone, somewhere, will always be cheaper.
Skills at Risk of Commoditization
In the technology sector, commoditization is accelerating. Consider software development. A few decades ago, simply being able to code was a superpower; today, millions can do it, and tools like GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT are making routine coding tasks even easier. Similarly, basic IT support and infrastructure management, once the backbone of enterprise technology, are increasingly automated or outsourced to cloud providers. Even skills like data visualization — once requiring a specialist — are now accessible through user-friendly platforms that generate dashboards in minutes.
What unites these examples is that the skills, though important, are no longer rare. They can be easily learned, quickly automated, or cheaply outsourced. For workers relying on them, this means shrinking differentiation and increased vulnerability in the job market.
Where Professionals Should Focus Instead
If certain skills are becoming commodities, where should technology workers focus? The answer lies in areas that resist automation and mass production—skills that require judgment, creativity, leadership, and problem framing.
Take responsibility - one thing neither machines nor cheaper service markets will replace soon is taking responsibility. For output, for outcome - provide guarantees, share risk.
Complex Problem-Solving Machines can write code, but humans still excel at deciding what problems are worth solving. The ability to frame challenges in business or society and design innovative solutions remains a rare asset - if you don't believe me see the research paper from Apple The illusion of thinking
Interdisciplinary Thinking Combining technology expertise with knowledge in healthcare, sustainability, finance, education or a specific company and its offering and its value proposition, creates unique marketable skills. The professional who can bridge two worlds is far harder to replace than the one who masters a single, crowded skillset.
Communication and Influence Technical excellence alone is insufficient if it can’t be translated into strategy. Skills like storytelling with data, persuading decision-makers, and aligning teams around ideas set professionals apart from a purely technical crowd.
Adaptability and Continuous Learning The most future-proof skill may not be technical at all—it’s the ability to learn and pivot quickly (as Darwin put it). In a field where yesterday’s cutting edge is today’s baseline, adaptability is the ultimate differentiator.
If you can't beat it - join it - learn automation. All the automation that is happening in the past decades (including AI) will have to be supported and developed. So it's a prudent space to be.
Why You Don’t Want to Be a Commodity
Being part of a commodity market with your skills is like being another bag of rice on a crowded shelf — interchangeable, undervalued, and replaceable. Professionals who allow their work to become commoditized risk being trapped in a race to the bottom, competing only on cost or efficiency. The goal, instead, is to operate where your contributions are distinct, where your perspective and creativity matter, and where you cannot simply be swapped out for the cheapest alternative.
Final Thoughts
When in competition to sell your products, services or skills the one thing you should focus on is sustainable competitive advantage.
The technology sector is full of opportunities, but also full of traps. Skills like basic coding, IT support, and routine analytics are increasingly commoditized, and those who rely on them alone may find themselves undervalued. To thrive, workers must seek the edges of automation — developing the rare abilities that combine technical mastery with creativity, strategy, ownership and human insight. In a world where machines can write code, the professionals who will stand out are those who can own their work, imagine why the code matters, who it serves, and how it changes the world.