I expect this won’t go down well, but I feel it needs to be said.

Firstly, bear with me – I want to start by talking about how I ended up in this industry.

I came out of uni heading nowhere. Meandered into a job as a pensions administrator. I was seriously considering becoming an IFA, not out of passion or ambition, just because I didn’t have any better ideas.

Then I got lucky. Someone I knew started a startup – like Facebook for villages (before Facebook existed). I picked up coding again (I’d played around as a kid). From there I blagged a job at another startup as an content editor, writing articles about online shopping. Then I blagged a job at Lycos as a “Web Master”.

Right place, right time. I was lucky. I benefitted from the DotCom boom. I fell on my feet. I still pinch myself every day.

I think about teachers and nurses – low pay, long hours, no real choice about where or how they work. I think about other well-paid knowledge professions – doctors, lawyers, architects – years of education, working brutal hours, often in demanding environments.

Most of the places I’ve worked had food and drinks on tap. Ping pong tables. Games machines. I’ve never had to wear a suit. Most places were progressive, and while the industry doesn’t have a great reputation overall, it’s been far more accommodating of people from different backgrounds, genders, and sexual orientations than many others.

After a long bull run – which peaked post-Covid with inflated salaries and over-promotion – things feel like they are changing.

Being asked to go back into the office a couple of times a week. You can’t just fall into jobs like you used to. And GenAI, of course – currently upending the way we work. A paradigm shift far greater than anything I’ve seen in 25 years of my career.

What we had wasn’t normal. It wasn’t standard. It was unusually good.

We weren’t owed any of this.

We all just got lucky.