A job is a bundle of tasks

In a recent podcast Marc Andreessen makes a an observation that

A job is a bundle of tasks

A job can naturally change and it becomes a different bundle of tasks. He gives an example of how the role of a secretary/personal assistant has changed from initially mostly typing things up to a set of more advanced tasks like travel planning and orchestrating the executives day.

He breaks this down further

The job persists longer than the individual tasks and as the tasks change enough then that’s when the jobs change.

Particularly with the current impact of AI the task bundle for a job will change and potentially very quickly. Some of those existing tasks will be done by AI but new types of tasks will be added to the bundle.

You need to be really good at making sure that you can swap the tasks out.

Over time you can increase the scope of your job with the tasks you perform - he gives the example of coder/designer/product person effectively merging into one. Being good at one or more skills sets you up well to add additional scope/skills using AI.

Viewing your job as a bunch of tasks rather than a single complete concept opens up the opportunity to pick and choose which tasks you can drop, which you can improve and which new ones you can pick up. It allows you to fine tune how you perform those tasks and lean on delegation to others or to tools, such as AI.