The future of full-time employment is changing.

And you should start investing in your own career optionality.

Last week was my last day at a full-time role. I don’t have another job lined up - instead, I’m going back to my solopreneur baseline.

I’ve been fairly open about my career journey - if you’ve followed me for a while, you know this isn’t my first time walking away from traditional employment (read: why I quit full-time roles). I first made the leap into solopreneurship six years ago, after realizing that the full-time leadership path I had fought hard for was actually pulling me away from the work I loved most.

And so I went ‘solo’: built a portfolio of work around my skills, and learned how to grow a business around my own product, which is my brain. Everything was ahmazing, but then boom - I grabbed a full-time opportunity with Dropbox (read: Why I ‘un-quit’ full-time roles) that led people to ask questions, the most pressing being “Is solopreneurship dead?”.

Solopreneurship is not dead. It’s so alive that I just jumped straight back into it.

Is full-time employment dead?

Haha, not quite. But it is evolving, and faster than we may think. Although I left Dropbox for traditional reasons (a change in company priorities), there’s a fundamental shift happening in our space. Just look at Shopify - they’ve already made it a requirement that any new role must be justified by proving AI can’t do it first.

In tech, we’re quickly moving toward a future where many of our very own traditional full-time jobs may not exist. We all know it’s happening - we see the cliff ahead, we’re talking about it, we’re even scared of it - yet we’re still collectively accelerating toward it. And yes, the institution (companies, investors, and the market) is applying an intense amount of pressure to that acceleration pattern, forcing us to make AI smarter, faster, and cheaper. But instead of pushing back for the sake of our own well-being and survival, we’re very much playing along.

Similar patterns showed up in the past, just take industrial revolution as an example, but this is the first time I’m living through one. And yeah, it’s wild.

Which is why I’m doubling down on the biggest career flex out there: career optionality. In this economy, you probably should too.

Full-time employment: the stability myth

Most people equate a full-time job with stability, and so they gravitate towards it. But that’s just not true.

Especially in U.S., where employment is at-will, a contract doesn’t protect you. You can be let go at any time, for any reason, or for no reason at all. And even in countries with stronger labor protections, companies restructure, priorities shift, and headcount gets cut. We’ve all seen it happen all too often recently with waves of layoffs across our industry. And this is just the beginning. More and more companies will experience product-market fit collapse, and your full-time job could disappear before you even see it coming.

So when people tell me that solopreneurship is risky, I very much disagree.

Building a diversified business around your skills is actually the most secure way to work. You own your skills, your reputation, and your distribution. To me, that looks like security.

And yes, the transition at the beginning is tough. The first six months of my solopreneurship journey were brutal - both for my sense of identity (who am I without a full-time job??) and my financial stability (when or where will the next client come from??). But once you build a baseline, you’re no longer dependent on someone else to decide whether or not you get a paycheck. You’re not on a short leash with the market anymore. You have options, leverage, and you’re building something that can catch you, no matter what happens.

The ultimate goal: career optionality

Ask most people about their career goals, and the answers will revolve around titles: “I want to reach Director level”, “I’m gunning for the CPO position”, “I want to start a company”.

All valid aspirations. My personal goal was to get to VP level as fast as possible. And as I quickly found out, this is also one of the fastest ways to accidentally start hating your life.

I know because I was there.

On paper, everything may look great: fancy title, great logo, big team. But what you end up doing in those positions is not nearly as glamorous - unbearable stress, terrible sleep, long working hours, meetings galore, and lots and lots of people problems (he said what in the meeting!?). I had no time for my family, and my health was deteriorating fast.

So I asked myself: “If I forwarded myself 15 years and looked at myself right now, would I be proud of my decisions or resent them?”. You probably know the answer because you know what happened next: I got rid of my golden full-time handcuffs and started my solopreneurship journey.

Along the way, I realized the ultimate career flex isn’t building someone else’s dream, chasing a title, or flying first class to company off-sites. It’s having career optionality - being in a position where full-time roles are just one of many ways you can engage with the market, not the only way and definitely not a requirement.

Is this me urging you to become a solopreneur tomorrow? No.

It’s just me suggesting you should start asking yourself regularly: Does this year working in this position help unlock new options for me? When you’re taking on new responsibilities, validating a recent promotion, or developing skills you can market later, for example, you’re building optionality.

But if you’re doing more of the same, with no growth in sight, the time investment is simply not worth it. It’s wise to start thinking about how to unlock new opportunities. That could mean taking an advising client on the side, switching jobs, switching departments, or even starting to share your knowledge online.

That said, I don’t recommend jumping into solopreneurship too early in your career.

You still need to build credibility and find your own personal product-market fit. Early roles are where you validate that people are willing to “buy” your thinking, either by hiring you, promoting you, or asking you to lead harder problems. That validation is what makes it easier to sell your skills later on.

Going solo ≠ forever closing the door to full-time

There’s a general misconception around the idea that once you go solo, you’re forever stuck outside of the walls of a “real job”. Again, not true! In fact, I get more full-time opportunities as a solopreneur than I ever did when I was in a traditional full-time role.

Increasing the variety of experiences under your belt doesn’t close doors, it opens more of them. When you see the inside of more companies and gather more data points, you’re strengthening your position as an expert.

Solopreneurship isn’t a rejection of full-time work, it’s just a different way of participating in the market. One that gives you more choices. You can take on an interim role, have advisory engagements, consult, run workshops, build courses, and write. Yes, you can even get a full-time job if the timing and the scope feel right.

And when one type of engagement doesn’t feel right anymore? You walk away with the same peace of mind that you walked in.

Where I see us heading

Having a full-time job or not is not a black and white discussion. The grey area in between is usually related to the career stage you’re at, and the circumstances of your personal life.

But one thing is becoming increasingly clear: the era of long tenures and static roles may be coming to an end, as AI accelerates everything. Innovation speed is increasing, priorities shift faster, teams reorganize more often, and the types of problems companies need solved change at accelerating speed.

In this new world, employment may starts to look a lot like a subscription: companies bring you in when they need your skills, and cancel when they don’t.

What does that mean for you?

It means you need to know your superpower and build a system that helps the right companies find it. Whether or not you ever end up going solo is up to you. But everyone should be building the same thing: a system that gives you leverage, protects your independence, and keeps your skills relevant, no matter how fast the world changes.

That’s what I’ve built. That’s what I’ll keep building. And that’s what I want for you too.