Prestige is a Lagging Indicator

Most career advice tells you to aim higher.

Get the title.

Earn the promotion.

Build the reputation.

No-one ever tells you that by the time you get there, the thing you climbed toward might already be worth less than it was when you started.

That is the prestige trap, and right now, in the middle of the biggest shift in how knowledge work gets done in a generation, it matters more than ever.

The Feeling That 'Something Is Off'

I talk to a lot of smart, experienced people. People with impressive job titles and salaries to match.

Many of them are exhausted in a way they cannot explain.

It is not burnout from overwork in the traditional sense. They are not buried under unreasonable workloads. It is something quieter and more disorienting. They have done everything right. They have the title. They have the seniority. They have the respect and yet they carry their work like a burden.

Heavy. Draining. Oddly hollow.

When we dig into it, the same pattern appears. The external signals of success are all there. The internal signals, the ones that tell you your work matters, that you are growing, that what you bring to the job is genuinely yours, went quiet somewhere along the way. The external validation was so loud, for so long, that they stopped noticing.

This isn't a motivation problem. It's a strategy problem.

What Prestige Actually Measures

Prestige is real. It reflects something. A job title signals that you have accumulated experience, navigated organisations, and delivered results at a certain level. That is not nothing.

But prestige is a lagging indicator. It tells you what was valued, not what will be.

The title you hold today reflects decisions made over the last five, ten, maybe fifteen years. The skills it recognises, the outputs it rewards, the kind of work it assumes you do, those were shaped by a world that is changing faster than any title can keep up with.

This matters enormously right now. New tools are moving through knowledge work at speed. The tasks being automated first are not the difficult ones. They are the repeatable ones. The process-heavy ones. The work that looks productive but requires no real judgement. The work that a capable person can do on autopilot.

The uncomfortable question is this: how much of your current role sits in that category?

If your day-to-day work requires no uniquely human judgement, no irreplaceable perspective, no real creative or strategic contribution that could not be replicated or improved by a well-prompted model with access to your tools, then your job title is not protecting you. It is just a label.

Prestige does not future-proof anything. The work underneath it does.

The Validation Loop That Keeps You Stuck

This is hard to see from the inside.

External validation is a powerful signal. Promotions feel like progress. Pay rises feel like recognition. Being introduced as a Senior Director, or a Head of, or a VP of something feels meaningful. It should do, you worked for it.

But validation is also a painkiller. It masks the signals that might otherwise prompt you to ask harder questions. Am I growing here? Is this work genuinely challenging me? Do I bring something to this role that could not easily be replaced? Does this work ask enough of me?

When the external signal is strong enough, those questions do not surface. The discomfort gets absorbed by the status. You tell yourself you are tired because the job is demanding. Not because the work has stopped requiring the best of you.

The professionals I see who are most at risk are never underperformers. They are people who are very good at work that is becoming less important.

They have optimised for the wrong signal for long enough that the right signals have gone quiet.

What to Optimise For Instead

This is not an argument against ambition. It is an case for aiming at the right things.

The question is not whether you have a prestigious title. The question is whether the work underneath it is building something that lasts.

There are three things to audit.

• Judgement. Does your role require you to make calls that a process, a formula, or an AI could not make? The more your work depends on your specific ability to read context, weigh competing priorities, and decide under uncertainty, the more durable it is.
• Irreplaceability. What do you bring to your work that is genuinely yours? Your relationships, your perspective, your ability to influence and connect and navigate complexity. These are harder to replicate than outputs.
• Growth. Is your current role making you better at things that will matter in three years? Not just more senior. More capable. If the honest answer is no, that is worth spending time to understand.

If your role scores low on all three, the job title is not the asset you think it is.

A Practical Starting Point

This does not have to be a crisis. It can be a question.

• Take thirty minutes this week and map your work over the last five days. For each significant task or output, ask one thing: does this require me specifically, or just someone in my role?

It is a blunt question and the answers can be uncomfortable. However, they are useful. They show you where your actual value sits vs. where your time goes.

If there is a gap, that is the work you need to do on your career.

Not the next promotion. Not the next title. Closing the distance between where you spend your time and where you genuinely contribute.

That is the career strategy that holds up.

The Title Will Not Save You

Prestige feels like progress. Sometimes it is. But a title that sits on top of work that requires nothing special from you is a fragile thing to build a career on.

The world is not going to get less complicated or less automated. The professionals who navigate it well will not be the ones with the most impressive job titles. They will be the ones who kept asking whether their work was genuinely theirs.

Start there.