The cohort problem: Which one are you in?
Right now the WNBA has two leagues inside one league. The older cohort of players spent their careers going overseas in the off-season just to survive, building the sport when there was no money in it. The newer cohort arrived when Caitlin Clark did — with audiences already built during college and the economics transformed overnight from NIL.
I watch the older players complaining about lack of recognition and no retirement plan, and it makes me want to look away. Because I get why they’re angry but I don’t want to be them.
I’ve been obsessed with this because I keep seeing the same pattern everywhere, and I’m starting to think the most important career skill isn’t raw talent or work ethic. It’s being able to recognize which cohort you’re in. But I think it’s almost impossible to recognize in time to get out.
When I was figure skating in the seventies, I woke up at five in the morning to practice compulsory figures — tracing figure eights on the ice for hours. That was how you won. Then the sport eliminated figures and started rewarding jumps and spins. I was with a group of kids who spent ten years on something that became irrelevant overnight. I didn’t see it coming.
Then I started writing professionally just as the internet became the dominant publishing platform. I never assumed I had an audience. I always wrote knowing you could count exactly how many people read. That turned out to be a massive advantage — but I didn’t know it was an advantage at the time. It just felt like the only way to do it.
I’ve been in a great cohort and a terrible cohort and I couldn’t see either one while I was inside it.
When my son was at Juilliard I could see the pipeline breaking in real time. The kids being rewarded were the ones with impeccable technique and perfect discipline — the traits that mattered before YouTube. But the musicians building large audiences online were being rewarded for personality and originality.
It looked exactly like practicing figure eights. I could see it clearly because it wasn’t happening to me.
After my son’s head injury ended his music career he pivoted to computer science, arriving at Duke exactly when AI tools were transforming how programming was taught. His first-year class was already using AI to write code. He immediately understood that the advantage wasn’t mastering syntax — it was combining computer science with something else.
I watched that happen and thought: why can I see it for him and not for myself? He was learning to code at the exact moment coding stopped being the point. I kept wondering what that looked like for me.
The first time I saw it clearly in my own life was at Harvard. I’d spent years doing autism research — reading a thousand scholarly articles, building a database of research subjects, learning the field on my own between homeschooling my kids and supporting them financially. I had the research. I had the access. I even published a paper. But I had more papers in me, and I couldn’t get them out because the format was the gate. I wrote drafts the wrong way. I asked the wrong people. I burned through goodwill and contacts just trying to get the format right.
Then AI showed up and made knowing the format unnecessary. I should have been celebrating the disappearance of the gate, but I had used everything up fighting against it.
That’s where the WNBA veterans are. They spent years making the league valuable. They just didn’t imagine the value would show up in someone else’s rookie contract.
I don’t think we’re actually afraid of AI replacing us. We’re afraid we spent everything building something, and the value shows up in someone else’s bottom line. I’m still not sure I’m in the right place now, and I’m always looking for signs. Because you don’t get to choose your cohort, you only get to choose when you leave.
in Canada, we got rid of a politician who billed her expense account for eight dollar (or more, I forget) for one glass of orange juice. What did her in was a photograph of her smoking outside looking like a furtive crow. A columnist then wrote that folks who want to change Canada by spending time crafting good essays are mistaken. Because now images are king.
A school teacher told me that all the teachers at school, except one, use A.I. I would probably be that one.
I guess that’s like the cohort spending time learning to type blogs when the future is in “moving pictures” on social media. The blogosphere is nearly a ghost town, somebody said, but I still blog.
I like that you know you would be the one teacher who isn’t using AI. That level of self-knowledge is hard. The blogosphere being a ghost town – yeah. Tell me about it. When you see me moving to video (if that ever happens), know that your comment here gave me a big push in that direction.
I just had the thought that this is happening right now with F1 racing.
The cars changed this year and an 18 year old rookie has won two of three races so far and came second in the other one. He became the youngest winner ever with his first win, meanwhile some recent world champions are struggling with the new cars
He does have talent and arguably the best car, but this made it click, I think the lack of old habits combined with learning in the new kind of car is giving him even more of an edge
The older guys have perfected their figures and he’s come in blazing with jumps
Such a fun comment! I don’t know anything about F1 racing so it’s a new route for me to understand the pattern.
On a recent blog post, where a young lady, age 25, asks for advice, there are 50 replies and 10 of them had blogs I could click on. They were interesting blogs by interesting people, that sometimes linked to other blogs. All members of the older generation, by the way, but that’s an interesting age group to me.
I will add, since you or your readers might relate: Being older and more settled, it’s been years since I said, “Never trust anyone over thirty” or viewed parents as “the enemy.” With my past, I can sympathize with (and avoid) a new feminist who has strident views about people who are male.