Paul Welty, PhD AI, WORK, AND STAYING HUMAN

The Future Focuses on Durable Skills

The Future Focuses on Durable Skills
Explore how durable skills are vital for thriving in an automation-driven future and why they will outlast technical expertise.

“durable skills—my preferred term—are essential. And in an automation-focused future, they’ll be even more so.”

The Soft Skills “Debate” Is Over


Featured writing

Why customer tools are organized wrong

This article reveals a fundamental flaw in how customer support tools are designed—organizing by interaction type instead of by customer—and explains why this fragmentation wastes time and obscures the full picture you need to help users effectively.

Infrastructure shapes thought

The tools you build determine what kinds of thinking become possible. On infrastructure, friction, and building deliberately for thought rather than just throughput.

Server-Side Dashboard Architecture: Why Moving Data Fetching Off the Browser Changes Everything

How choosing server-side rendering solved security, CORS, and credential management problems I didn't know I had.

Books

The Work of Being (in progress)

A book on AI, judgment, and staying human at work.

The Practice of Work (in progress)

Practical essays on how work actually gets done.

Recent writing

We always panic about new tools (and we're always wrong)

Every time a new tool emerges for making or manipulating symbols, we panic. The pattern is so consistent it's almost embarrassing. Here's what happened each time.

Dev reflection - February 03, 2026

I've been thinking about constraints today. Not the kind that block you—the kind that clarify. There's a difference, and most people miss it.

When execution becomes cheap, ideas become expensive

This article reveals a fundamental shift in how organizations operate: as AI makes execution nearly instantaneous, the bottleneck has moved from implementation to decision-making. Understanding this transition is critical for anyone leading teams or making strategic choices in an AI-enabled world.

Notes and related thinking

Boosting Productivity with AI

Unlock your potential by leveraging AI tools to enhance productivity and streamline workflows for you and your team.

Leading for Digital Culture Creation

Empower your organization by embracing digital culture; learn how effective leadership fosters intentional decision-making and nurtures innovation.

Discover how generative AI is more likely to augment jobs rather than replace them, transforming tasks and creating new opportunities for efficiency and innovation.

Explore how generative AI enhances jobs by automating tasks, fostering efficiency, and creating new opportunities instead of replacing human roles.