Why Are Plumbers Happier Than CEOs In The Age Of AI?

During the first wave of industrialization, factories and abstract management became separated from one another. Factory owners and early industrial managers lived in a new world with distant markets, fluctuating prices, and machine-controlled production. The village blacksmith or butcher, on the other hand, continued to experience a closed cycle between manual labor, products, and recognition by the community.

The same machines that had significantly increased prosperity also created a hierarchy in terms of physical presence. Those who were close to the material reality felt more complete than those who coordinated from an office.

When we have accomplished something, when we have resolved issues, we receive feedback from another person's perspective. Our actions and our results are valued in this shared physical space where we have accomplished something, gained trust, and our senses recognize what has been done. No increase in information complexity has ever led to as much attention and satisfaction as work performed by human hands with a physical result. With a controllable task and visible progress, social acceptance can be achieved.

For a CEO in 2026, the next step is to downgrade the centrality of their role, as AI agents will take over a large part of their work. What is the concrete value of the work done by CEOs, and is it still relevant even if all the dashboards they created have disappeared in the wake of the algorithm?

CEOs must redesign their roles so that they remain relevant for years to come. And that's the difficult part, because they will lose contact with real people as more and more machines take over. Their task today is to figure out how they can continue to stay in touch with the people on their team, 80% of whom are machines and robots.

Plumbers, on the other hand, are happier than many CEOs in the age of AI thanks to their working lives. Their work is based on locality and physical necessity, while the work of executives is increasingly abstract, verticalized, and algorithmically competitive.

Software is cannibalizing cognitive work: algorithmic models perform almost all tasks in the knowledge sector, analyzing, designing, forecasting, calculating, and coordinating, which once justified the management class and the large number of skilled workers in office cathedrals.

The Radical Changes in What Seemed to Be Such a Good Life

Plumbing or electrical work requires perception and improvisation in unstructured environments and demands skills that current AI and robotics cannot yet reliably perform in real households and messy locations at a level that meets people's expectations.

What was often considered a “good” life in the US and Canada was based on academic degrees, knowledge work, and the status of having a large office, a car, a house, and a luxurious vacation. AI is stripping away the promise of “you can make it if you try hard enough to achieve a respected status in society” from this script, which has formed the cultural foundation of North America for years.

Craftsmen report high levels of satisfaction and pride based on unrestricted freedom of movement and direct human interaction, while many managers in office jobs report burnout, insomnia, and fears that AI will rob them of their future.

In a practical example, a plumber's day is structured around finite, solvable problems and concrete feedback from people, while a CEO's day is defined by invisible results, reputational risks, and constant comparison with an invisible machine benchmark.

Today, the big AI companies sell their products to executives, arguing that they are missing something important that their competitors already have implemented into their daily work. They sell something that can reduce costs and increase efficiency. The problem, however, is that this has profound implications, and will trigger an existential office crisis. This is not about operational things, such as being a machine and being able to calculate or write better than a human being, but about the fact that it destabilizes the very meaning of being the one who knows how to solve tasks and whose knowledge is no longer needed for this purpose.

But we shouldn't be too romantic here and believe that plumbers will always be successful, while all CEOs will soon be demoted and fired. Just because AI can't currently repair pipes or do physical work, there will be new opportunities for many industries to collaborate with AI. The key point is that we shouldn't simply retrain knowledge workers to become plumbers. We should retrain company employees in terms of new conditions defined by AI that will continue to enable people to be employed in office work, secure prosperity, and maintain the basic social order.

The aura of the lawyer, the consultant, and the seemingly indispensable executive with his large, unshakeable ego and his ability to command specialist knowledge is increasingly fading.

The real risk is not that the CEO will lose his job to AI, but that he will retain his title while his role is limited to supervising models that he does not really understand.

Therefore, training and continuing education in AI-based knowledge and work models is the decisive factor for successful leadership by a CEO.

And let us also rethink our status mindset. For decades, the status of knowledge workers, executives, consultants, and analysts was based on a simple premise: I know things you don't know, and that knowledge is rare and valuable. That moment has completely changed with AI, which can draft legal briefs, for example, or calculate and plan in seconds.

How Can We Build a Life That AI Can't Hollow Out?

I think the answer comes down to three principles.

First, invest in craft skills. Learn to do things with your hands, not necessarily for your job, but as your own personal exercise. For example, cook, work in the garden, build furniture, or repair things. This is not nostalgia; it is a survival strategy for your psyche. The more your identity is rooted in things you can physically do and create, the less vulnerable you are to the existential upheaval caused by AI, which is sure to happen.

Second, cultivate irreplaceability through presence. AI can generate content. But it cannot be physically present, it cannot look anyone in the eye or shake anyone's hand. It cannot improvise in real time in a crowded physical environment. That is a skill that requires human presence. Real human and physical presence will be one of the decisive factors in our working world in the future. This applies to plumbers, but also to nurses, teachers, therapists, coaches, and anyone whose work is fundamentally based on relationships.

Third, redefine your relationship with status. For many people, this is very difficult because it also involves money. Since childhood, we have been trained to chase prestigious titles and the recognition that comes with impressive-sounding professions. But when AI is currently changing everything in the office, clinging to old status professions makes us something akin to a completely devalued currency. So, start measuring your value not by what you know or what you have achieved, but by what you do and who you are when you do it.

Let's come back to the question. Do you want to be a CEO or a plumber? And I think by now, you can see that the question was really never about these jobs. It was about two different ways of being a human.

One says, I am what I know, and my value is my information. And in the age of AI, that way of being is under siege.

And the other one says, I am what I do; my value is my presence, my hands, my irreplaceable physicality. And in the age of AI, that way of being is more vital and more grounding than ever.

Now, not everyone should quit their job and become a plumber. That's not the point. The point is that the age of AI forces us to ask a question that has long been avoided:

What is it about being human that no machines can replicate?

If this has given you food for thought, please share it with someone who needs to hear it.

For further insights into the changes we face as humans in a future shaped by AI, subscribe to the newsletter, listen to the podcast and watch the videos on my YouTube channel.