How to Fire Your Boss. And Safeguard Your Future.
There is a phrase going around corporate Singapore right now — dignified retrenchment. Companies are being praised for how humanely they let people go, with generous severance packages, a farewell town hall, and a thoughtful post from the CEO about how difficult the decision was.
But honestly, does the dignity of the process matter all that much when the power has always sat with the corporation? A business is always a business. Shareholders come first. If you are no longer valuable enough to justify your salary, you will be made redundant in this AI-driven world, hopefully in the most humane way possible.
So here is the question I want you to sit with. In a world where your employer can let you go at any time, what would it take for you to fire them first?
That is what this is about.
The world has always replaced things it once thought irreplaceable
A couple of years ago I was at the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, and I read about how for a thousand years, the way people went faster was simply to add more horses. The horse was not just transport. It was infrastructure. Entire economies were built around it, and no one could have imagined it being replaced before Karl Benz put a gasoline engine on four wheels. Within a generation, the horse was gone from the roads.
I have lived through smaller versions of this myself. I grew up needing to be computer-enabled in school, social media-enabled in university, and AI-enabled today. The next wave is already forming before this one has fully landed. Maybe one day we will need to be space-enabled. I do not know. What I do know is that trends are changing faster, and what society values can shift so quickly that you might be made redundant before you even see it coming.
Even I had to adapt. I had to start personal branding, something I would have vehemently rejected when I first became a financial consultant.
What is actually hard to replace
Not everything falls to the next wave at the same speed. There are roles that are probably safe in our lifetime.
Professional sport, for one. Can you imagine a robotic Messi and Ronaldo competing on the pitch for the GOAT of robot footballers? That might be mightily entertaining for some, but it is not for me. If you remember, BattleBots have been around for years, yet they have never come close to replacing the joy of supporting a team made up of real people. I still fondly remember watching the Golden State Warriors take on the Lakers in 2022. The excitement, hope, and emotions that Steph Curry sparked in me by doing things on the basketball court that seemed almost superhuman — that feeling is irreplaceable.
The common thread is this: work that requires real human connection, or practical judgment where no two situations are exactly the same, will not be easily replaced in our lifetime.
The relationships you build with the right people will be invaluable. So will the unique knowledge and experiences you possess, communicated in a way that resonates with and can be understood by others.
So get creative. Discover where your edge lies within your industry, and then invest the time and effort to build it deliberately.
But upskilling alone is not enough
Here is the honest part. How long can we keep upskilling for? The world is changing fast enough that whatever edge you build today will need to be rebuilt in a few years. If your only plan is to stay ahead through skill alone, you are playing a game that never ends, unless you have enough money to survive while your skills catch up.
I am always reminded of a survival show called Alone, where ten contestants are dropped into the Arctic wilderness to compete to be the last one standing. In one season, the winner got lucky early and caught a huge deer. Instead of eating through it, he smoked the meat and built structures to store it away from bears and other animals. Because his food was secured, he had the energy to go fishing, to build a better shelter, to think clearly while others were running on empty. The man with the most resources, who knew how to manage them, survived and won.
That is a perfect picture of what we need to do.
As simple as it sounds, earning enough, saving enough, and managing our money well gives us the runway to survive while our skills and value catch up. It affords us a luxury that someone who did not accumulate and save simply does not have, especially in a world that keeps changing the rules.
So what does it actually mean to fire your boss?
It does not mean quitting tomorrow or sending a dramatic resignation letter. It means building enough of a financial position that the decision to leave becomes yours, not theirs. So that the next restructuring exercise, however dignified, does not catch you with six weeks of savings and no runway.
In this AI-driven world, it is not the most AI-enabled person who will survive. It is the most financially abled person who will. That is what financial planning is actually for. Not just growing your wealth, but giving you the option to walk before you are pushed.
As to how you can become that person, I am always open to a chat.
Originally published on LinkedIn.