The Competitive Advantage of Going Back to Being a Rookie (and My Plan Z)

In 2017, my life fit in two suitcases.

I was in the middle of selling everything, closing accounts, and saying goodbye to my family to leave Venezuela and restart my professional life from scratch. Amid that emotional and logistical chaos, I wrote an article on Medium with a reflection that today, 9 years later, hits me in the face like a brick:

"When we get old, we're afraid of learning new things. And that kills us."

In that 2017 text, I mentioned as a "distant curiosity" the news that two Facebook bots had invented their own language to communicate and engineers had to shut them down. Back then it seemed like science fiction, a fun anecdote for a barbecue.

Today I reread that and it doesn't make me laugh. It gives me urgency.

Last week the tech industry shook again. We see tools like Claude Code (with Opus 4.5) being more than simple "chatbots" that write you a poem — doing the work of the world's best programmers. They're agents. They write code, refactor, deploy, and fix bugs in the terminal while we go get coffee.

Yesterday for example I installed clawd.bot on a free AWS layer. Just a matter of running a script in the terminal to install, selecting the model, and starting to throw prompts with context. Out of nowhere, you have an agent working for you 24x7. Total madness within anyone's reach.

Well, within "anyone's" reach who knows how to use it. Because the risk isn't AI — the risk is stagnating while it evolves.

At the same time, the "Vegetalization of Humanity" that philosopher Éric Sadin talks about (I bought all his books) is no longer a French academic theory; it's a daily occupational risk. We're becoming passive spectators of an intelligence that doesn't rest, doesn't take vacation days, and doesn't make errors from tiredness.

If you think this is an unfair competition, you're right: it is. But nobody said life was fair. It is what it is and you have to row.

99% of people today only consume AI. The challenge is to be part of the 1% that masters it.

Another Day Feeling Like an Impostor (and Liking It)

Over the weekend I watched Google DeepMind's documentary about AlphaFold. For those who don't know, it's the AI that solved the "protein folding problem" — a biological mystery that had science stuck for 50 years. Basically, they deciphered the building blocks of life.

Watching Demis Hassabis (the brain behind DeepMind) and his team accomplish in months what would have taken humanity centuries generated two things in me.

First, fascination. What a privilege to live in the same era as these people. Second, being brutally honest: I felt like an ignorant next to this person.

I felt stupid. We think we're "Senior" because we know how to configure an ERP or lead a migration, and suddenly I realized that my technical knowledge — the kind it took years to accumulate — was becoming a commodity.

It's human nature to compare. But here there were two paths: get depressed, become defensive and deny reality (we know how that story ends), or embrace that feeling.

The title of "Senior" is a trap. The "Senior" believes they've arrived, that they're a star for life. The "Senior" defends what they know. The "Senior" is afraid to ask questions to avoid looking stupid.

The "Senior" is on borrowed time if they don't have hunger to learn every day.

Why Go Back to School?

I could stay comfortable in my Plan A, pretending my experience shields my future. But the documentary awakened something I'd already sensed 9 years ago. If DeepMind's geniuses didn't stop until they solved proteins, I can't stop until I understand this new playing field. Or at least not remain in ostracism without putting up a fight.

So I made a counterintuitive decision: Go back to the "Rookie Mindset."

Instead of doing another postgraduate program or signing up for a theoretical MBA to hang a diploma on the wall and feed my ego, I enrolled in Platzi.

Yes, I went back to the basics. Back to being a student alongside 20-year-olds. Why? Because I don't have time for five-year-old academic theory. I need to know what's happening today in the trenches. Although I keep a close eye on the SAP+AI world, being in a study program forces you to discipline.

I need to understand how these agents work (which aren't just Copilot or SAP Joule), how they integrate, how they operate. I need it to cost me something. I need to feel that frustration of not understanding anything at first.

The good news is that being a marathon runner, I have tolerance for pain. I got used to not throwing in the towel. I know I'll manage even when it's hard. And when I say "hard," I mean sacrificing free time to keep training the neurons and stay ready in case I need to burn the boats again.

That discomfort of "feeling stupid" while learning something new is, paradoxically, the only thing that makes me feel intelligent today.

Plan Z (Reid Hoffman Was Right)

In that "Nostradamus" article I also wrote in 2017, I cited the book "The Start-up of You" by Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn's founder). He says that as professionals, we're a company in "permanent beta" and need three plans:

• Plan A: What you do today. Your comfort zone.
• Plan B: Your lateral pivot. Where you move if A fails?
• Plan Z: Your life raft. The certainty that if everything burns down tomorrow, you have the raw skills to survive.

In 2017, my Plan Z was emigrating from a collapsing country. In 2026, my Plan Z is intellectual humility.

My life insurance is forcing myself to learn things that cost me. Admitting that what I know is very little to survive what's coming (AGI predictions for 2027 and singularity included). There's no chance of doing the ostrich act here.

If today you feel like you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room (or you're lying to yourself). Get out of there as fast as you can.

A Plan ZZZ (Manual, Edible, and Anti-AI)

Now, let's be realistic paranoids. There's a possibility that AI advances so far that even learning to program it becomes irrelevant. That Skynet wins.

If everything digital fails... I have my Plan ZZZ. This plan wasn't defined by Hoffman — I invented it for the craziest catastrophic scenarios.

Last year, in a presentation to a board of VPs and Managers, I closed with a joke that was half jest, half truth:

"If AI and automation leave us without jobs tomorrow, don't worry. I already have my Plan ZZZ: I'm going to make sourdough pizza and wood-fired barbecue."

The room went silent for a few seconds. I thought: "I really blew it." Eventually some laughed (perhaps out of courtesy), but I noticed one of the executives wasn't amused at all. Maybe because, deep down, the idea of losing corporate status terrifies them.

Not me. I've been clear for a while: AI writes code better than me. Analyzes data better than me. But it hasn't yet learned to ferment flour, control the heat of firewood, or know when the meat is perfect just by the smell.

In an infinite and cheap digital world, the physical and human become scarce and valuable.

---

This week's challenge:

I'm not asking you to run a marathon. I'm asking you to find something that makes you feel a little stupid. A new framework, an AI tool that frustrates you, a new language. That frustration is the only indicator that your brain is still alive and hasn't "vegetalized."

My final advice: Push hard on Plan A (excellence), never neglect Plan B (strategy), advance with Plan Z (humility)... and always keep an ace up your sleeve for Plan ZZZ.

And if you want to see my Plan ZZZ in action (and confirm there's a human who cooks and runs behind this text, not just another LinkedIn bot), I'll leave you my IGs: @pabloaboveaverage and @pablo_cocinando

See you in the discomfort. If we're not there, we're not growing.

Pablo Above Average