Why your job title sounds senior, but you pay is very junior?

If you’ve been job hunting lately and feel like you’re reading job titles in a different language, you’re not imagining it. Roles like “content engineer,” “marketing developer,” and “strategy lead” are everywhere—and yet somehow, they don’t come with the pay or clarity you’d expect.

We are not talking about a future shift. The AI transformation of work is already happening, and it’s happening fast. Companies are actively restructuring roles, eliminating entry-level “doer” work, and quietly redefining what it means to be qualified—all while rebranding jobs to sound more senior, more technical, and more competitive than they actually are.

In this post, I break down what’s really going on: the death of execution-based roles, the subtle but real masculinization of job titles, and the rise of what I call “title theater”—where companies inflate titles without increasing compensation. More importantly, I’ll walk you through what this means for your career right now, and how to adapt your job search strategy so you don’t get left behind in a market that’s changing in real time.

You might be noticing when you're going on LinkedIn or applying for jobs that you're starting to see job titles where you're like, have I've never really heard of this before? What's a content engineer? What on earth is a content strategy lead developer? What is a marketing developer? There's all of these job titles that maybe haven't historically existed and job titles that sound super senior, but are paying, well, just not super senior.

We already know that AI is completely changing the work landscape, but I firmly believe for the first time, maybe ever, we're seeing a massive, like earth-shattering shift in corporate work as we know it. And we're starting to see the changes right now. It is no longer hypothetical. It's no longer a generic AI is going to change jobs. I'm seeing the changes right now. I've been researching this for the last few weeks. I've been pulling some insights and I finally feel ready to talk about

the changing landscape of work right now in this moment as we know it. This is absolutely nuts. Today's episode of Clock In with Emily Durham is dedicated to the shift and the revolution of career today in 2026 as a result of AI and the fucked up dumpster fire that is the job market. Thank you so much for listening. And if you enjoyed these episodes or any episode, I so appreciate you leaving a rating and a review. It's how we grow the show.

And if you'd like more No BS career advice from me, check out my debut book, Clock In. You can always click the link to pre-order in the description of this and every episode. So I'll save us some time. Let's clock right on into it.

Experts everywhere are talking about the fact that 93 million jobs are going to be completely replaced with AI. They're also saying that up to 170 million new jobs are going to be created. AI experts are framing this as this is not job loss, it's job transformation. And I don't fundamentally disagree. I firmly believe, based on history and based on data, that a lot of the roles that will be eliminated with AI will be replaced by new jobs and new industries.

created by AI. The best way to think of this is like the age of the internet, the internet boom. The internet started, suddenly we didn't buy as many dictionaries. We didn't purchase certain industries, you know, from certain industries quite as much. But the rise of the internet has created all of these different career paths, as we know, at this podcast you're listening to included. AI is going to be the exact same and arguably on an even bigger scale. And this

This thing, this whole like transformation thing does stress me out a little bit because these experts are not telling us timelines because they can't. The reality is the job loss is happening right now. We are seeing it with how many people are suddenly losing their jobs, companies laying off 40 % of their workforce. Oracle laid off what 30,000 employees a couple of weeks ago with a 6 a.m. termination email. And yet we're not hearing a lot about the net new job creation.

That's because the loss almost always comes before the creation. And right now we're riding the wave of this transformation while looking at loss and not seeing the fruits of our labor just yet. So where does this leave you and I right now in this holy fucking batshit crazy moment? Well, it leaves us in a spot where things are changing and we need to adapt our job search strategies and we need to be able to adapt our ways of thinking about work so that we don't get left behind on this curve.

My thesis, my theory is that we are watching the first massive wave of transformation in the corporate space happen right in front of us. And companies are rebranding it so that it doesn't sound scary. And they're rebranding it in three ways that you absolutely need to be aware of. Number two is it's the masculinization of work.

You really have to understand all three of these to understand what's going to happen to your job today, but also what's going to happen in your job search tomorrow and for months and maybe even years to come. So starting with the death of doer work, this is going to be like the least shocking. We already know that many administrative roles, roles that are heavy in automation are getting replaced by AI. We're seeing this everywhere. This is news to absolutely no one. Now, what they're not talking about as much is this is disproportionately impacting early career talent.

You've just graduated from college or university, or you're just starting your corporate career path. When I first started working, I took on administrative roles to break into industries. Those no longer exist, which is very much contributing to the death of entry-level work as we know it. But you'll notice, if you start to look at the jobs that are being posted right now, you are no longer seeing job titles like coordinator, like analyst, or sometimes even like specialist.

companies are actually starting to rebrand the job titles they use to basically erase all of the doer-based work, the execution-based work. So instead of a company sometimes using a job title like marketing coordinator, you'll notice they'll say things like marketing innovation lead. Even sometimes the elimination of common job titles like bookkeeper, someone who's managing the books and the accountant work of an organization, are now being called financial analysts. And do know why that is? It's because

The data, the technical skill that you would have been rewarded for being great at, like being great at Excel, being great at pulling data, being great at researching, all is now something that is being replaced by AI. And the proof is, it is very difficult to find a research analyst job right now, or a data analyst job right now. And when you do find those jobs, the work is no longer about pulling the data, it's about the insights from the data.

AI is replacing all of the execution-based work, and that goes for every single industry. Whether it's market research, data analytics, marketing execution, posting on socials, all of this is being fundamentally replaced by AI, which leaves what? All of the strategic work is now going to be in the entry-level workspace. It's time we talk about the masculinization of work and job titles. This is actually insane. This is crazy.

When a company posts a job description and uses words like competitive, dominates, assertive, leadership, all of those words have historically consistently been attributed to men. Those tend to be traits that people perceive subconsciously to be masculine traits, traits that men have. They are the traits that women often get punished for having. And statistically, women are less likely to apply for jobs

when they use these kinds of adjectives and descriptors. In short, that's because women have historically been punished for having those traits. A woman who is a bold, assertive leader isn't just that, she's a bitch. So women tend to shy away from associating with those titles. And even when they do apply, people don't associate those qualities, even if it is subconscious with women, so they're less likely to move forward in those roles. That's why the language that people use when they post job descriptions is so important.

And right now we are seeing a crazy pattern of language shifting in the kinds of job titles that we see. So much that people online, myself included, are shouting it out as the masculinization of work as we know it. Obviously not always, but marketing tends to be a very like female dominated industry and female dominated team. Traditional job titles for these jobs are marketing strategist, marketing coordinator, marketing manager. Love that. Have you noticed that right now there is an uptick?

and this is proven by data, there is an uptick in jobs being posted that use the word engineer and developer in non-technical roles. So instead of seeing a job that says marketing coordinator as the title, it's now marketing developer and marketing engineer. And do know what that's doing on a subconscious level? It's signaling to the person reading it that there is a heightened level of seniority and that this is a technical role.

And if we look at the psychology of how people apply for work based on the words that we use, we know that words like engineer and developer come with barriers. And this isn't because women see these things and no longer want to apply for these jobs. That's not how this works. But the reality is only 30 % at best of people working in STEM, so science, technology, engineering, and math, are women. That's largely because

Well, firstly, women weren't accepted or allowed to apply to these academic programs historically. B, they had much less access to mentorship in these spaces, so it was harder to break in. And even when women did break into STEM, you know, and I'm not talking about hundreds of years ago, I'm talking about even right now, they're met with significantly more barriers. They're less likely to be given access to new opportunity. They're more likely to be given low visibility administrative tasks.

There's all of these barriers that make it difficult for women to thrive in engineering roles and engineering spaces. So when we start slapping the title of engineer and developer to historically non-technical roles and frankly roles that aren't technical at all, all this is doing is up-leveling the position, meaning the position now is seen as more senior, less accessible, harder to get into. And we know that women are less likely to apply for jobs that they perceive themselves to be under-qualified for.

But now we're adding this technical component to it that women are already pre-programmed to think, I'm not qualified for this. I shouldn't apply. There is a masculinization of historically feminized industries right now. And this might sound like a crazy take. I don't think it is. This is happening right before our eyes. And it's happened in history, and history is repeating itself. In the 40s and 50s, women were primarily the people doing computer work and computer programming.

It was largely baked into something seen as an administrative or low value task. In addition to scheduling things or organizing the office, they would putter around on their silly little computers to program for what was necessary and what was needed. But as computers became more complicated and more integral as far as business strategy, this work stopped being seen as administrative and started to be seen as strategic.

And as this work became more complicated and therefore more prestigious, the language around it started to shift. It was no longer something a woman could easily do because it was no longer programming or admin. It was software engineering. The hiring criteria suddenly became much more rigid. You required certain levels of training, academic accretations. Even personality testing was brought into play to hire the right type of software engineer. And what did this do?

Instead of continuing to build and develop on the skills these women already had, these positions eventually got replaced into men, men who had access to education, men who had access to that mentorship, and who were passing these personality tests. And I'm not saying that women are suddenly going to get kicked out of marketing. I'm saying that this subtle shift of language and potentially at some point of barriers to entry like academic needs or experience requirements

can actually make it more challenging for women to enter and continue to grow in this industry. Largely because of AI, we're changing the type of work that marketers and creative folks have to do in their day to day. So it makes sense to an extent that job titles evolve along with it. But the fact that it's following a very familiar pattern where there's a masculinization of the titles, I firmly believe is going to kind of detract women from applying.

and make it more challenging for women to grow in these fields because these words like engineer and developer automatically carry this barrier weight and this risk to not being able to grow so quickly that we've seen in other industries. So the work and the titles are changing, but on a subconscious level, who we believe deserves to do this work is likely to change with it. Which leads me to point number three. This is all called title theater. There is a big theme here.

The work itself is changing, so the titles need to change with it. That's fine. Yeah, I'm cool with that. But how we're changing the titles is kind of bat shit crazy to me. Companies are shifting the job titles they use because the work itself is changing. They want things to sound more prestigious, a little bit more technical, and focus on the new skills that are going to be needed, like strategy and decision making and empathy.

But what's simultaneously happening as we replace certain work with AI and frankly, as we masculinize some of these job titles, is there is this phenomenon of job title theater. This literally means companies are inflating job titles, making the job title sound sexier, more powerful, more important, while not changing the pay at goddamn all, keeping that pay the exact same. So the death of the marketing coordinator position as we start to see that decline,

is going to be potentially a marketing engineer, which sounds much more prestigious with the same pay. Or maybe they're even a marketing manager because they're managing many AI bots. Boom, it's still the exact same pay. Companies are doing this to attract top talent, to retain employees, to try to make you feel like you are doing a very noble, innovative thing. And although these job titles are sexy and great, I am so sorry if they're not matched with adequate pay.

That's not a promotion. That's not a step up in your career like we want to believe it is. These job titles slowly aren't making sense. What do you mean you're a director who doesn't do any strategy? Companies are starting to make up these literal new job titles to attract people and to keep you while they underpay you. What the fuck is a marketing engineer? I saw a job posted the other day that was a content engineer.

I thought it was like, okay, they have to maybe develop the content. are, you know, maybe editing the content. No, it was a marketing manager job. That's what it was. They were building a marketing strategy, but this title inflates the work, makes you think that the barrier to entry is much higher. So certain groups are less likely to apply. You got the job offer. You're getting paid the exact same as a coordinator. There is a total misalignment in the work, the job title, and the pay. We are actually in the fucking twilight zone.

It's actually crazy. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. My prediction is that this is going to continue to evolve. I believe we will see more and more masculinized job titles. I think we're going to see this impact women's access to work. And I think that the salary gap from early career to later stage career is going to continue to grow because of this.

This is not to fear monger anyone. It's so important to have information so you can make the right decisions for yourself and your career. Here's what I need you to do. Like I said, anchor yourself in the top skills that employers are looking for. It is decision making, strategy, and empathy. Make sure when you introduce yourself, you're leading with that. Your resume, it leads with that. The next thing I need you to do is stop paying attention to these job titles. They're made up. Clearly they're made up.

What am I, a podcasting engineer? Like, hello? Hello, these titles are fake. Do not disqualify yourself from the job application process over job titles that sound senior. I guarantee you would be disturbed to find out what the pay of these sexy senior titles are. Do not let them scare you. This is a rebranding tactic companies are using. Get very good at translating your experience into data. Do not let companies get hung up on the job title you occupy. And if you have to,

lie about your fucking job title on that resume. They're looking for a marketing engineer? Bitch, guess what? Today you're a marketing engineer. When you're interviewing, anchor it in the data of your results. Don't focus on the admin task, focus on the impact to the business. And please, do not accept an up-leveled without an up-leveled salary. Otherwise, you are going to get caught in this inflation loop, where if you take this senior marketing director title,

with the coordinator pay, other companies when you apply are going to assume you're getting paid too much, they can't afford you, they're not gonna interview you. It's gonna get you caught in a nasty loop. Please, please, please continue to negotiate even if the title feels like it's a career-advancer. Titles don't mean what they used to, and that's the shift we need to be making. Apply above your title and focus on your skills, not on the things that are happening in your job title, in your job description.

Focus on those skills employers are looking for and do not let yourself get freaked out with this changing environment. Because this is going to be the next year or two, but then we'll have another wave of change where things settle. So this is not at all forever. This is like a bit of a sidebar. I do think this is just important to note. With all of these changes happening in work and the job titles itself, we're at the tip of the iceberg. But I did find a statistic that was very comforting that maybe will give you a little bit of comfort as well.

Did you know that there are many organizations who have laid off people to be replaced by AI, who actually were not replacing people with AI at all? There are studies showing this. These companies were using AI as an excuse to do layoffs to boost investment from their investors. They were doing this to boost their stock price. And do you want to know what those companies have started to do right now? Is they've started to rehire the talent that they've laid off.

because they realize, surprise, surprise, AI can't do customer service. They've realized that AI drops the ball, or they've realized they didn't actually replace people. They just did a layoff and invested in fricking chat GPT and called it a day. That should give us a little bit of comfort that experts are predicting the great AI rebound, where companies who have laid off people will be rehiring under these new job titles. So we're in the dark ages right now.

We will get through this, but please focus on those tangible skills. And if you're feeling a bit behind, please do not. Let's just focus on getting your decision-making really, really strong, your communication really strong, and up-skilling in AI, if that's something that is a bit of a stress point at this point in time. I just think this is crazy. I actually learned about this through TikTok. Shout out to the internet. I'm gonna link all of the posts that I saw, as well as the studies that I've cited in the description if you're interested.

I found this topic, especially the masculinization of work, be so fascinating. I thought it was just such an interesting shift that we're seeing. I do want to be clear, this does not mean that men shouldn't be working in marketing. It's not what I'm saying even a little bit. I'm just saying we're following a familiar pattern where the work that we deem is valuable suddenly gets shifted into masculine, lensed work. We did this with engineering when it suddenly became super valuable to have software experts.

That became engineering, that became high value, high barrier to entry. Marketing and creative strategy is now that new high value space. Because everyone can pull insights, but not everyone can make you buy our insights. Everyone can say this is what's happening in the market, but not everyone can build a strategy that people actually resonate with that's truly creative in era of AI slop. It's just we're living in different times. That was bat shit crazy, y'all. I gotta say.