Attention Really Is All You Need
In 2017, Google researchers published a foundational paper called "Attention Is All You Need," which introduced the transformer architecture that now powers ChatGPT, Claude and basically every AI tool flooding all of your social feeds. It's ironic that the pivotal insight behind the AI revolution is also the foundational insight behind surviving in modern careers: attention is the most crucial resource. Everything else follows from it.
Time, energy and focus are finite and extremely coveted resources for humans. When someone gives you their focused engagement, they're giving you something essential and of true value. Stanford researchers quantified this, measuring the economic impact of internet attention at roughly $38 billion annually in the US alone. McKinsey's 2025 research goes further, showing that attention isn't just time spent but "valuable time spent, driven by focus and intent." Whoever captures quality attention captures economic value. Full stop.
Social media influencers figured this out years ago. While the rest of us were heads down in CLIs and config files, they were building audiences and those audiences translated directly into economic value. 81% of consumers report researching or purchasing after seeing an influencer's post. Some dismissed it as frivolous but it turns out they were early to something important.
The Implicit Contract Is Dead
Nearly three decades in this industry has taught me that the original deal many of us thought we had with employers doesn't really exist anymore. The traditional contract of work hard, be loyal and grow with the company got shredded along with damning internal memos in between quarterly earnings calls and "workforce optimization" initiatives. I've personally watched very talented engineers get walked out of orgs because of what a spreadsheet says. It wasn't because they weren't valuable so much as the company's attention shifted elsewhere. There's that attention thing again.
Companies will absolutely leverage your expertise, your relationships, your institutional knowledge. They'll also cut you loose the moment a forecast goes south. The sooner you internalize this, the sooner you can prepare accordingly.
Your Voice Is Your Asset
Medium cracked this open first and then Substack made it sustainable. Now Ghost, Beehiiv and even plain old LinkedIn have created an entire ecosystem where practitioners can build direct relationships with audiences. You don't need a publisher, a media company or your employer's permission to share ideas. You just need something worth saying and the discipline to say it consistently.
People are building real income streams from newsletters, podcasts and technical content. Not necessarily just the influencer bro-hustle culture nonsense (because I think everyone agrees we don't need more of that), I'm talking about actual practitioners sharing hard knocks knowledge and then building audiences who value it. That audience becomes career insurance so if a layoff email lands, you're not starting from zero. You have people who know your work, trust your perspective and want to hear what you're doing next.
This applies to engineering as much as any field. The folks building communities in public, speaking at conferences (like the USNUA, NANOG or Autocon), writing about what they're learning and getting out there to meet with their peers are building resilience.
The Connection Paradox
We're drowning in content. Algorithms serve us an endless stream of optimized engagement bait. Most spend their days behind screens and much of what hits those screens is noise. In stark contrast, in-person events keep getting better because the conversations are deeper, the connections are more meaningful and people are hungry for real interaction.
As digital attention gets cheaper and more abundant, human attention becomes precious and more fulfilling. Showing up matters more. Building genuine relationships in a world of parasocial interactions is a competitive advantage.
User groups, conferences, and meetups over beers aren't relics of a pre-digital era. They're more valuable now precisely because everything else feels hollow, especially the AI slop that wants so badly to be meaningful but really isn't.
The Practical Bit
So to participate in the new human attention economy, one needs to show up with authenticity and transparency. Write about what you're learning. Share your perspective. Show up where your peers gather. Build relationships that exist independent of an org chart. Your network, the real life human kind, is your safety net.
Google's researchers stumbled onto something bigger than neural network architecture. In an age of infinite content and artificial intelligence, one of the most meaningful and powerful things in the world is the attention paid to information, ideas and the people who share them.
Attention may be the foundational insight for AI, but it is the foundational currency for us all. Spend yours where it actually builds something that belongs to you.