Last week, I had coffee with one of my friends who’s currently working in tech. He was worried about AI taking over his job, and to be honest, who isn’t worried right now? Let’s face it, we’re all seeing these headlines about AI writing code, creating content, and even having human-like conversations. Everyone is wondering if their job is next. Here’s the thing: what started as a worried conversation over coffee turned into something fascinating that I want to share with you. We ended up discussing a concept that I’ve been thinking about lately, what I call an “AI-proof score.” When I explained this to my friend, it completely changed his perspective on the future of tech jobs, and I’ll explain why in just a moment.
Top 5 High-Income Tech Skills for the AI-Driven World of 2025
For the average person, AI taking your job might seem pretty scary, but it’s actually quite exciting when you understand how to position yourself for what’s coming. If you’re new here, hi! I’m Salaman, and I’ve worked in tech for a decade. Today, I help businesses secure and scale their systems on the cloud, and I also run an education company with over 400 students. In this post, I’m going to share the five high-income tech skills that you should learn for 2025 and beyond. These are the skills that will prevent you from falling behind as AI continues to advance. Imagine everyone in tech has an invisible score floating above their head. It’s not a number that you can physically see, but it represents how valuable your skills are in a world where AI is growing larger every single day. A low AI-proof score means your tech skills could easily be replaced by AI soon. A high AI-proof score means the opposite: your skills are relatively safe from AI taking over. Let me show you a real example of how this works. About 3 to 4 years ago, copywriters could write really good marketing messages and scripts. They were making serious money—let’s say £100 an hour, just as a rough number.
Back then, their AI-proof score was high because their skills in storytelling and creating a brand’s voice were unique, not something that could be easily replicated. But fast forward to today: with AI tools generating marketing copy and social media posts, copywriting’s AI-proof score has dropped significantly, maybe down to around £50 an hour. Why? Well, because AI has essentially entered this profession, and now with just a few good prompts into ChatGPT, anyone can write decent copy. This means many more people are competing for these jobs, and when more people can do the job, business owners and companies have more choices when hiring, so they can pay a lot less.
Securing Your Tech Career: The AI-Proof Formula for High-Income Skills
When AI makes a task easier to do, two things happen: firstly, the AI proof score drops, indicating that AI could potentially replace it; secondly, the income associated with that task usually decreases as well. This leads to the question, “Okay, Salan, if copywriting now has a low AI proof score, which tech skills would you say have a high AI proof score?” Well, that’s exactly what I’ve been researching lately. I’ve been talking to tech industry leaders and have identified three critical factors that, when combined, give tech skills a high AI proof score, which in turn correlates with a high income. Think of it as a formula for ensuring your career remains secure in the future, and I’m about to share it with you for free.
First, these skills require human judgment, the kind that involves nuanced decision-making. Imagine you’re a technical product manager at Spotify, deciding how to build new features. AI can certainly assist with this process. It can analyze user data and identify patterns, such as people tending to listen to songs with higher beats per minute during workout hours, leading the AI to suggest, “Let’s create a feature that will automatically sort the workout playlist by beats per minute.” However, as a human who understands real user behavior, you realize that nobody actually thinks about their workout music in terms of beats per minute. People consider their energy levels and how the music makes them feel. The AI can spot the pattern in the data, but it can’t grasp the emotional connection people have with their music. As a product manager who understands this, you might instead think, “Let’s create tags for users to customize based on their mood, allowing them to organize their music according to how it actually makes them feel.” This is what I mean by nuanced decision-making: it’s about understanding the human experience behind the data and making decisions that serve people, not just following the patterns suggested by the data.
Secondly, you need complex problem-solving skills. In the real world of tech, you often encounter problems and situations without perfect solutions. Someone once told me that life is all about weighing pros and cons, and this couldn’t be more true when working in tech. Frequently, you’ll need to understand that there will be trade-offs, and you must navigate these situations, knowing what you’re willing to sacrifice to make the right decision at the time. In contrast, AI is still quite limited and confined to more straightforward tasks that follow a systematic process, like a domino effect.
Thirdly, a high-income tech skill requires strategic thinking, and this isn’t just a buzzword. I’m referring to the ability to consider the bigger picture and adapt to ever-changing situations. Sometimes, you must make decisions that might harm the company in the short term and appear expensive, but you know that in a few months, it will prove to be a worthwhile investment because you can strategically plan ahead and anticipate future developments.
These three critical factors define what a high-income tech skill requires and, therefore, what has a high AI proof score. However, there’s a twist. What underlies all of these factors is something I learned early in my career from a mentor who changed everything for me. On my first day, she gave me a simple yet ultimately powerful piece of advice, and I’ll explain its significance in a moment. She advised me to speak to one new person every single day at work. As a 19-year-old, this was definitely uncomfortable for me. I wasn’t the confident person I am today, comfortable in front of the camera with all the experiences and confidence I’ve built up since then. I took on the challenge, and within a few months, I was on a first-name basis with the CEO of the company. What did this do for me? Well, when new projects arose, I was at the forefront of everyone’s mind. They would include me in any new opportunity or project that came up because they knew me, trusted me, and recognized my potential.
You see, what I’ve learned is that high-income tech skills have their own AI proof score, but as humans, we have our own AI proof score, and it’s underpinned by your ability to do one thing exceptionally well: communicate. In fact, communication, for the second year in a row, has been rated as the number one skill to have because no AI can replace your ability to communicate very well and have genuine human connection. No metric can fully capture the value of being able to walk into a room, read the dynamics, and be able to build real relationships with real people. Because let’s be real, we work with people, and at the end of the day, that is something AI can’t replicate. So, if you want to position yourself accordingly and you’re thinking about making yourself valuable in tech, remember it’s two things: your technical skills and how well you communicate. You simply need both
No Degree Required – Starting with AI and Machine Learning
This title encapsulates the key points of the text, including the focus on high-income tech skills that don’t require prior experience or a degree, the specific mention of AI and Machine Learning as the first skill, and the promise of a pathway to start learning for free. It’s designed to be attention-grabbing and informative, reflecting the content’s aim to guide readers towards lucrative tech careers.
Now that we’ve covered all the necessary context, here’s a little disclaimer: the five high-income tech skills I’m about to share with you don’t require any prior tech experience or even a computer science degree to get started. For each of these high-income tech skills, I’ll show you exactly how much money you can earn, how to start learning them completely for free, and most importantly, how to position yourself so you’re not just another applicant; you’re exactly what companies are looking for. And yes, all of these skills have high AI-proof scores.
Let’s start with the first high-income tech skill: AI and Machine Learning. This may seem obvious, but if you want to become AI-proof, learning how to build the machines that are transforming the tech world is essential. However, there’s a nuance to this, and I believe AI and machine learning are often misunderstood by many people. Let me explain what I mean. Most people think that to break into this industry, you need to be a math or coding genius. However, to get a job, you don’t need to build the next ChatGPT. Most AI and machine learning jobs actually involve implementing and working with existing AI tools because it’s more about understanding how to use these tools effectively than inventing brand new ones. There are already frameworks that exist.
Let’s talk about the money first because even at entry-level, many of these positions start around $100,000, and once you gain some experience, you’ll quite comfortably be earning over $150,000. These numbers aren’t just from big tech companies like Google or Amazon; I’m seeing them across multiple industries because AI and machine learning engineers are in massive demand right now.
Here’s exactly how you can start learning today, completely for free. First, you need to learn Python. It’s the foundation; everything built on AI and machine learning requires Python. It’s the most popular language and in super high demand. Google offers an amazing free Python course, and there are also many free four to five-hour-long videos on YouTube teaching you the foundations of Python, so you can use those to get started. You won’t become a programmer overnight, but Python is a cornerstone if you want to become an AI and machine learning expert, and you just need to understand how it works.
After that, I would spend some time understanding key math concepts through Khan Academy, focusing on statistics, algebra, and some calculus too, which will help you understand how AI makes decisions. Finally, take an intro machine learning course. There’s a great one by Andrew Ng, a leading authority in AI, and you’ll learn how to make computers recognize patterns and make predictions. I’d definitely enroll in that as a gateway into machine learning.
This brings me to high-income tech skill number two: Cloud Engineering. Every time you open Netflix or check your Instagram notifications, you’re actually using the cloud. Think about it: your photos and favorite shows aren’t stored on your phone, right? They’re stored elsewhere, but you can access them instantly. Your iCloud storage is another great example. It’s quite literally in the name, so that’s the cloud in action, and we all use it every single day, even if we don’t realize it.
In the past, companies had to build these massive computer rooms, which we call data centers, to store all of their computing, their storage, and their networking. It was expensive, it was complicated, and to be honest, a little bit of a headache. But now, any business, companies of all sizes—even me and you—can just rent exactly the computing power that we need from the big players like Amazon through AWS or Google through GCP. It’s like plugging your laptop into a wall socket; you’re just borrowing power from the electric. That’s the same with computers from these big tech companies.
Now, here’s the golden opportunity in the cloud: the industry is going to 10x in the next decade, and that’s not a stretch. It’s expected to grow from 700 billion to more than 5 trillion by 2034. In short, the numbers are massive, and it means there’s a massive opportunity for those people looking to take advantage. And the thing is, companies are desperate for people who understand cloud technology. Amazon recently announced that there is a shortage of 6 million cloud professionals in 2025.
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Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOtvah9dH84
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