July 11, 2026
For decades, Singapore had an unwritten career rule…If everything went wrong, you could always drive a taxi.
It wasn’t an easy job and it didn’t feel glamorous … but it paid the bills and gave thousands of retrenched PMETs time to regroup while they figured out their next move.
I remember a 54-year-old former Regional Sales Director I coached a few years back. Retrenched after 22 years with the same MNC, no severance package to speak of beyond the statutory minimum. He drove for Grab six nights a week for almost a year while we rebuilt his personal brand and network from scratch.
I remember him joking with me once, sitting in my office, “After 20+ years of commuting, I’d never imagine I’d be grateful for ‘Peak Hour CBD Demand… Now that I’m the Driver, it’s the only thing I look forward to!”
That’s the safety net I’m talking about. Managers, engineers, bankers, HR directors… they all traded boardrooms for the driver’s seat at some point, not because they wanted to, but because it kept food on the table.
This week, the Government announced a transition package to help taxi and private hire drivers prepare for autonomous vehicles.
Read that again… The very career that used to be Singapore’s unofficial safety net now needs its own transition plan – and that should make every PMET pause.
1. Yesterday’s Fallback Job Is Never Tomorrow’s Fallback Job
In the good old days, retrenched executives drove taxis and private hire vehicles as their fallback job… and now that path is being redesigned because autonomous vehicles are coming.
For years, I’ve had senior PMETs tell me, “If things get really bad, I’ll just drive Grab for a while.” I never criticised that thinking. It made perfect sense at the time…
But the world has changed, and the question is no longer “What’s my backup plan?” It’s “What happens when my backup plan also has an expiry date?”
This is no time to get complacent.
2. Career Resilience Was Never About Having a Plan B
That’s the part most professionals get wrong… Career resilience isn’t about stockpiling just one backup option – it’s about making sure you never run out of options at all.
That means continually building Skill Currencies that are hard to automate, strengthening your professional reputation, expanding your network, staying commercially relevant, and learning to work alongside AI instead of pretending it won’t touch your industry.
In our Career Currencies framework, those are exactly the currencies that don’t expire the moment the market shifts – in fact, your reputation, network, and adaptability increase in value during those times.
Your career insurance was never a profession. It’s adaptability.
3. This Is Actually Good News, Not bad news
Ironically, I don’t read this announcement as a warning sign.
I read it as one of the clearest signals yet that the Government recognises AI and automation will reshape careers well beyond transport, and they’re preparing workers before the disruption lands – which is exactly what more professionals should be doing for themselves, right now, instead of waiting for their own transition notice.
Because if the career that once represented Singapore’s ultimate Plan B now needs a transition plan of its own… perhaps it’s time to ask yourself a harder question…If your career disappeared tomorrow, what would your Plan B be… and how long before AI comes for that one too?
#CareerAgility #PMET #FutureOfWork #CareerCurrencies
