The $775K skill
English majors, this is your decade.
Hi, I'm Aria. Welcome to Notes from Aria — tech, AI, and the careers nobody's writing the playbook for. Glad you're here.
Netflix is hiring for a job that pays $775,000 a year and doesn’t require a single line of code. I made a reel about this earlier this week if you want the 90- second version.
If you want the actual list — keep reading. ◡̈
Quick context: software engineer job postings are down 36% from 2020 — the lowest level in five years. Meanwhile, AI roles grew 25% year-over-year, and many of the highest-paying ones don't require code.
The reason is simple. AI flooded the internet with content that all sounds the same. The people who can sound human now are suddenly the most expensive hires in tech.
Here are five places it’s actually happening, plus how to start positioning yourself this week.
1. Director of Product & Technology Communications
What it is: The person who explains a tech company’s AI to the world. Writes the speeches the CEO gives. Decides how the brand sounds when it talks about AI.
Salary range: $200K–$775K at top AI labs. Mid-level Senior Communications Manager roles at the same companies start around $130K–$220K.
Who’s hiring: Netflix, Anthropic, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, plus most enterprise companies launching AI products.
Who can pivot in: PR pros or communications managers. Honestly, if you’ve been asked “make this sound less confusing.”
Why it pays: AI labs need humans who can explain dense research to investors, regulators, and customers without losing the tone. One bad sentence can cost billions.
The skill to build this week: Pick one piece of dense AI news, an Anthropic research post or an OpenAI product announcement. Translate it into a 200-word LinkedIn post a non-technical friend could understand. Do this once a week and after 8 weeks, you have a portfolio.
2. AI Product Manager (PM)
What it is: The person who decides which AI products a company should build and why. Making the calls about what’s worth building, who it’s for, and what trade-offs make sense.
Salary range: $240K–$700K at Netflix’s fully remote Generative AI PM role. $140K–$250K at most companies. Mid-level Associate Product Manager roles in AI tools start around $90K–$160K.
Who’s hiring: Netflix, Microsoft, Meta, Salesforce, plus virtually every AI startup. Also non-tech enterprises adding AI to their products (banks, hospitals, retailers)
Who can pivot in: Project managers. Marketing managers. Operations leads. Consultants. Anyone who’s been the person making decisions about a product.
Why it pays: Companies are paying for judgment that prevents them from shipping something that fails on a problem AI can’t actually solve.
The skill to build this week: Pick a product you use daily. Write a 1-page document on an AI feature it should add, what it does, who benefits, how you’d measure if it works. Post it on LinkedIn. Get feedback and now that is now the start of your portfolio.
3. Head of Content / Editorial Director
What it is: The person who runs a tech company’s editorial. Decides what stories the company tells. Builds their blog, podcast, newsletter.
Salary range: $200K–$223K+ at companies like Hinge, Ramp, and Adobe. Mid-level Content Manager and Senior Content Strategist roles start around $90K–$140K.
Who’s hiring: Hinge, Ramp, Adobe, Notion, Figma, and more.
Who can pivot in: Writers. Former journalists. Marketing people who’ve run content programs. Social media managers who’ve grown an audience. Anyone who’s good at deciding what to publish, not just writing.
Why it pays: Tech companies figured out they can be their own media. Why wait for TechCrunch to write about you when you can hire a former TechCrunch writer to do it directly?
The skill to build this week: Audit your favorite tech company’s content. What are they publishing? What’s working? What’s missing? Write a 300-word “if I ran content here, I’d do this” memo and post it on LinkedIn. Tag the company. You never know if the company will notice you!
4. AI Content Strategist
What it is: The person who figures out where AI helps content production and where it kills brand voice.
Salary range: $100K–$180K+. This is the most accessible role on the list right now.
Who’s hiring: Almost every mid-to-large content team in tech, e-commerce, and media. HubSpot, Canva, Notion, Shopify, and more.
Who can pivot in: Content marketers. Writers. Editors. Social media managers. If you’ve used ChatGPT or Claude for real work in the last six months, you’re more qualified than most applicants.
Why it pays: Companies that figured out they could 10x their content with AI also figured out quality fell off at the same time. Now they’re hiring humans to fix it.
The skill to build this week: Take a piece of AI-generated content from any brand you follow. Rewrite it in 30 minutes to make it sound human. Save the before/after as a side-by-side document. You now have a portfolio.
5. AI Evangelist / Developer Advocate
What it is: The human face of an AI product. Makes videos. Speaks at conferences. Writes tutorials. Builds community.
Salary range: $200K+ at companies like Adobe. Mid-level Developer Advocate and Community Manager roles start around $80K–$130K.
Who’s hiring: Adobe, GitHub, Vercel, Hugging Face, most AI tooling startups.
Who can pivot in: Creators. Communicators. Former engineers who liked the speaking part more than the building part.
Why it pays: The person who can make the case in plain language is worth more than the engineer who built the feature.
The skill to build this week: Pick one AI tool you actually use. Make one piece of content explaining how to use it for a specific job, a Reel, a tweet, a quick blog post. Tag the tool’s account. This is exactly the work the role does.
The pattern
The shared skill isn’t coding. It’s translation. That’s the skill that just got expensive.
It’s also the skill the people I know with humanities degrees, communications backgrounds, journalism experience, or “non-traditional” paths have been quietly building for years. Usually while being told they were the less employable ones.
That flipped.
What you can do right now
2. Get fluent, not technical. Pick one AI tool — ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini. Use it for real work for 30 days. You don’t need to understand how it works. You need to know how to get a good output, recognize a bad one, and explain the difference.
3. Build proof in public. One piece of public-facing writing — a Substack post or a LinkedIn post is more credible than a degree to a hiring manager. You never know who will come across it.
P.S. — I have a biology degree. I made it to PM at Meta and Sony. I now make more from a content business than I ever did in tech. None of it required a CS degree. The version of me five years ago needed someone to send her a list like this. So here it is. ◡̈
P.P.S. — Today is Mother's Day. If yours is a celebration, I hope it's a good one. If today is hard — for any of the reasons today can be hard — I'm with you. I'm in that group this year too. Sending a warm hug.
See you in two weeks,
Aria
Find me on Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, or Youtube at @techwitharia