A quiet anxiety is spreading across offices and homes in India. It doesn't arrive with a dramatic announcement. Instead, it creeps in during the late hours, after the laptop is closed but the mind remains restless. A single, troubling thought takes root: What if the skills I've honed for years suddenly don't matter? What if my role vanishes, not in a distant future, but soon enough to feel like an unavoidable fate?
From FOMO to FOBO: A Darker, More Personal Fear
This is not the Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) that defined a previous era of abundant opportunities and celebratory career updates. What has taken its place is a deeper, more personal dread. It's called FOBO – the Fear of Becoming Obsolete. This phenomenon, which was also highlighted by Forbes last year, is now gripping the modern Indian workplace. It is fuelled by the relentless advance of artificial intelligence, automation, and a pace of technological change that no traditional training manual ever prepared workers for.
Unlike FOMO, which was about missing a chance, FOBO is fundamentally about losing personal and professional relevance. The modern workplace is no longer characterised by stability but by sheer velocity. AI systems now draft emails, analyse complex data sets, prepare legal contracts, assist in medical diagnoses, and even generate computer code. They often perform these tasks faster and at a lower cost than human professionals.
Why This Wave of Automation Feels Different
This transformation is distinct from earlier waves of automation that primarily affected manufacturing and blue-collar jobs. Today, the disruption is penetrating deep into white-collar professions once considered secure. Lawyers are encountering AI that can prepare preliminary legal documents. Doctors are using algorithms that help analyse scans and suggest diagnostics. The tasks that once formed the core of entire careers are being systematically reassigned to algorithms that don't need sleep, ask for raises, or take sick leave.
The corrosive nature of FOBO lies in its silence. Employees rarely voice this fear to their managers. Instead, it manifests as subtle yet damaging workplace behaviours:
- Increased hesitation and risk aversion.
- Chronic burnout and quiet disengagement.
- A decline in volunteering new ideas.
- Procrastination on important decisions.
- Compulsive overworking in a futile hope that sheer effort can stave off irrelevance.
However, in the new workplace order, effort alone is no longer the primary currency; adaptability is.
Two Paths Forward: Resistance Versus Adaptation
In response to this pressure, professionals across Indian organisations are splitting into two distinct camps. The first group leans into the fear. They resist new tools and workflows, quietly hoping the technological shift will stall or reverse. Ironically, this defiance often accelerates their isolation. As AI reshapes the work environment, those who refuse to engage are quickly perceived as incapable of change and are left out of critical loops.
The second group chooses a different response: they lean into learning. They experiment with new AI tools, viewing them not as competitors but as powerful additions to the human role. They focus on enhancing the quality of their questions and insights rather than just the quantity of their output. They double down on uniquely human strengths—strategic decision-making, nuanced understanding, emotional intelligence, and providing context—areas where machines still struggle to compete.
These adaptive professionals are not immune to FOBO, but they refuse to let it paralyse them.
The Uncomfortable Signal FOBO Sends
FOBO is not merely a prophecy of doom. It is a critical signal. It tells workers that careers can no longer be built on a single set of static skills. It tells companies that employee loyalty without continuous learning is no longer a sustainable model. And it tells leaders that empty reassurance will not calm a workforce genuinely anxious about its disappearing relevance.
The fundamental truth is this: AI may not come for every job, but it is coming for every role that refuses to evolve. The survivors of this great transition will not necessarily be the most technically brilliant. They will be the most agile—those most willing to rethink how they contribute, shifting from being mere task-doers to becoming decision-makers, and from executors to interpreters.
Moving Beyond Fear to Regain Agency
The true antidote to FOBO is not blind optimism. It is agency. Employees who proactively take control of their upskilling journey, who expand into adjacent skill sets, and who deeply understand where human judgment and creativity still hold an irreplaceable edge are already pulling ahead. They are not waiting for disruption to arrive fully formed at their doorstep. They are meeting it halfway, prepared and proactive.
FOBO may well be the defining workplace anxiety of this decade in India. However, it does not have to define its casualties. In a labour market increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, relevance is no longer inherited from a degree or a title; it is continuously earned through learning and adaptation. This shift from stability to perpetual evolution is perhaps the most unsettling—and defining—change of all.
