On Dignity of Work: STOA's Next Steps

For the past two years, I have been struggling with an increasing discomfort in the narrative surrounding the work I do for our clients at STOA.

Business owners, vendors, and employees themselves have been talking nonstop about how AI will automate the work they do. Some come from a place of optimism, others from pessimism, or even the well-known doomerism that focuses on AI’s potential to wipe us out.

Rarely has this discussion focused on a matter close to my heart: dignity at work.

To me, dignity is the utmost human value to protect and, in my worldview, work is a fantastic source of it. Given that I am a hopeful realist, I believe that we will find the way to make this new technology (and any future ones, really) operate in our favor to create a world of more opportunities and equality for all.

However, I also believe that won’t happen by accident.

That’s why I’m making the changes I’m making at STOA Digital Solutions. I’m personally refusing (and by extension, this professional project of mine) to perpetuate a conversation overly focused on productivity, efficiency, and revenue (vital things, yes) while downplaying the dignity and opportunities for self-realization for the same people who give life to these organizations.

Where Am I Coming From?

It took me a little bit to understand how the pressing issues close to my heart overlapped with the work I do.

I was born and raised in Venezuela, where work opportunities are very limited. “Follow your passion” would be very irresponsible advice given in an economy such as the Venezuelan one. Freedom of choice in what to do for a living is compromised, at least if you want to make enough money to survive.

In the language of the Capability Approach to human development, we didn’t have many capabilities nor the options to function or exercise them.

When opportunities are fewer and fewer, the ones available tend to lose the dignity available to workers. Wages go on freefall and baseline conditions are rarely met. You just do what you need to do to survive.

In my own experience, my friends and I who went through this, the lack of dignity was in the center of the conversation. We wouldn’t complain often about the wages (somehow, we would find a way), but about the conditions at work. There was no regard for our physical or emotional safety; unreasonable demands had to be met; and, perhaps even more importantly, the opportunities for growth and self-realization were hard to find.

Then, when I was 20, I moved to Spain. I quickly learned about the infamous “garbage contracts” (contratos basura). Spain, in all its glory, enjoys a 23.4% young-adult unemployment rate as of June 2026. While there are many factors playing into this, the “garbage contracts” might be one of the ugliest parts of it.

With the 1984 labour reform, the Spanish state decided to attack the unemployment issue (at that moment, around 20%) by creating a new type of employment contract that would have a fixed term and low to no severance pay. This opened the door for employers to hire people under this contract and undermine working conditions dramatically.

Were (and “are”, because the issue persists to this day) employers to blame? Yes, but not fully. They exploited a loophole because, in many cases, their survival depended on it. I had my own run at owning a business in Spain (freelancing or autónomo from 2016 to 2020 and then having an incorporated business from 2020 to 2023). And it was a trial by fire.

Spanish small businesses pay corporate tax similar to US levels, but they carry far higher social security costs on labour: employers pay 23.4% of labour cost against 7.5% in the US, and freelancers pay a minimum monthly fee (yes, it goes on top of regular taxes) of about €205 regardless of the revenue (did you get sick? Not their problem), while US freelancers pay a flat 15.3% with nothing owed below $400.

This means that keeping a business alive in Spain takes God and His help.

It is bad to the point that when I engaged with local businesses to be under some sort of contract where they would need to pay for social security, they would put a “garbage contract” on the table alongside their recommendations on how to sign up to this or that social program to complement my income, knowing fully well that their pay was not going to be enough.

And with the lack of opportunity, dignity was hard to find. The nature of these jobs was abusive, unreasonable, and almost fully devoid of opportunities for self-realization. Young adults, especially, would take anything they could get, so most employers were not making big efforts to create dignified conditions.

These experiences show me how desperate the search for dignity at work can become.

A Work Revolution

Fast forward, AI landed (or crashed?) in the workplace. And for too many, the first and foremost question was: how do we use this to replace employees?

I highlight this not to pass judgment on those owners and executives. Hiring is a great risk that businesses undertake: massive direct and indirect costs, legal liabilities, and the likelihood of choosing the wrong person for the job.

It is natural, and even at STOA, we look for automation opportunities to decrease our operational costs.

However, AI presents us with a very unique opportunity to transform work for the better. As I said, I believe that work is an outstanding source of dignity and self-realization. I’m almost religious in my belief in work as a means to exercise the virtues that are unique to the human experience. So my preferred reaction to the potential of AI is to be optimistic about how this technology can improve working life.

As with any other technology that has positively influenced the way we work, AI can augment what we can accomplish (I say “can” because part of my hopeful realism is seeing both the potential for good and evil). We can learn faster, build things that would be impossible otherwise, and count on the support of a super-intelligent assistant that will take care of the low-value, menial tasks we don’t want to be doing anyways.

More importantly, it can multiply the opportunities for all of us to find more meaning and satisfaction in the work we do. That is not only true for workers who have full agency over how they use their time (business owners) but also for employees with a specific set of responsibilities. Indeed, it is not about replacing them but creating the conditions for them to thrive.

Perhaps the most difficult thing to genuinely internalize is that human capital that is satisfied, experiencing fulfillment and self-realization from the work it does, augmented in its capabilities with AI, is going to skyrocket the business’s growth and overall success. Productivity will increase and will make future exits or successions much more successful.

Employees who are being trained suitably to improve the work they do with AI can become more productive AND find more satisfaction and flow in their tasks: these conditions do not need to be exclusive.

Multi-Dimensional Happiness

Success in the human experience is not driven by efficiency.

A smaller window at home will help you with energy efficiency, keeping the heat or cold in and driving your power bill down. But the smaller the window, the fewer trees you can see. Is that what we want at heart?

Yes, efficiency can help us reach our goals. Yet, it is only one part of it. This is a recipe that demands many other ingredients.

Having the agency to decide how to use our attention and our time, the freedom to choose how we do our work, the opportunity to experience flow state at work, the possibility for continuous learning and satisfying our curiosity: these will not only make for a better life on an individual level but support the flourishing of our communities in small and large scales.

Therefore, the enemies are pessimism and cynicism, and these take many forms. Companies attempting to capture and monetize our attention; our tendency to look out for saviors; and powerful forces monopolizing the markets: these are the threats between us and dignity at work.

We must stay aware of the particular trap of economic growth. AI overly-optimists talk about GDP growth, when this economic indicator is unable to take into consideration the very things that create happiness or the challenge of providing equal rights and opportunities. Yes, AI might boost GDP, but this methodology hasn’t been a reliable way for real human development in decades. This fact is truer now. We cannot allow politicians and uber-wealthy to tell us otherwise.

The future is bright and promising, but threats to our happiness are real, and we must protect our attention.

STOA’s Future

I will no longer frame the value of STOA Digital Solutions’ services to our clients as automation and opportunities for efficiency. We are taking steps to see and show the full picture.

Human work is a means to freedom and dignity. AI must amplify it. STOA becomes the executive means to make this happen.

It will take nurturing the business culture of our clients to believe that technology exists to create more opportunity for flow and dignity. It will take training, learning, order, and attention. It will take promoting realistic hope.

We are going to automate tasks, not people; be pro-market, not pro-monopolies; work to support people and be very clear about our skepticism toward power. And above all, we will invite people to doubt us too.

The next few years require conversation and debate. It needs us all, hopeful realists, blind optimists, and doomers alike, to find ways to use these new tools for the greater good. We must stop feeling and believing ourselves powerless. We live in a world that has shown us that over the centuries, the human experience has a tendency to improve. We are not diminishing the suffering that billions have had and continue to experience. There are hills and valleys, but ultimately, betterment has been proven to be the most likely outcome.