Technical change often simplifies jobs. This increases productivity, but it also makes work- ers more substitutable—or more “commoditized”. Commoditization of labor drives down worker bargaining power: anyone can do the job, implying workers are disposable, which improves the outside option of firms and can lower worker wages. We develop a model that captures both the productivity enhancing and wage depressing effects of commoditizing tech- nical change. Commoditizing technical change involves firms standardizing tasks which im- plies that output is less sensitive to worker quality. Firms benefit because they can more easily fill vacancies for their durable jobs. We show that our model can help explain the divergence between productivity and wages in the service sector, increasing markdowns despite falling local concentration, and the decline of the large-firm wage premium.