The Elder Millennial Fork

Some of us are leaving tech. Some of us are just getting started.

I keep seeing elder millennials quietly leaving tech. Not dramatic exits. Just... backing away. Opening coffee shops. Learning trades. Consulting "selectively." Doing IRL stuff.

I get it.

We hit the payoff phase of our careers right when life got heavier. Kids. Aging parents. Bodies changing. The stock options that were supposed to make it worth it? A lot didn't pan out. Layoffs kept coming... 264k in 2023, 153k in 2024, 124k in 2025.

Then AI showed up. Not as a tool, but as a platform shift. Retool yourself again, fast, or get left behind.

For a cohort that's already tired... a lot of people just don't want to do it anymore. So they're choosing something else. That's a valid choice.

I Went the Other Way

I'm in the same cohort. Same life stuff. I just had a baby, so sleep doesn't exist.

But when AI showed up, I didn't see "work harder." I saw: I can finally ship the things I've wanted to ship.

For years, I had ideas I couldn't build because I didn't have the technical skills. I could design and prototype, but shipping meant convincing engineers to care about my side projects. I've been lucky... I've worked with great engineers who helped make Blush, Lummi, Bueno, Robotos. But I was always working within constraints.

Now I ship things myself. Efecto. Remoto. Not mockups. Real products.

I wrote about learning to love the terminal a few weeks ago. Designers in my mentions were like "this is wild" because for years we learned to stay in our lane. Design, hand off, hope it ships right.

That's changing.

The Fork

One path: step back. Do something tangible. Human connection. Coffee shops, family businesses. That sounds nice honestly.

Other path: lean into the tools. Take the experience you have, combine it with AI that removes the technical friction, and suddenly you can build faster.

I've shipped more in the last year than in the previous five. Not working harder. Just blocked less.

The Advantage

Here's what people miss about older folks who stay:

We have context the tools don't have.

I've seen what good design looks like. I've seen bad business decisions. I know when something feels off. I've watched products fail and succeed for twenty years.

AI can generate code. It can't tell you if the feature should exist.

When you combine that experience with tools that remove the execution bottleneck... you're not competing with 25-year-olds who are faster at prompting. You're playing a different game.

Anyway

People leaving tech aren't giving up. They're choosing what they want their life to be.

But if you're on the fence... this might be a good time to stay. Not to work harder. But because for the first time, you might not have to.

What's left is judgment and experience. The stuff you spent twenty years building.

That's not nothing.

I'm @pablostanley on Twitter if u wanna talk about this.

also, try a tool I've been working on: https://efecto.app/