Jennifer Kerns already had plans to travel to Mexico, California, and Cape Cod. After more than 30 years in the tech industry, Kerns, 60, finally hung up her hat in March. Most recently, she worked at GitHub, a Microsoft subsidiary, as a program manager — and before that, she was a contractor at Microsoft for 25 years.
She was already making plans to retire, but the reasons to step away began to pile up in the months leading up to her decision. Nearly her entire leadership chain departed over the course of a couple years. Her youngest child was about to age out of her family's insurance plan. And then there was AI, which became the "sole focus" of the company, she said.
"That was really it for me," she told Fortune. "I don't buy into AI. I think it's a bubble that's going to burst."
Kerns considers herself a creative person, and while narratives surrounding AI's possible negative impact on the arts isn't her only reason for not buying into AI, it's that she simply didn't want to deal with it at this stage in her career.
"It's not that I don't think I can learn to use AI or [have a] fear of displacement," she said. Plainly, "It offends me."
Finding herself at a crossroads where she either picks up the technology she loathes to use or calls it quits, Kerns decided to retire — joining the nearly half of Americans who retire earlier than expected.
Her story isn't unique. A growing number of tech workers near retirement age are stepping back early as AI reshapes their industry. According to a study by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, the share of workers 55 and up leaving white-collar work is surging in the post-ChatGPT era. For computer programmers, the number of exits rose by over 25 percent between 2014 and 2025, while accountants and auditors saw a 22 percent increase.
Craig Copeland, director of wealth benefits research with the Employee Benefit Research Institute, says workplace changes are driving more people toward early retirement. "The tech industry is going through a revolutionary period of moving toward AI, where they're changing what needs of employees they have, and therefore that really causes people toward the end of their careers," he said, "to really come to the forefront."
For tech workers, one of the distinctive features is the learning curve of getting up to speed on a new technology — and the decision of whether to jump onto the next wave and ride that or not. Over 30 years, there's been desktop PCs, the internet, mobile, cloud computing, and now AI. Each time, workers face the same choice: adapt or opt out.
Kerns opted out. For her, it wasn't about ability or fear. It was about values. And at 60, after three decades in the industry, she decided the technology didn't deserve her time. She's traveling now, and the bubble — if it is one — will have to burst without her.