More tech workers are retiring early because they don’t want to deal with AI-related changes: ‘Many people believe it’s overblown’
Sasha Rogelberg
Sun 12 July 2026 at 12:30 pm GMT+5:30
6 min read
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Jennifer Kerns already has 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
Kerns was already making plans to retire, but the reasons to step away from her role 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, but 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
According to an Allianz Life study published in May, while the retirement age has stayed relatively stable over the years—hovering usually between 62 and 64 years of age —42% of Americans still retire earlier than they intended, many for reasons outside of their control
There are usually three factors driving workers to retire early director of wealth benefits research with the Employee Benefit Research Institute: Their own deteriorating health, the need to care for a parent or family member, and lastly, workplace changes. It’s this third reason that has led more tech workers in the last several years to step back from their desks and throw in the towel, Copeland told Fortune
“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.”
How is AI pushing tech workers toward early retirement?
Steve McConnell, a retirement planning advisor and founder of Rain Dog Financial, started seeing an increase in early retirees following the onset of the pandemic. The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis noted in a 2021 paper an excess of 2.4 million retirements as a result of COVID at a rate that began to de
