A quiet prediction for 2026, from someone who has spent a lot of time studying how humans behave at work: I think we’re about to see an unprecedented quiet retirement of elder millennials from tech. Not dramatic exits. Not mass layoffs. Just a steady, largely unannounced backing away. Many elder millennials hit what was supposed to be the payoff phase of their careers—middle to senior roles, stable compensation, some accumulated growth—at the exact moment life got heavier. Kids entering adolescence. Parents aging or dying. Bodies changing. Energy changing. Perspective changing. (Read: perimenopause and midlife crises...) At the same time, the last decade didn’t quite deliver what was promised. Most stock options didn’t meaningfully materialize. Homeownership was delayed or derailed. Many relocated during the pandemic “temporarily” for childcare or sanity and never fully returned—to cities, to offices, or to the pace they once sustained. Then AI arrived. Not just as a new tool, but as a true platform shift. What I’m watching isn’t resistance or denial so much as a widening gap in orientation. Some people are instinctively reorganizing how they think, work, and create around this new substrate. Others are using it incrementally; helpful, but not transformative. Neither is a moral failure. But the gap compounds quickly. For a cohort already tired, already juggling more life outside of work, and already questioning the ROI of constant grinding, the incentive to retool themselves again—this time at platform speed—just isn’t there. So many will choose something else. They’ll frame it (honestly) as leaning into IRL, into human connection, into building tangible things. They’ll open coffee shops, take over family businesses, learn trades, consult selectively, or turn long-held hobbies into second careers. It will look intentional. And often, it will be. What fascinates me is not the “exit,” but the alignment: a generational life stage colliding with a technological inflection point that dramatically raises the bar for cognitive and adaptive load at work. From an HR lens, it’s one of the most interesting workforce transitions I’ve ever seen unfolding in real time... and I think we’re still underestimating how quietly, and how profoundly, it will reshape who stays, who leaves, and what “career success” even means next.

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