Elena Verna · 4 min read · AI & Product
Confessions of a Millennial in Tech
Read the original on elenaverna.com →
The piece reflects on how tech has repeatedly transformed itself—from cloud to digital transformation and product-led growth—yet AI feels 10x bigger and faster, challenging our mental models and sense of identity. It highlights social dynamics, the flattening of expertise, and the economics of higher output with lower costs.
Key Takeaways
- AI is accelerating change in tech and often outpaces individuals' mental models, demanding rapid adaptation.
- AI-driven efficiency is reshaping seniority, hierarchy, and how we signal competence in product and growth roles.
- Productivity gains from AI are quickly absorbed by organizations, driving more work rather than shorter hours.
- The shift fuels impostor syndrome and a perception that others have already found the 'system' that works, even as noisy confidence remains.
- The economics of knowledge work may be disrupted as output rises while costs fall, affecting compensation and leverage.
Excerpt
I’ve been in tech long enough to think I’d already lived through the big shifts. We went from on-prem to cloud. Then came digital transformation, where every company suddenly needed to become a software company (whether they had any business doing so or not). Entire stacks got rebuilt - .NET stopped feeling inevitable, Python spread everywhere, and everyone got weirdly excited about Next.js. Mobile came in hot (B2B, naturally, is still deciding whether a phone is a real device). Recurring revenue became our SaaS religion. Remote work exploded, then partially un-exploded. Product-led growth rewired how companies scaled. Each wave felt…