I get it. A lot of jobs in tech just aren’t that rewarding anymore. If they ever were. At least in 2021, they were kind of easy, and you got to work from home, often < 30 hours a week.
These six figure jobs honestly aren’t all that great, in many cases:
- Being an FDE is endless deployments.
- You’re a mid-level PM working on yet another update to yet another agent feature nobody asked for.
- You’re in sales, grinding the same product into an ever-shrinking patch. With a new boss every year.
- You’re in CS and half your tickets are getting routed to a bot now anyway.
- The same endless campaigns in marketing, except now you are supposed to do them all “in AI”
It’s not what you signed up for. And the Age of AI has made it feel even more existential. I hear you.
But maybe don’t quit.
At least not yet. At least not without a real plan. Because here’s what I’m hearing from every single B2B CEO I talk to right now — and I talk to a lot of them:
Every CEO wants to get leaner.
Not “maybe we’ll do a small RIF.” They want to run tighter than they ever have. The companies that were 200 people and probably should have been 120? They want to be 80 now. AI has given every CEO permission to finally right-size in ways they were afraid to before.
Most CEOs don’t think half their current team is the right team for the Age of AI.
This isn’t about performance reviews or stack ranking. It’s a deeper, more structural question. They’re looking at their org charts and asking: “Which of these people can actually work alongside AI, build with AI, and adapt fast enough?” And honestly? A lot of founders I talk to privately think the answer is maybe half their team. Maybe less.
Almost every CEO wants to backfill departures with AI, not people.
This is the one that should really make you pause before you fire off that resignation letter. When you leave, your role may not get refilled. At least not by a human. I’ve seen this firsthand at SaaStr — we went from 20+ employees to 3 humans and 20+ AI agents. Revenue went from -19% to +47%. That’s not a theoretical case study. That’s my company.
So when someone on your team quits voluntarily? Many CEOs are quietly celebrating. One fewer hard conversation they have to have. One fewer severance package. One more headcount they can reallocate to AI tooling or just drop to the bottom line.
The Math Is Not In Your Favor Right Now
Here’s the uncomfortable reality. The tech job market in 2025 and 2026 is not the tech job market of 2021. Back then, you could quit on a Friday and have three offers by Wednesday. Comp was up, hiring bars were lower, and everyone was desperate.
Today? Senior roles are fewer. Mid-level roles are getting compressed or eliminated. Entry-level roles are increasingly going to AI-first workflows with a thin layer of human oversight. The companies that are hiring are being incredibly selective, and they want people who are already building with AI, not people who are “open to learning.”
Before you quit, before you take that dramatic walk out the door, ask yourself one honest question: Is there actually somewhere to land?
Not theoretically. Not “I’m sure something will come up.” Actually. Do you have a real offer? Do you have a pipeline of conversations? Do you have a skill set that’s in genuine demand right now, today, in this market?
If the answer is no, or even “I’m not sure” — stay. At least for now.
What To Do Instead of Quitting
Use the time. If your job is boring, fine. But boring is stable. Boring pays the mortgage. And boring gives you 5-8 hours a day where you can be quietly building the skills that will actually make you valuable in the next chapter.
Learn to build with AI. Not “prompt engineering” — actually build things. Ship a side project. Automate part of your own workflow and show your boss the results. Become the person on your team who figures out how to do 3x the work with AI tooling. That person is the last one to get cut.
Be the one your CEO looks at and thinks: “They get it. They’re adapting. They’re part of the team that works in the Age of AI.” Because right now, every CEO is making that mental list. You want to be on the right side of it.
Learn to Love The One You’re With. At Least For Now. There’s Just Too Much Change.
Most of us aren’t going to love our jobs. That was true before AI, and it’s true now. But the difference is that in 2021, you could afford to be restless. You could job-hop your way to a 30% raise every 18 months. That arbitrage is mostly gone, apart from elite AI tech talent.
The people who are going to do well in the next few years aren’t the ones who quit in frustration. They’re the ones who stayed, adapted, got leaner themselves, and made themselves impossible to replace — human or AI.
Don’t love your job? I hear you. But trust me — make sure you have somewhere better to go before you walk away from what you’ve got.
